Venturing into the unknown world of washed rind cheeses and how to have Elderflowers all year round. December 10th 2014

It's been a while since I experimented with a new cheese variety but with my cheeseaholic daughter coming home from the UK to visit this summer, I thought I would be brave and try something new -a washed brine cheese in the style of the French Haute Savoie Alps cheese Reblochon.

The initial process was fairly straight forward, adding culture, rennet, cutting curds, slightly heating, draining and light pressing. Adding a culture called Brevibacterium linens is the distinguishing difference  to begin with. 

Once it is in the cheesecave,every alternate day the cheese gets flipped and washed with a light brine solution. This I have to do for 2 to 6 weeks. Meanwhile the cheese will develop a yellow orange colour and the inside will get soft and pasty and very stinky I think.

I just hope I know when it is ready and that it hasn't gone off! So far so good.

I have also done a bit more foraging for more elderflowers in parks and along a disused railway line. I had the (I hope) brilliant idea that I could preserve any excess flowers in the freezer by vacuum packing them.I hope this prevents any discolouration so that they can be used later in the year to make the super easy Sparkling Elderflower of my last post.