{"id":100,"date":"2015-07-20T19:53:20","date_gmt":"2015-07-20T19:53:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cheese.sunspotdesign.com\/cheese\/?p=100"},"modified":"2016-09-06T15:16:40","modified_gmt":"2016-09-06T15:16:40","slug":"garlic-montasio-july-18-2015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/cheese.sunspotdesign.com\/cheese\/?p=100","title":{"rendered":"Garlic Montasio – July 18, 2015"},"content":{"rendered":"

I recently saw a kickstarter project for a cheese place in\u00a0 Little Rock, AR,
\nwww.kentwalkercheese<\/b>.com<\/a>. \u00a0Kent has\u00a0some great looking cheeses on their website, but the one I liked best, Garlic Montasio, was sold out. So I wrote to them and got some details about the cheese and decided to try to make it.\u00a0 In doing a little research it turns out Montasio can only be made in Northern Italy and that it is tightly controlled. \u00a0I have found this control with cheese as well as wine, the protection of the name.<\/p>\n

\"Roasted<\/a>
Roasted Garlic Heads<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The first step was to roast some garlic. \u00a0I chopped of the top of two heads so the garlic was exposed. \u00a0I poured olive oil into the head and wrapped in foil. Cooking at 350\u00b0 it took 45-55 until the tops were a little brown and the whole head was squishy. <\/em>\u00a0After it cooled a bit, I squeezed the garlic into a food processor to turn the garlic into paste.<\/p>\n

\"Heating<\/a>
Heating the milk<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

These days I always try a recipe first with cheap grocery store milk to see how it work. This is a 3 gallon batch. \u00a0I decided to add 3\/4 tsp. of Calcium Chloride to try to help the cheap milk, I probably should have doubled that measure, as the curd did not set to firmly after 75 mins. \u00a0I was also guessing on the rennet as I went with a little more than 1\/2 tsp. Upping this amount may have also helped. Once I started cutting, I suspected something was a little off the curds looked more like oatmeal than cheese \"20150718_113310_resized_1\"curds.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

We heated the curds for an hour with<\/p>\n

\"curds<\/a>
curds on top<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

stirring and ended up with curds on top. \u00a0I even let them settle from time to time and some would still cluster on top of the whey.<\/p>\n

This made pulling off any whey very challenging. This is a washed curd recipe so I was going to add in some hot water to finish the process. \u00a0I added a couple cups and decided to try to just strain off a couple cups to give me some more room in the pot. Anyway we finally reached the final temperature and stirred for another 10 mins to complete the process.<\/p>\n

\"curds<\/a>
curds going into the mold<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I strained off the whey and then pulled out 1\/3 of the curds to mix with Garlic. I was planning on making a one\u00a0pound wheel and a two pound wheel, so I was going to add Garlic for the one pound wheel and see how much Garlic seemed right.<\/p>\n

I blended the garlic into the curds by hand to get a good mix. The curds went into the molds and on to the press next.<\/p>\n

\"Large<\/a>
Large and Small Press<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

The smaller press was going at 25-35 lbs and that may have been the problem with that wheel as it came out very flaky(see the last picture). The larger wheel came out of the press(55-60 lbs.) ready for brine and looked really solid.<\/p>\n

The recipe called for brinning anywhere from 12-24 hours. \u00a0This seems like a pretty wide range but as it worked out the larger wheel got 21 hours and the smaller got 17 hours of brinning.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Wheels<\/a>
Wheels fresh from the brine.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When I pulled out the larger wheel I noticed some large cracks in the middle of the block that may prove problematic very soon. \u00a0The smaller wheel is pretty flaky and the curds are still visible, not a good sign.<\/p>\n

I will wipe on olive oil when they dry to try to keep the mold down but we will probably be eating these real soon.<\/p>\n

Update: Aug.1, 2015<\/span> – I put the smaller wheel into a seal-a-meal bag today. It seemed like it was drying out a bit. \u00a0This should keep it until I slice it mid-September.<\/p>\n

Update: September 23, 2015<\/span>\u00a0–\u00a0Time to eat the cheese. \u00a0We broke into the smaller wheel and wow is it good. Great garlic flavor. \u00a0It was a little dryer than I would have wanted, so we will see how the other wheel turns out soon.<\/p>\n

Update: August 31, 2016<\/span>\u00a0– I\u00a0pulled out the last quarter wheel to take to a party and found that the cheese had dried enough that it could be flaked apart with the end of a cheese knife. \u00a0It had an amazing flavor after sitting for 14 months. The rule must be if you don’t like a cheese put it back in the frig till you do. Not it is all gone, however I just remade this recipe, so check out that posting.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I recently saw a kickstarter project for a cheese place in\u00a0 Little Rock, AR, www.kentwalkercheese.com. \u00a0Kent has\u00a0some great looking cheeses on their website, but the one I liked best, Garlic Montasio, was sold out. So I wrote to them and got some details about the cheese and decided to try to make it.\u00a0 In doing a little research it turns…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hardcheese","category-semi-hard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/cheese.sunspotdesign.com\/cheese\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/cheese.sunspotdesign.com\/cheese\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/cheese.sunspotdesign.com\/cheese\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cheese.sunspotdesign.com\/cheese\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cheese.sunspotdesign.com\/cheese\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=100"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/cheese.sunspotdesign.com\/cheese\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":421,"href":"http:\/\/cheese.sunspotdesign.com\/cheese\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100\/revisions\/421"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/cheese.sunspotdesign.com\/cheese\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cheese.sunspotdesign.com\/cheese\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cheese.sunspotdesign.com\/cheese\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}