I love truffle. I know, its an acquired taste at best but to me it has that umami flavour that is worth the money. So in the absence of a truffle dog to go and find my own truffles, the closest I can get is to make my own products with truffle at the heart.

A few years ago, before I started this blog, I found a local small farm who happened to sell some rare breed pork. After watching river cottage for a while I decided that, as I was going to make my own air dried cured ham, I should invest in the best local pork for it. And so I struck up a relationship with the farmer and secured two of the leg joints for the project.

But that’s another post. Anyway through this relationship iI found out that she also sold raw milk. After trying gold top milk with one of those ‘make Italian cheese’ kits I figured out that I needed the proper stuff. So I tried it with the raw milk and it worked! I made a passable mozzarella.

It was enough to get me moving. I wanted to make the cheese that I really wanted but couldn’t find in the shops so I made the leap and bought myself a cheese press along with a couple of other ingredients to get myself to the next level of cheese making.

The Ingredients/Equipment

3l of Raw milk

1/32nd teaspoon of cheese (mesophilic) culture – or a tiny sprinkle

1ml of calcium chloride dissolved in 100ml of water

1ml of liquid rennet in 100ml of water

1/2 tablespoon of truffle salt

1-2g of fresh truffle finely sliced (in my case black summer/best with the very expensive white truffle)

Cheese press

Cheese cloth

Lard/coconut oil/sealing wax

Thermometer (best if you can get a laser one)

The Recipe

1. Heat the milk slowly in a large sauce pan to around 40 Celsius and add the sprinkle of cheese culture.
2. Leave for 30 minutes
3. Heat again to around 40 Celsius and then add the rennet and the calcium chloride mixture. Give it a good mix and then leave again for an hour. Cover the pan with a lid and some blankets to keep warm.
4. After this the milk should have split in to the curds and the whey. Check for this using your finger and see if the top makes a clean split. If this stage hasn’t quite got there heat a little and wait a little. It will get there
5. Slice the curds into 1-2cm cubes using a knife and leave for 5 minutes. Then very slowly heat back to 40 celsius stirring constantly. Do this for at least half an hour.
6. Once done the curds should look even smaller. Drain off the whey keeping the curds.
7. Mill (squish up) the cheese into a bowl. Add the sliced up truffle along with the truffle salt and mill again.
8. Add the mixture to the cheese cloth lined cheese press and put pressure on the top until liquid starts to drain out. Leave it like this for an hour.
9. Come back and turn the cheese over. Press it using even more pressure and then leave it for a further 12 hours.
10. After this it should look a lot more like cheese. Smooth with flecks of truffle in it. Keep the cheese out to air dry for a couple of days on a drying rack. Turn every 12 hours or so.
11. After this either dip in the wax or wrap in the cheese cloth and smother in lard/coconut oil. Leave it for between 6 weeks and 12 weeks depending on how mature you like your cheddar.
12. Serve with the best sour dough bread and butter you can get your hands on.

Notes

This one is not a save money project. The costs are going to out weight the benefits for quite some time. Just as a rough estimate it probably cost me close to £50 to complete this project but as usual the price will go down when you try it again and again.

The main costs were the cheese press and the truffle products. These will all last for several versions of this recipe and so will work out ok in the end. The real cost was the raw milk.

This is expensive, hard to get and in demand. Its not as if the source is next to my front door either. If you can source this close and cheap this will be worth doing on a regular basis.