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Jews For Cheeses

Homemade kosher cheese is fun and easy.

Louis Finkelman | Contributing Writer

W

here does cheese come from?
The supermarket, obvi-
ously. It comes in neat plastic-
wrapped packages.
David Barth of Oak Park says he has
“long had an interest in how people used to
do things for themselves; things that we buy
in a store. Once upon a time, people made
them at home for themselves.”
When he retired after serving as in-house
counsel for Consumers Energy for 33 years,
he finally had the time to indulge that inter-
est.
“My brother bought me a book of one-
hour cheese recipes,” he says. “They all
looked doable. I just followed the recipes
and, with one exception, got what I wanted.
The exception: I bought some goat’s milk
for one recipe, and then noticed that it was
ultra-pasteurized goat’s milk. The chemistry
is fascinating. You need the natural bacteria
to help curdle the milk, as the experts warn,
and ultra-pasteurized milk has no live bac-
teria.”
Barth says that “one hour” in the book’s
title amounts to a bit of gimmickry. Many
of the recipes take a bit longer; but they
are worth the effort. Guided by the book,
Claudia Lucero’s One-Hour Cheese, Barth
produced:
• A very successful mozzarella. “I use it in
all Italian recipes, like lasagna and pizza.”
• A cheddar. “Not a true cheddar because
it is not aged, but it tasted pretty much like
cheddar you could buy in the store.”
• A halloumi. “That was the one that did
not turn out exactly right. I made it half
from the ultra-pasteurized goat’s milk and
half from cow’s milk. It was pretty good, but
it did not have the texture of a halloumi.”
• A farmer cheese. “I recommend that
anyone who wants to start with cheese-
making start with farmer cheese. It is
extremely easy; it takes 15 minutes, and
it’s perfect, crumbly and with just the right
taste.”
You make these soft cheeses by adding
coagulating agents to milk. Add vinegar,
lemon juice or the sap of fig trees, and the
milk solids (curds) promptly separate from
the liquid (whey). That, according to Barth,
constitutes the most exciting moment in
cheese making.
“Seeing it happen … seeing the liquid
milk, and adding a coagulating agent, and
watching it turn solid has an ‘Oh, look at
that!’ factor. You might feel like this is a
product you pay money for in the store; it

14 July 21 • 2016

Mark Bodzin holding a wheel of Parmesan

needs an expert to make it. Seeing that you
can do this at home is thrilling.”

KOSHER CHEESES
To make hard cheeses, you need to use dif-
ferent agents to coagulate the milk. Since
ancient times, people have used rennet
made from the stomach of a calf, which
might have implications keeping kosher.
The Talmud records an argument about
how a meat ingredient can never get added
to milk in a kosher product (Avodah Zarah
35a-b), and the Talmud may require that
Jews make the cheese for it to be kosher.
Though moderns can use vegetable or bac-
terial rennet; the religious requirement for
Jewish involvement may still apply.
The cheese maker then needs to sepa-
rate the curds from the whey and press
the curds in a cheese press to get out most
of its moisture. This pressed curd must
age, under just the right conditions so that
friendly microorganisms add flavor to the
cheese and unfriendly ones do not spoil it.
With curiosity about how to make cheese
at home, and also dissatisfied with the
flavor of the available kosher Parmagiano
or Romano cheese, Southfield resident
Marilyn Finkelman and her daughter-in-
law Caryn Finkelman of Oak Park (this
reporter’s wife and daughter-in-law) make
a hard cheese for grating. For supplies
and detailed instructions about how to
make cheese, they relied on the website of
the New England Cheese Making Supply
Company, “The Fantastic Moos-Letter,”
published by Rikki Carroll, who calls herself
the Cheese Queen.
Former Detroiter Mark Bodzin of New

Jersey followed a different path when dis-
satisfied with available kosher cheese.
Bodzin says, “I have not always kept kosher.
One of those things that I missed when I
started keeping kosher again is high-quality
cheese: grassy-smelling, crumbly, melt-in-
your-mouth cheddar.”
Bodzin knew that kosher cheese can
be excellent. He tasted really good kosher
cheese in Israel. So Bodzin went in search of
award-winning cheese makers who would
do a kosher run. He found what he sought
in Shelburne Farms of Vermont, a nonprofit
educational working farm that models
sustainable agriculture without using hor-
mones or artificial chemicals.
Bodzin appreciates working with a pro-
ducer who makes food the way it used to be
made. “You can feed this to your children
with no guilt,” he says.
Shelburne Farms appreciated making
their product available to a consumer base
they currently were not serving.
“Cheese making is a very sanitary, very
clean operation. The kashering process is
not that different from regular cheese pro-
duction. We are cleaning all the time,” Kate
Turcotte, Shelburne Farms’ head cheese
maker told the Jewish Link.
Bodzin began with a Kickstarter cam-
paign to raise $16,000, enough money to
kasher (under the supervision of the Vaad
HaKashrut of Massachusetts) Shelburne
Farms for a one-day run. He quickly raised
that amount and more.
For more information, or to order your
own shipment of cheese, you can contact
Mark Bodzin at Muncle Arks Gourmet LLC,
www.munclearks.com.

*

Caryn, Marilyn and Yaakov Finkelman
followed these steps to make kosher
cheese at home.