The Cheese Owners Manual
Getting it home -
How do you get our cheese home? Soft young cheeses like to be cool, but will toleratesome time at ambient temperatures. Our rule of thumb is - if your are comfortable, so is the cheese. So in the heat of summer - if your aren't heading right home to store the cheese carry it with you, but at least don't leave it in the car. Other times of year are more forgiving.
Seasoned farm market customers bring a cooler and ice packs with them to the farm market during the heat of summer. This way they can shop at the market early to get the best quality and selection, and still be able to stop for brunch with friends or run other errands without compromising the quality of their food purchases. One couple proudly showed Fleming a cooler they had bought just for carrying our cheese home in style, yet still allowing time for that important Saturday morning coffee stop at Weaver Street Market: it was an insulated wine bag with a frozen ice insert! Holds 3 logs of cheese, or one wine bottle (take your pick) Cool idea.
How long will it keep in the fridge? -
The quick answer is: Several weeks - if packaged properly. In its natural life cycle cheese gradually dries out as it ages. Small cheeses have shorter aging periods than larger ones. Ours (under a pound) have a natural aging period of only 3-6 weeks.
Your challenge is to guide this process in your fridge - which is both colder and dryer than an ideal cheese aging room. The waxed parchment deli paper we use to wrap the cheese retards evaporation, thus compensating the low humidity level in your fridge. Cheese wrapped this way will gradually age - getting dryer, and with a more definite flavor. Left alone, it dries up into a small shriveled rock. (We know - pieces of cheese routinely flee captivity to the freedom to be found in a refrigerator's dark recesses - only to be recaptured during that great event - the annual refrigerator cleaning) Don't throw these out! What you have created is an aged grating cheese. Take credit for your patience and self-discipline, and grate these rocks as a garnish for salads and pasta dishes.
The worst thing you can do is to wrap the cheese in plastic - as this totally arrests the aging process. After a week, cheese wrapped this way will develop a butterfat "sweat" on the surface, and often start growing a black mold (poile de chat - or cat hair - a sign of too high humidity) that causes a bitter taste.
Will it Freeze? -
Yes - definitely! If you are stocking up on cheese in the Fall to carry you over the winter when the goats are pregnant, and there's no milk to make cheese from - pop your cheese into the freezer. The plastic deli cups used to package our soft Serendipity spreads are a perfect freezer container. However - the chèvre logs need to be put into freezer quality zip-lock bags. For best results - thaw the cheese slowly in your fridge overnight. After thawing, the cheese's flavor is unchanged. When pressed for time we've even thawed the cheese in a microwave oven - but this insult may make its texture a bit grainy. Better to plan ahead.
Hint: before freezing - cut the chèvre logs into smaller size pieces, and re-wrap in deli paper. This way you can remove and thaw just the amount of cheese you'll need later. Use a length of dental floss to cut the cheese: it leaves a clean sharp surface that both looks neat, and minimizes exposure to the air.