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Thursday, September 12, 2013

Cheese ricotta making

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Welcome to our blog, Genzano it story
and this post, Cheese ricotta making
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Making ricotta is an old way of getting as much cheese as we could from the milk.

Ricotta making my grandma way

This hub is being written with a double view in mind, one of which is to compare the old ways of doing things like this ricotta making the old ways which grandma thought me, so that we could compare with what we know today; the other purpose is just to tell you my life story and how I had to cope with what I had to do in those hard times just to live a normal life.

In one of my last hubs, I have been telling you how we made cheese a long time ago in the small farms of southern Italy, in this hub I am going to tell you how we made ricotta then, that is the way that my grandma taught me a very long time ago; I now that you are thinking, what is the use to know that, since we are not going to make ricotta ourselves, because we can just buy ricotta and eat it from the shop nowadays, it is a lot easier and enjoyable to do that. Okay I know what you mean, but just to compare the ways of life of today with the ways of life when I was young, I am going to tell you how we made ricotta my grandma way anyhow.

So, let us go back to when I made cheese, at the end of which I have replaced all the whey in the large kettle and I was ready to make ricotta, so let us start making ricotta my grandma way, you can check out how we made cheese at my hub, My farm life chapter, 7 .

First of all rekindle the fire and make sure that you have enough fire wood for the whole procedure, then lift the large kettle and whey on this three legged devise on the fire and start warming the whey slowly and steadily, as the whey warms up you need to turn this wooden devise around and around in slow motion always in the same direction, this wooden devise is only a simple stick of wood and although it is simple it has been made perhaps from Elmwood or some very high grade wood as it is an utensil porously made and it is going to last for a very long time, perhaps for generations, this wooden utensil has a larger rounded end, and you need to turn it around as I said with the larger end dragging softly on the bottom of the kettle, so that any ricotta that is forming while the whey warms up does not stick to the bottom of the kettle.

This procedure will reach a stage when you can see that some very fine flakes of ricotta are forming in the whey, this is the stage when you need to set the ricotta to rise at the top of the whey, how can we do that you may ask? This can be achieved by adding about half a litre of goat milk to the whey, while you continue to turn your wooden devise as described before, this action of adding this goat milk should set a reaction to the forming ricotta in the whey and it will rise to the top.

Here you need to continue to turn the wooden devise around even more slowly for a few more minutes; you have to take it slower because you don’t want to mix the rising ricotta to the whey again, and when you see that all this has taken place, you can lift down the hot kettle and you are ready to collect your own ricotta.

At the time when I was young the new hot ricotta would be collected in small woven baskets that would let the rest of the whey out while the ricotta was cooling down, we collected it with a sort of colander with handle from the top of the whey, at the end of all this work sometimes we would leave a bit of ricotta for ourselves, and we used it in the following manner:

Usually in the farms of those days there was always plenty of dry old bread that would be hard to eat the way it was, so we would slice the bread and put it in a large dish, and then we would put the still hot ricotta and a bit of whey on top if this dish filled with old bread; this rustic prepared dish usually would replace a whole meal during the day. Okay, you might be shocked and spew that this was a prepared dish of whole some food, but hey it was either that or old dry bread, I hope you see what I mean?

At this point of time the whey in the kettle is still hot, it has got to be because to make ricotta, we had to warm the whey to a very high temperature just below boiling point, so, I have one last use for this hot whey before I finish with it; I have to dip the fresh cheese that I have made into it, and this is a sort of pasteurisation for the new cheese.

I know that now you are saying, this procedure about cheese and ricotta making is very boring; I hope you have finished with it now, because we don’t see the use of knowing all this stuff thank you very much. Sorry to disappoint you because I still have to explain that in those days even the whey had to be put to good use, it has always been so in farming, the main rule of which is; waste not want not, so what we did with the whey was this, we could give small drinks of it to cats and dogs, it had to be small drinks otherwise it would make them sick. The rest of the whey was good for the pigs to drink and to mix with coarse milled grains to feed them. Yes you guessed it right once again the pigs are the saving bank of all farm foods that would otherwise go to waste.

Now that I have described to you this cheese and ricotta making, I feel that I have said enough about my farm life in the town of Genzano di Lucania, which is the town that I was born and lived my young life; therefore, from now on I am going to talk about my life experiences as a migrant to this land of opportunities Australia. See you soon.

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Genzano it story

Cheese ricotta making

IS GOING TO BE CONTINUED;

Next time with, Today modern farming

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Monday, August 26, 2013

Cheese making

We the people use the farms animals to our own advantage, you see, we sell the calf to the butcher and then we milk the cow, from the cow milk we do many thing including cheese

A container on a fire that could also be used to make cheese in the farm, as most times in the farm we were pushed to use whatever there was available, when I was young and working in the farm.

Cheese making in the farms

The king of cheeses must be Parmigiano Reggiano, as its name suggests it is from the province of Parma and surrounding territories in northern Italy, here I would like to point out, what is the Difference between Parmesan and Parmigiano-Reggiano?

The answer to this question is this: (I am going to use this explanation from the internet) Due to Italian D.O.C. laws that protect the names and recipes of certain cheeses, a cheese cannot be called Parmigiano-Reggiano unless it is made using a specific recipe and production method within the provinces of Parma, Reggio-Emilia, Modena, and specific regions in the provinces of Bologna and Mantua. The D.O.C laws are meant to preserve the integrity of traditional cheeses by insuring the flavor and quality. Therefore, any cheese made outside of these regions with a slightly different recipe or production method cannot be called Parmigiano-Reggiano.

One may guess that the recipes for this great cheese has been the work of very many generations of Italian cheese makers in the first place, and then many generations of organizing the great factories of cheese making, one has to look at some of these photos where they cure and store the cheese until it matures to see what I mean.

Now, I am saying this because I know for a fact that in the old times lots of people made their own cheese; in fact I have made some cheese myself and I would like to tell you how it was done the old way, as most farmers had to do it anyhow, and because I was in the farm I did it also, so let us see how I have learned to do it.

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Working in the farm

When I was young I ended up to work in our family farm, as I have already said before, therefore while I have been writing about my life in the farm, I have become aware that I have learned how to make cheese in the farm and I am sure that some of you would like to know how it was done in those times; well I have to tell you that this is not exactly making parmiggiano cheese, but is it more like the poor farmer cheese. So here I am going to tell you hereunder how to make this types of cheese and ricotta my grandma way.

Now before I start I need to say that what I am writing here has really happened in the fifties, I had to tell you this because a lot of things have changed since then, but the principle of how these things are done does not change much, so what we did then can still be done now, so let me tell you what we were doing then?

In southern Italy and perhaps in many other parts of the world, the farmers use to milk the cows the goats, the sheep and perhaps other animals as well, so that they would have their milk and also could make their cheese and other milk products, so this was also happening in our small farm. For those people that is not familiar with this sort of farm life I need to explain that milking is done twice a day in the morning and in the evening, milking is a must to do at the right times otherwise the animals will suffer, and also if you don’t milk them then slowly those animals will produce less and less milk. So, what to do with all this milk that we collected by milking the cows etc.

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Cheese making grandma way

In our case we had two milking cows, so we would collect up to 30 litres of milk every day in spring time, when there was plenty of green food for the cows to eat. In those times everybody needed to be self sufficient and nothing would be allowed to go waist, the theory was waist not want not, therefore everybody was ready to do those things necessary to save whatever had to be saved, therefore the milk we had collected from the cows we used to made cheese, this is what all farmer would do in the old days and I am going to explain it to you how all this was done, including some description of how in the very old time was done.

When I was very young my Grandma would come to the farm to make cheese from this milk that we had for a few years, and she taught me how to make cheese. The whole process was simple but at the same time it was hard for a young bloke, but as I grew older and stronger and able to do it I was left most times on my own. So, if you don’t mind let me go over the process, because I would like to make a record of how these things were made in the past. You see, today in the farms things are different, because now there is a vehicle that collect milk from these farms and take it to the cheese factory to make cheese and any other milk products. So let me tell you how I made cheese and ricotta when I was young and how my forbear had made cheese themselves for centuries if not thousands of years before me.

After milking the cows the evening before and the morning I had about 30 litre of milk that I could make cheese with. Now the first thing that I had to do was to light a fire in the fire place of the farm and make sure that there was enough fire wood ready beside the chimney for the whole process, set a strong three legged steel device on this fife that I had started that was capable to hold the weight of the milk in this special container safely. Then I would get this special large copper kettle, but this copper kettle had to be clean and treated from a specialist perhaps once a year with a coat of tin or something like that, this treatment is very much like galvanising the inside of the pot, and it needs to be done properly, so that all copper surfaces inside the kettle should be covered in full. Now that I had this large kettle ready, I would strain the milk with a fine strainer while I am filling the kettle with the milk and after that I am ready to make cheese.

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Making cheese and ricotta the old ways

My dear readers, I want to point out that the way I am making cheese and ricotta this time here, is the way that we used then and of course there may be other ways to make cheese and ricotta, but hereunder is the way that I was taught from my grandma.

So now that I have the fire going steady but at a slower pace, this three legged device set over the fire to hold the kettle safely, I had to be extra careful to lift the kettle containing milk over the fire without getting burned. Here I had to be very careful that the milk would warm up only to 37-38 degrees and no more, otherwise the whole process would not work. So once the milk reached this temperature I would take the kettle off the fire. Now let us go on to see what I need to do next, you see to make cheese you need to add something like enzymes or an extract so to speak in the milk while it is around 37 degrees to make the milk curd. In my young days I was lucky here because this extract could be bought at the chemist and so it was a lot easier that the old ways, when you had to prepare your own extract. Anyhow at this point I would measure the amount of (caglio) this extract and mix it in the milk with a wooden devise which was purposely made.

You see in the old time people had to do most things in wood for this purpose because wood does not rust, it does not contact heat so while one end is hot the other end will not be affected and remains cold, and also it does not react with milk, therefore wooden utensils were safe to use; and last of all but not the least important was that these wooden utensils could be carved from the farmers themselves, when in winter was cold and miserable to go out of the farm building.

Now let me tell you how the enzymes to curd the milk were collected or prepared in the past, when there were no chemists to help the process how to curd the milk. I know this is going to be a shocker for some people but that was the way that it was done in the old times. First of all a very young lamb is killed after feeding on milk, so that its stomach is full of milk. You see in the young lamb stomach there are these enzymes that curd the milk for the lamb to digest, as this is the way for the lamb to absorb the milk nutrients and grow. You need to harvest the stomach of the lamb, because this is where all the process starts. There are a few ways how to use this stomach, and one of the less shocking ways is that once you have this lamb stomach you seal it by tying top and bottom and hang it up to dry in a cool clean place. When it becomes dry you can use the powdery stuff inside to curd the milk. You need a little bit of this powder and a little lukewarm water to mix together and you are ready to add it to the milk you want to curd. This is how it was done in the very old days when there were no chemists to help, this is the ways our forbears have done it, since this is the way that Mother Nature itself has set up.

Now let me go back to cheese making as we have left the milk to curd for a while. 10 minutes or perhaps a quarter of an hour has passed since we have added this caglio to the warm milk and now the milk is firm like jelly, my next move now is that I use the wooden devise the I stirred the milk with and push it into this curd and start breaking it to small pieces. After that I stop and wait a moment for the particle of fresh cheese to start sinking to the bottom as the whey and the cheese become separated, now I put my washed clean hands in the kettle and go to the bottom of it, the fresh cheese has all sunk at the bottom, so I start pushing it slowly to one side of the kettle, by doing this I am slowly compacting the new cheese by pushing the whey out of it, I am going to do this until a firm ball of new cheese is formed. Once I have this firm new ball of cheese in my hands I lift it into a container; wait a minute this is not a real container, but it is something like a woven basket purposely made for this task, so that the whey can continue to run out the fresh cheese. Now I have about four to five kilogram of fresh cheese and by the time it matures may become three kilograms. The whole process does not end here, because there are a couple of other things I need to do. One is that I need to get all the whey in the kettle so that I can make ricotta, and after I make ricotta I have to dip for a few minutes the new fresh cheese that I have just made into the hot whey after I have made ricotta. This action is a sort of pasteurising the new cheese, you see the milk we have used has never been pasteurised. Having made the new cheese now that cheese needs to be cured for a few months, this curing usually involves sea salt and vinegar. Now in this hub I have made cheese and in my next hub I will make ricotta. See you then.

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Genzano it story

Cheese making

IS GOING TO BE CONTINUED;

Next time with, ricotta cheese making in the farms

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Tuesday, August 6, 2013

We use the farms animals

We use the farms’ animals

As soon as we mention the word farm, we cannot help thinking about the farms’ animals and the ways that the farmers use their farms animals, this has been going on for thousands of years, and very likely it is going to go on till the world ends; here we may have to point out that not everybody agrees with the ways the farmers uses their animals, however the animals have always been used and we will continue to use them in the future. Now let us see how the animals live according to Mother Nature, and how we the people use them to our own advantage.

It would be important to note that the order in Mother Nature setting of how things happen is almost faultless, most of the farm animals give birth to their offspring when there is plenty of food to go around, and when mild and fine weather is usually expected, it is for this reason that in springtime most of the animals offspring are born, starting from the sheep, and also the cows that usually calf once every year and they make plenty of milk especially when there is plenty of green food to eat, also other animals have their offspring, the sheep have their lamb, the mares have their foals, and other animals have also their young’s whatever it is according to their specie. We suppose they are born in spring so that they can grow big and strong during the spring and summer, so that when the cold weather comes back they would be able to cope with it easily, this is really how Mother Nature wants it to be. But we the people sometimes do things that go against Mother Nature, as we want to control everything around us. Sometimes we do cruel things also, and one of those things that come to my mind is that we take away the veal from mother cow, we sell the veal to the butcher who will kill the veal and sell the meat to the people to eat it, for doing this not only we get some money from the butcher, but then we can happily milk the cow, so the poor cow cops it both ways. You see we take plenty of milk from the cows after selling their veal, and what we do with most of the milk? We sell it if there is a market for it or we make cheese; at least this is what we did when I was young and I was working in the farms. So in my next hub we will be talking about, how we made cheese when I was young.

This cheese making in the farms when I was young, is not going to be spectacular at all, so do not expect a great deal from it, our writing about it is more to do with showing you how things were done in those times and how they were done even before those times, One can still learn something from this cheese making, but above all one can learn a little bit of the history of mankind from those parts that I am coming from, perhaps we could compare this to the ways we are using these days.

See you in our next post Cheese making.

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Genzano it story

We use the farms animals

IS GOING TO BE CONTINUED;

Next time with, cheese making in the farms

-------------------------------------------

Some useful links

Australian houses in Brisbane, Australia affordable houses

Some hub links

Travel Videos - Fountain cavallina, Genzano, Italy - The Compulsive ...

Most interesting photos from Genzano di Lucania, Basilicata, Italy

Where is Genzano di Lucania in Basilicata, Italy located?

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Sunday, July 21, 2013

Springtime in the farms

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In spring all trees start to flower and it is wonderful to see Mother Nature work at its best.

In the fields there are flowers everywhere in springtime.

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SPRINGTIME IN THE FARMS

Dear readers, after the boring winter as I have written in my last post, a winter day in the farm, the only time that one can say that living in the farms could be better that living in town was and is at spring time, because those natural things that make life interesting in the farms happen, you see one can observe Mother Nature wonders as they occur at very close range; and springtime is the time when most of those wonders occur one after another. Therefore, life in the farm becomes more interesting and wonderful after a cold and boring winter when finally spring comes. Early in spring when the weather is fine it is nice and warm to stay outside doing odd jobs, like preparing the soil in the kitchen garden and planting some seeds that will soon grow, you see in the temperate zone as the temperature rises the plants start growing very quickly, this fact of life even by itself seems to bring some joy after the cold winter, as one observes what is happening in spring time.

For a start we would be thinking finally wonderful spring is here

During early spring it would be wonderful, if one could be able to forget all worries in the world, and look at the work of Mother Nature at its best. You see, today you look at one tree and you wonder whether it is alive or dead, because its twigs seem really lifeless; but in a few days, when you look at that same tree again you can see a few flowers and some small leaves on its twigs, and in a few more days the whole tree will be in flower, and also its leaves will be growing on its twigs very rapidly, all the trees start flowering and growing quickly at springtime after winter, all grass and seedlings grow faster and everything is greener and full of life, also the birds that throughout the winter seemed timid and sad, now start to sing and they sound very happy. In the country there is a change in the air in springtime and everything and everybody feels happy in spring, there are lots of sunny and mild days in spring, so the sunshine and the mild days tell you that the dreadful winter is past, so better times are ahead for the farm people and for the farm animals as well.

So let me describe the changes that spring brings in the country of the town that I came from: After looking after and hand feeding all farm animals during the winter, which was a very boring job, now spring is welcome. I am saying this because, in springtime the way of looking after the farm’s animals changes a lot, because in spring most of the farm’s animals will be feeding on grass, and most of them will be grazing in the paddock during daytime, and there are a lot of other interesting happenings. During the winter and perhaps most of the year, the large animals have been hand fed in the stable with straws, oats and hay, but now gradually they will be let loose to graze in the paddocks. So as soon as the grass in the paddock grows enough early in spring, the cows are let loose in the paddock for a few hour each day to begin with, and then as the grass starts growing faster they will graze in the paddocks all day long. The next on line to graze in the paddocks are the pregnant mares, followed by the rest of the animals: So that in mid spring all animals that are grass eater will be feeding only on grass; that is during the day in the paddocks and at night with fresh harvested grass, which has been purposely grown and cut from the farmers. As you can see the farmers are still busy to look after the farm animals, but now it is not as hard as in winter times and the weather is usually fine, and every day that go past it becomes warmer, so a more relaxed way of life can be enjoyed and there are also other happy happenings, you see, spring is the season of hope and in spring we start to harvest many things, there are plenty of vegetables in spring as everything grows pretty fast, also in the fields things grow fast, there are plenty of fresh peas, green beans, broad beans just to name a few, the farmers go around with great hope in their hearts, they hope to harvest plenty of everything, when they are ready to be harvested. But at the same time the farmers always look at the sky, as they fear bad weather that can ruin their crops. This can really be a real problem when stormy weather approaches, as all the work they have done during the year can be ruined or destroyed in a few minutes. So hope and heartbreak are there ever present, it is not an easy life being a farmer. This was also one of the reasons that I left farming and migrated to Australia when I was still young, hoping for a better and easier life in Australia. But now let us talk about the farm animals, as they are a very important part of farming and also how we the farmers use the farm animals in many ways; but I think that I have said enough in this post, so see you in our next post, Cheese making the old ways.

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Genzano it story

Spring times in the farms

IS GOING TO BE CONTINUED;

Next time with, Cheese making the old ways

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