All Things Cheese

Last weekend I spent Saturday attending a cheese making workshop.  The workshop was run by Elisabeth Fekonia from Permaculture Realfood and covered cheese making basics, raw milk vs processed milk, lacto-fermented foods including, kimchi, kefir, and sauerkraut, and things such as cultures butter and yoghurt.
Over all I was very pleased with the course and I found it very educational.
We got to see the cheese that we would be making from scratch (and later having for lunch)

Elisabeth shared a lot of her knowledge and her experinces with cheese making and all things dairy.

 We started by making a brie

 The curds were spooned into baskets to drain.

 By the time we had lunch the curds had drained considerably.

Morning tea was sourdough piklets with cultured cream, ricotta and cottage cheese. Then we went back to the lesson and made a cheddar.  The curds are cut to release more of the whey.

 Then the cut curds were heated to release even more of the whey then spooned into a cheese hoop lined with butter muslin.

Once all the curds were in the hoop the cloth was folded over the top and second hop was pushed down on top.

The hoops were the put into a press and weights were added to the top.

 Then it was lunch time.

 We had sourdough, kimchi, cheeses, fermented fruits and vegetables and salad.

After lunch we learnt about kefir, yoghurt and cultured butter.  Many of the dairy products we tried were fermented and if this is not a taste you are used to then it can be a bit confronting to get you mind around the fact that the milk is not off.

Elisabeth had kefir grains and yoghurt for sale and I purchased some of each.
It was a great day out and I learnt a lot.  I am not sure if it just me but some of the flavours of the fermented foods we tried were a bit challenging.  I have now been drinking my milk kefir for a week and I am sure it is just that my pallet is not used to these new flavours as I am not noticing it so much any more.

Do you have any experience with fermented foods?