Robin's Write Living: Cheese Making at Esalen with Charlie

Our finished Crotin Goat Cheese decorated with fresh herbs and flowers.

This is my journey into cheese making with Charlie Cascio at Esalen. The last few years I have been eliminating most of the dairy from my diet. I love dairy, and I do use a fair amount of organic butter in my cooking. Although I eat much less cheese now than in the past I still love to indulge in some goat cheese or the fabulous varieties my sister often brings to family gatherings like Humboldt Fog. So this course exploring cheeses was really the last thing I needed in terms of keeping up the willpower to refrain from dairy...but you gotta live a little! And if you're going to indulge, how about pure, wholesome and handmade!

This is one of Charlie's eight french goats. She lives an idealic life for a goat, foraging among the oaks on the ridgetops of Big Sur at Charlie's Farm. She drinks pure water from a source on her land and her raw milk is transformed into artisanal cheeses and stored in a little cave near her pen. We also used her milk for the cheeses we made during our course as well as raw cow milk from another local dairy, Straus Family Creamery.

Heating the Milk

I had never made any sort of cheese. It is both a simple process and a difficult process. It requires precision, extreme cleanliness and patience. But, the process for all cheese is basically the same and it is in the subtle manipulation of the steps that brings you all the variety you can find in cheese. Our learning process was very interactive. Charlie would take us through a recipe and different volunteers would assist him in the execution. The first step is to sanitize EVERYTHING and be careful of cross contamination throughout. You slowly heat milk to a particular temperature and then add in a starter. You just sprinkle the powders on top and give them a few minutes to rehydrate, then gently mix it in and wait a set amount of time. Next you add the rennet and sometimes at this point other additives like mold starter. There is another waiting period during which the milk solids coagulate into the curd and the liquid separates and forms the whey. When tis separation is complete, you cut the curd with a long knife into small pieces. For soft cheeses, you then pour the curd into forms. For hard cheeses you then cook the curd at a ,ow heat for a set period of time while gently stirring. Hard cheeses are then poured into a mold and a cheese press is used to extract the whey. There is then some tempering, maybe brine or wine or honey, and the cheese is stored, at least six months to develop its flavor.