Djath Vermoshi Albanian Cheese Vermosh style June 29th June 2018

With cold and windy weather keeping me indoors last weekend, I decided to try out the recipe for cheese I had been given at our guesthouse in northern Albania. The recipe, handwritten on the back of our bill, was lacking in finer details but I thought I would see what I ended up with.
First instruction was to warm the milk, no temperature given, so I guessed somewhere between 85 and 90 degrees F like Feta might be a good starting point. "Add the bacteria", I translated into adding mesophilic culture so I opted for Flora Danica. There was no mention of rennet but i decided to add a few drops at the same time as the cheese we had tasted had to be pressed and so would need a firm curd. Leave at room temperature for 2 days.
"Pour off the water". I figured I needed to cut the curd roughly and then drain through cheese cloth for a couple of hours.
"Put the cheese under a stone for 2 days" How heavy would a Vermosh stone weigh? Maybe 2.5kg per  mould? Let's try that.

The curd was quite soft so needed to go into a mould for pressing. A chopping board on top of the moulds held the weights for the next 2 days.

Next the cheese was to go in salt water. My recipe said the water needed to be salty enough for a raw egg to float. This is about 18% or more. This is the way to store the cheese , like Feta. It makes it quite salty so can be washed prior to serving.

It ended up as quite a crumbly cheese, much like Feta but a lot less time consuming to make. It tasted quite different to the Albanian version but their Jersey milk tasted very different to our Friesian grass fed milk so perhaps that accounts for it. I shall certainly be making it again!