Upon the recommendation of my cheesemaking group, I ordered a new book: The Art of Natural Cheesemaking by David Asher. The group warned me that the author was a bit rabid about the right way to make cheese. No freeze-dried cultures, they warned me. No plastic. Only fresh raw milk.

I hesitated — purists irritate me — but finally I ordered the book. And then I read every single page, some of them out loud to my (uninterested) husband, until, just this week, I finished the book. I even read the appendices. Every few pages, I’d shout Now I get it! Or, Listen to this! Or, Can you believe…? The other afternoon when I yelled I’M LEARNING SO MUCH, my younger son who was up in his room teaching himself about binary numbers called back, ME, TOO. Our house was positively glowing from all the lightbulbs going off. Or turning on. You know what I mean. 

Here’s a brief summary of the book:

*Our food system is fear-based and highly industrialized, which means our food is being mass-produced in the most simplified, streamlined way for minimal variety and ease of production. The need for pasteurization comes about, not because raw milk is dangerous to consume, but because our milk is mass-produced from many cows, collected from farms and transported to the plant, processed into a uniform product, then packaged and shipped to stores. It’s how we handle the milk, not the milk itself, that is dangerous. 

*The addition of yellow dye began in the industrialized revolution when they needed a way to mask inferior cheese. Some people have no emotional attachment to yellow cheese, but I do. I made a white Colby and just looking at it makes me feel sad.

*There is no need for added molds and freeze-dried cultures. Just as grain holds all the components necessary to ferment into sourdough — and grapes for wine, apples for cider, and cabbage for kraut — raw milk contains all the good bacteria needed to culture milk into cheeses.  

*Instead of relying on freeze-dried cultures which are expensive, single-strain, and less resilient and flavorful (think GMO vegetables versus heirloom), use natural cultures such as kefir, yogurt, and buttermilk to start a cheese. Another option is to let milk sit out at room temperature to sour naturally, or use whey from a previous batch of cheese.  

*The basic cheeses can be categorized as follows: stretched-curd (mozzarella), alpines (Parmesan and Tommes), washed-curd (Gouda), cheddar, white molds (Camemberts), and blue molds. Learn to make a simple rennet cheese and, depending on how you care for the pressed curd (reheating and stretching it for slow mozzarella, cutting and stacking it for cheddars, letting it sit out to grow white mold for the camemberts), you can make all sorts of cheeses. Each one will be different from the one before, depending on all the little variations that occur during the cheesemaking process. Natural cheesemaking is not focused on conformity. 

I am not ready to toss out my vacuum sealer or dig a cave in my room, but this week I did scrape a bit of blue mold from a piece of sourdough, dissolve it in water, and add the water to a quart of yogurt which I then hung and proceeded as with yogurt cheese. Now it’s aging in the cold room. In a couple weeks, once (if) it grows blue mold, I’ll pierce it all over so the mold can work its way into the cheese.

And I started making kefir. (According to Mr. au Naturel, kefir rhymes with “deer,” so it’s to be pronounced Kuh-FEAR, not KEE-fur. It’s a hard habit to break.)

I got the grains from my friend down the road and quickly fell into a rhythm.

In the morning, I put a small lump of kefir grains — about a teaspoon or so — in a pint jar, top off the jar with milk and give it a quick shake. The next morning, the milk is solid, like jello. I schlub-schlub-schlub the contents into a strainer set over a mixing bowl and stir gently until all the kefir has dripped through and only the grains are left. I pour the kefir into a jar, date it, and pop it in the fridge. The grains go into a fresh jar and I start the whole thing over. 

^{grains in a clean jar}

^{top with milk, then shake}

^{twenty-four hours later}

^{stir through a strainer}

^{grains for the next batch}

The kefir grains keep multiplying, so every week or so I’ll dump half of them in the compost. I also keep a small jar of grains submerged in milk in the fridge. Like so, they should keep for weeks. If I ever need more grains, I just strain them out and start the process and, like a sourdough starter, after a day or two, they’ll be fully activated again. (Just this morning, I opened a small jar of milk-covered kefir grains from back in the beginning of December. The milk didn’t smell sour at all. Maybe a little sweet, if anything. How wild is that??)

The liquid kefir, I use either in smoothies, or in place of buttermilk in baking, or as a culture for cheese. Some people like to drink it, but not me. I don’t like how it tastes funky-yeasty and almost metallic. Purist Guy said you can’t detect the flavor of kefir in the final cheeses, but I’m not so sure. I think I taste something, like there’s a very slight “off” flavor. On the other hand, I might be detecting that because my cheeses are still fairly young. Maybe, after six months or a year, that flavor will disappear, or morph into something more complex. 

And that’s the other thing: it could be that this is just what real — excuse me: natural — cheeses taste like. Yesterday, after feasting on about 20 homemade cheeses (my cheesemaking group met at my house and we gorged), some of which packed a flavor funk-punch, I ate a piece of store-bought marbled Colby and was surprised to realize it tasted like absolutely nothing.

How many cheeses can you count? (And that’s not all of them.)

Because kefir is wildly good for you, and because it’s free, and because I love the concept of letting the milk do all the work — using the cheesemaking methods to tease out the different bacterias, yeasts, and molds that the milk already contains — I’m sticking with kefir for now. I have a hunch it’s the right way to go. And it does make good smoothies as long as I add a couple bananas, a generous scoop of jam, and a bunch of other fruit to mask the flavor. 

You might be asking, why use kefir as a culture and not yogurt? I use yogurt in Alpine cheese and that cheese is sweet and mild, with no weird funk whatsoever. The reason is this: Kefir is a mesophilic culture which means that, if you heat the milk to a higher temperature, above 106 degrees or so, it no longer works. So for my higher temp cheeses, like Alpine, I need to use a thermophilic culture, like yogurt, and for the lower temp cheeses, I need to stick with Kefir. (Or buttermilk! I haven’t tried buttermilk yet, but I plan to.) And some cheeses call for both meso- and thermophilic cultures — they kinda tag-team each other — so technically I can use both Kefir and yogurt for some cheeses, which I fully intend to soon do.

^{a fresh batch, ready to strain}

P.S. I like to pick at Asher, but truth is, his is a fabulous book. I wish I had read it back when I first starting making cheese. In my stack of cheesemaking books (I have five) it’s moved to the top.

^{and so on…}

Kefir

1-2 teaspoons kefir grains
1 pint milk

Combine and give a quick shake. Let the jar sit at room temperature. In the first twelve hours, give it a little shake once or twice, but then allow it to sit, undisturbed, over night. In the morning, it should be thick — it can be cut with a knife, but it feels more watery than yogurt. 

Dump the contents of the jar into a sieve and gently stir, forcing the kefir through into a bowl below and separating out the kefir grains. Refrigerate the kefir to drink, or use in cheesemaking or baking. The liquid kefir should stay good in the fridge for at least a week. (If using for cheesemaking, only store for several days.)

Put the grains in a clean pint jar, top with fresh milk, and repeat the process.

The grains will multiply. If you get too many, it throws off the balance and the kefir will get wonky, so every few days, throw out some of the grains (or give them away). (Or you can just increase the amount of milk, accordingly.) For a pint of milk, you’ll need anywhere from a teaspoon to a tablespoon of grains. More than that is too many. 

If you want to stop making kefir, place some grains in a small jar with fresh milk and refrigerate. Stored in this way, they should stay fresh for months. To use, simply strain out the grains and start the process (it may take a day or two for the kefir to reach full strength). 

This same time, years previous: this is who we are, the quotidian (1.14.19), through the kitchen window, quick fruit cobbler, starting today, inner voices.

Popping in with some apple strudel for you, my friends.

We’re at the tail end of our apple supply, just a dozen or so more baking and eating apples rolling around in the crisper, but this weekend when my parents are in Pennsylvania, they plan to swing by an orchard, so I’ll be putting in an order for a bushel of eating apples and a half bushel of baking. (Our local orchard closes over the winter.) Now that we have an extra fridge in the barn for (mostly dairy) overflow, storing apples is a lot easier. 

The first time I made this strudel, I was not impressed: soft biscuit with apple mush. But then I ate another piece the next morning. The flavors had melded and deepened, and the filling and pastry felt more cohesive, like together they were worth more. My younger son was nuts about it. He kept slicing slabs of strudel to eat out of hand.

So I made it again, this time slicing the apples bigger and baking it longer. It was good after all, I decided. A couple days ago, I made it again (there’s all those apples to use up), and this time I made more changes. To the apples, I switched from white sugar to brown. To the dough, I added sugar, increased the salt, and swapped out some of the all-purpose flour for einkorn. And now I’m happy.

I realize some of you highbrow folks (“highbrow” because you raising your eyebrows judgily at us lowbrow folks who are working too hard to look up long enough to raise our eyebrows) will take issue with my use of the word “strudel” since the dough I’m using isn’t traditional: high gluten, super thin, with oil, no sugar, etc, etc. Mine is more of a biscuit-slash-flaky pie crust. But I’ve never had traditional strudel and mine is delicious, so there. 

Einkorn flour is new for me. I learned about it at the bakery — the head baker once made a one-hundred percent einkorn bread — and then I decided to order some of the flour and give it a try. So far, it behaves similarly to whole wheat pastry flour (I’ve been adding some to my sourdough in place of whole wheat, and to biscuits, too), but it has a nuttier flavor and adds a pretty texture and a bit of speckling to the final product. In the case of the strudel, it elevates the whole thing considerably, I think. I’ll be ordering more soon.

I realize this strudel is pretty similar to pie — crust plus filling — but it feels about seventy-five percent easier. Maybe because it looks so rustic. Maybe because there’s no messy oven drips. Maybe because you can eat it out of hand. Actually, I think it has to do a lot with that last reason. Pie feels like an event. You need a plate. Maybe a special crumb topping. Perhaps some whipped cream or ice cream on the side.

Strudel, on the other hand, is its own thing. Cut a slab and eat it with a cup of coffee for breakfast. Or pass it off to a hungry kid for an afternoon snack, no dirty dishes necessary. 

Apple Strudel
Adapted from Kate at Venison for Dinner.

for the dough: 
2 cups all purpose flour
½ cup einkorn flour (or whole wheat pastry flour)
1 tablespoon white sugar
1¼ teaspoon salt
2 sticks (8 ounces) cold butter, cubed
1 egg, separated
¾ cup milk

Measure the flours, white sugar, and salt into a food processor (or mix by hand) and pulse to combine. Add the cold butter cubes and pulse until crumbly. Pour in the milk and egg yolk (save the white) and pulse briefly, just until combined. 

for the apple filling: 
6-8 apples, peeled, cored, and cut in thick slices
¾ cup brown sugar
3 tablespoons cornstarch
1 teaspoon cinnamon

In a separate bowl, toss the fruit with the sugar, cornstarch, and cinnamon.

for the glaze:
1 cup confectioner’s sugar, sifted
½ teaspoon vanilla
several tablespoons milk

Whisk together all ingredients, adding more milk as needed to make a dizzle-able glaze. 

to assemble: 
Place two large pieces of parchment paper on the counter. Lightly flour one piece. Cut the dough in half; set one piece aside and roll the other half out into a thin, large rectangle on the piece of parchment. Place the parchment on a large baking sheet. Repeat the process with the other piece of floured parchment and piece of dough, making the two rectangles as similar in size as possible. 

Tumble the sugared apples onto the piece of dough that’s on the pan, making sure to leave about a half inch of exposed dough around the edge. Flip the other piece of dough onto the top of the apples and peel away the parchment. Crimp by folding the bottom edge of the crust up over the top and pressing to seal. Beat the egg white with a fork until frothy and brush over the top and sides of the strudel. Using a sharp knife, cut slits in the top crust. 

Bake the strudel at 350 degrees for about 45 minutes, or until golden brown. Drizzle with the glaze and allow to cool before cutting into squares. Leftovers keep well, uncovered, at room temperature in a jelly cupboard. 

This same time, years previous: the coronavirus diaries: week 45, the quotidian (1.13.20), full house, Scandinavian sweet buns, cranberry bread, the quotidian (1.13.14), roll and twist, vanilla cream cheese braids, rum raisin shortbread.

As a rule, I’m not a tea drinker, BUT THAT IS CHANGING. (It’s not taking the place of coffee, though. NEVER.)

Once a day, maybe twice, I fix myself a giant mug of tea, or sometimes a whole teapot worth. I fill my electric kettle with water, drizzle a hefty dose of honey into the bottom of a mug, pour in a couple glugs of raw milk, and unwrap a tea bag. When the water’s hot, I fill the mug to the top, give it a stir, and that’s it. Yummy, sweet, milky tea.

I purchased a selection of teas for the wedding celebration, so right now I have all the best to choose from. I’m partial to the Twinings brand: English Breakfast might be my all-time fave, but I also like Earl Gray and Irish Breakfast. While still delicious, herbal teas don’t pair with milk and honey quite as well, so if I have to go decaf, I tend to reach for a basic decaffeinated green tea. (For herbals, I like them all, but I really like Tazo’s flavors, especially the wild sweet orange.)

***

Have you seen Don’t Look Up yet? Everyone’s raving about it, it seems. Some people are even calling it a “documentary.” They’re not wrong, really. (The critiques aren’t wrong, either.)

My husband and I watched it a couple weeks ago, and it sent me spiraling into a lowgrade depression. It wasn’t a bad depression, per say. Just my typical “world is ending” vibe but with the added realization that by ignoring the imending doom (my coping method of choice), I’m just like those dumb joe shmoes in the movie not looking UP.

***

I just finished reading The Story of Arthur Truluv by Elizabeth Berg. Though not a thriller, it was still a page-turner. I read it lickety-split.

It has a similar feel to A Man Called Ove (I kept double checking to make sure it wasn’t set in a Scandinavian country). The story is simple, but not simplistic. It’s a kind story, a true story. About love. Truluv.

***

My husband, younger son, and I just watched season 7 of Alone (the only season available for streaming on Netflix, though it looks like all the seasons might be available for streaming on the History channel) and I can not stop thinking about it.

It’s slower paced and much less sensational than most reality shows, though the producers do try their darndest to jack up the suspense by cutting away right when someone loses their gill net or discovers an animal has gotten into their food cache. Without the hype, I relaxed into the story, marveling over the grueling cold, the diet, the isolation, the raw beauty, and the participants’ mental, emotional, and physical struggles and growth. (At the ending of each episode is a white-toothed guy in a clean garage doing a zoom call chat with participants — skip it.)

***

This video tour of a Canadian family’s cheese cave(s) makes me ridiculously happy. Maybe I need to upgrade my cheese cave to CocaCola fridge out in the barn? My husband isn’t too keen on that idea. The other option, I said, is to dig out under the house. Would he like that better, hmm?

This same time, years previous: homemade lard, the quotidian (1.11.16), spinach lemon orzo soup, kiddling shenanigans, grilled cheese sandwich with pesto and oven-roasted tomatoes.