We’ve been staying in Orgiva (Granada Province, Spain) for a couple of months, we rented a little house as it was getting a bit cold in the van (there is no heating in the van). While we were travelling in France we were buying the most amazing selection of raw milk cheeses, but here in Spain there is not the same selection, and they mostly have hard cheeses rather than the soft cheeses they have in France. You can buy soft cheeses in Spain but they are much harder to find, and it seems that in Orgiva it is only possible to buy hard cheese.

But here it is easy to buy raw goats milk direct from the farm, so I decided I would try making my own cheese. A friend told me a way of making cottage cheese just using lemon juice to curdle the milk, it worked ok but took quite a long time for the milk to separate. A little while ago I got a book called Wild Fermentation by Sandor Katz, which has some cheese recipes in it using rennet. So I got some rennet and used kefir as a starter to “ripen” the milk, and made cheese which resembled mozzarella in texture. Wild Fermentation is an excellent book, I reviewed it in Funky Raw magazine issue 17, and I will republish the review here soon.

Wanting to take things further, I bought a book called Home Cheese Making by Ricki Carroll, which has recipes for all kinds of cheeses, but I’ve not yet made anything from it as I need to buy various starter cultures and moulds. It looks like a really good book, with hard and soft cheese recipes, mould ripened cheeses like Camembert and more. If you like cheese, I really recommend you try making your own, it’s lots of fun and there is so much to experiment with to make your perfect cheese.