metro » 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.