Chevre July 25th

Chevre July 25^th

Well, I'm sure you all know what chevre is – it's a goat - right! Well, it's also goat cheese and we had the opportunity to make goat cheese from beginning to end. So a trip to the goat farm was on the list for the day. It wasn't a pretty farm and if I was an inspector for cleanliness I would have probably shut the place down. Still the goats looked healthy and were very friendly. In case you were expecting hand milked goats, guess again. The farm had electric milking machines. They goats were all neatly lined up in the stalls and udders where suctioned onto the machines. The milk went directly into a pipeline that went to a large tank for storage. The milk line had a supplemental spigot that the public could access. We brought our own bottles and tapped into the pipe line to fill our bottles.

It's self serve and you could leave your money on the counter or hay stack or in the farmer's hand! I'm thinking it's a good thing the line went directly into the bottles. There were so many flies in the barn it was hard to breathe. The milk was clean and warm though and you can't get much fresher!

We took our cache of milk and headed for home where we started making our own goat cheese. I have made goat cheese in Colorado but they do it a little different here. With the warm goat milk there is no need to heat it so we put the rennet drops in the milk right away and put it in a big pot. Then we let it sit over night where it began to coagulate. The next day we take the curds out of the whey and put it in containers that are full of holes. The curds stay in, the whey washes out. Then we do a process of turning and salting for a couple of days. Et voila – le chevre! It's very easy and boy is it good. You can eat it fresh or age it and add your own seasoning.  I hope to continue making it when I return.

Maaaaaaaahhhh