Barncast 84 -- Feta

2007-09-17 08:07:40

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Important!! Barncast 85 is a user call in show, call the farm phone with questions, comments at 206-202-GOAT or else it'll be a boring show!

This weeks show is done late in the barn, most of the animals are asleep so it's not the roar cacophony you're used to. It's rather long since we spend a long time going over the farm phone calls, so hopefully that will answer your questions that have come up about recent shows. In the show this week:

Feta pictures for the work though.

There is a video extra, and it will be posted latter today. (monday)

Recipe is given in the full post. (click on the more link)

Feta Ingredients:

Steps:

  1. Warm Milk to 86f/30c
  2. Add culture, let sit on top for 2-3 minutes then stir in
  3. Let milk ripen for 45 minutes for raw milk, 1 hour for pasteurized milk
  4. Optional: Dissolve lipase into 1/4cup of water, then mix into milk
  5. Dissolve liquid rennet into 1/2 cup of water
  6. Stir the rennet into the milk with 20 good top to bottom stirs
  7. Let the milk sit until a firm curd forms, 30-45 minutes
  8. Cut the curds into 1/2 cups, then let sit for 5 minutes
  9. Stir for 20 minutes. If you want a firmer cheese raise the temperature to 90f as you stir
  10. Drain the whey, then either hang in cheese cloth or in molds as described in the podcast
  11. After draining/hanging for 24 hours cut the cheese into 1-2" cubes.
  12. Salt the cubes, then let sit for 24 hours. Roll the cubes over and salt again, let sit 24 hours
  13. Repeat for 3 days until the cheese is firm. Drain any whey that builds up.
  14. Put cubes in jars (quart mason jars work well) and fill with light or medium salt solutions

Light Salt Solution: 14oz of salt/gallon Medium Salt Solution: 20oz of salt/gallon

If you don't want to make a gallon of solution scale as required.

Comments

Susanne on 2007-09-17 18:17:02

Hi Misty! Hi Andrew!

I am hearing your podcast only since two weeks ago. I am now at #16 (because I want to hear it in the order you posted it) and I am enjoying each and every episode.

I live in Austria (which is pretty much on the other side of the world) and although my mother tongue is german and my english is far away from being perfect I have no problem understanding your accent. I don't understand what Misty called "canadian joke" in the podcast, but I don't really care about this.

I really love what you are talking about. I am looking forward to buy a little farm with a garden in a few months, but I don't want to keep any animals at the beginning, because I live in a city and will only be able to live at the farm at the weekends and during the children's school breaks. Let's talk about this issue again when my husband get's retired and we maybe move there for the full year...

But I sure will do a lot of gardening from the start (which is a big hobby of mine) and I have to confess: I found you by doing a search for podcasts and fibre because I am a knitting podcast junkie ;-)

I have a podcast named "Susanne macht Sachen", but as it is in german (about all things crafty) this is just a sidenote to express that I mean what I am talking when I say that I really honor the work you put in this weekly show.

Thanks a lot for creating this great show, you really take me to another world while I listen.

All the best from Vienna, Susanne

Warren on 2007-09-18 08:05:06

Thanks for the info on the dehydrators. The trouble I had with my leathers was mostly that they had an "overdone" taste. They weren't really burnt but they must have gotten too hot. I followed the directions that came with the dehydrator but it didn't work out. I don't know whether the heating element was a little hot when I first got it or what. Anyhow, I have since lost the directions and my dehydrating has gone much better! I need to try leathers again I guess. I just discovered that we have a persimmon tree so I may try some persimmon leathers. We're going to make persimmon jelly too.

Anyhow, thanks for the info and the video on cheese making was cool. I don't have access to fresh milk so I will have to try experimenting with store bought I guess. I am not sure I like feta enough to make it yet but I would love to try some mozarella. Sounds like a good thing for the weekend! Thanks again!

Libbye on 2007-09-25 20:52:21

Hi Guys!

Misty, can you update us on your quest for a new breed of sheep please? You know I'm all about the sheep.

And what's happened to John from Scotland? I miss hearing his beautiful accent.

Kentucky is still in the midst of a horrible drought, I'm having to feed hay to my flock already. EEK!

Thanks for being such good company when I'm on the road each week!!

Timothy on 2007-10-12 11:26:01

Love the show, I've been listening for about a year and have been trying to come up with things to do in the back yard with my 3 year old daughter.

We're now in the process of trying to raise some chickens. I've built a small coop for the chicks and am working on the additions as they get older. Living in southern California, I'm not too worried about heat lamps and such, more about keeping them cool in the summer.

I'm documenting my coop as I build it out here: http://iedaddy.wordpress.com/projects-around-the-house/the-chicken-coop/

So far, I've lost about 11 chicks in my learning process. The first casualty was due to my daughter not understanding that only mother hens sit on their chicks, we quickly straightened that out. Then I lost the rest of the batch due to the heat lamp falling into their warming box (argh!), second batch was lost due to the chicks kicking over their watering bottle during a heat wave and when I came home to check on them they'd all died of heat stroke (that was a tough one to explain to my daughter after she'd named them, the next week I went out and bought an automatic watering device and secured it to the coop so that will never happen again). This current batch was 3, but my daughter wanted to show one to the neighboring kid and well...he's no longer allowed to play with any of the chickens.

I feel like we should name our place the Kevorkian Ranch.

That being said, I've got the automatic waterer, a feed bin that hold several days of food, and we're keeping the chickens in as safe and secure a compound as possible. Hopefully these guys make it to laying age!

I also make beef jerky from time to time with my little dehydrator... saves a ton of money and my wife loves it. I use cheap white plastic dehydrator with fan and heating element and plug it into a light timer so it can do its thing overnight and automatically turns off. I haven't made fruit leathers in a while because the special plastic trays for them melted in the dishwasher when they fell off the rack into the heating element... but I might see if i can pick up more and give it a second try.

One thing I have learned through all this is that if I were a farmer 100 years ago I probably would have needed a 7-11 next door to make it through the winter!

Tom on 2007-09-18 23:00:01

Ooh. Feta cheese. One of my favorites. "Live from Indiana, it's Greek Farm Life" :)

Which brings me to: Since you have lamb, you can make your own gyro meat. It's between meat loaf and sausage. I use a bread loaf pan. Bake at 200F or so until the middle is 150F. Lots of recipes on the web.

Thanks for another great podcast. Love the video extras!

Talk to you later. Tom

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