Animal, Vegetable, Miracle_ A Year of Food Life - Barbara Kingsolver [69]
Forging ahead, Ricki announced we were making queso blanco, whole milk ricotta, mascarpone, mozzarella, and farmhouse cheddar. Yes, us, right here, today. We looked on in utter doubt as she led us into our first cheese, explaining that we’d make all this with ordinary milk from the grocery. Raw milk from a farm is wonderful to work with, unhomogenized is great, but any milk will do, so long as it’s not labeled “ultra-pasteurized.” Ultra-high-temperature pasteurization, Ricki explained, denatures proteins and destroys the curd. The sole purpose of UHP is to ship milk over long distances; after this process it can sit for many weeks without any change in its chemistry.
Because its chemistry is already so altered, though, UHP milk will not make cheese, period. This discussion confirmed what I’d learned the hard way at home in my earliest efforts. Before I knew to look for the term “UHP” and avoid it, I’d used some to create a messy mozzarella failure. The curd won’t firm up, it just turns into glop.
“Ask your grocer where your milk comes from,” Ricki instructed us; the closer to home your source, the better. Reading labels in your dairy case may lead you to discover a dairy that isn’t too far away, and hasn’t ultra-pasteurized the product for long-distance travel. Better yet, she suggested, ask around to find a farmer who has fresh milk. It may not be for sale, since restrictions in most states make it impossible for small dairies to sell directly to the consumer. But some allow it, or have loopholes the farmer can advise you about. You may be able to buy raw milk for your pets, for example. (Those kitties will love your mozzarella.) You can pasteurize raw milk yourself if you like, but most outbreaks of listeria and other milk-borne diseases occur in factory-scale dairies, Ricki said, not among small dairies and artisans where the center of attention is product quality.
The subject of regulations touched a nerve for several small milk producers in our workshop. Anne and Micki, two mothers raising families on neighboring New England farms, got interested in home dairying after their pediatrician suggested switching to organic milk. If a family can put one organic choice on their shopping list, he’d said, it should be dairy. The industry says growth hormones in milk are safe; the pediatrician (and for the record, he’s not alone) said he had seen too many girls going through early puberty.
So Micki and Anne acquired their own Jersey cows, happily guaranteeing their families a lifetime supply of hormone-free milk. Anne also makes kefir, which she would like to sell at her farmers’ market, but can’t. Micki’s daughter makes ice-cream-and-cookie sandwiches using their own milk and eggs—a wildly popular item she could sell to build her college fund, except it’s illegal. “We’re not licensed,” Micki said, “and we never will be. The standards are impossible for a small dairy.”
She wasn’t exaggerating. Most states’ dairy codes read like an obsessive compulsive’s to-do list: the milking house must have incandescent fixtures of 100 watts or more capacity located near but not directly above any bulk milk tank; it must have employee dressing rooms and a separate, permanently installed hand-washing facility (even if a house with a bathroom is ten steps away) with hot and cold water supplied through a mix valve; all milk must be pasteurized in a separate facility (not a household kitchen) with its own entrance and separate, paved driveway; processing must take place daily; every batch must be tested for hormones (even if it’s your cow, and you gave it no hormones) by an approved laboratory.
Pasteurization requires three pieces of equipment: a steel pot, a heat source, and a thermometer that goes up to 145°F. Add to this list, I suppose, the brainpower to read a thermometer. I’ve done it many times without benefit of extra driveways and employee lockers, little knowing I was a danger to the public.