Here’s a horrible confession: I don’t really know how to do anything. I can’t make stuff. I can’t fix stuff. Ask me to construct some flatpack furniture and you’ll return to find a dangerously ramshackle avant-garde MDF torture device and me, curled up in the foetal position, swearing and crying and bleeding like some sort of godawful milquetoast ninny.
My lack of dexterity is a constant source of embarrassment, especially as I’m about to become a dad. Soon I’ll have a dependent who’ll rely on me, like I still rely on my dad. I cannot let my son down, and the only realistic way that’ll happen is if I start learning skills now. Wherever possible, I’ve decided to try and make things that I’d usually buy. It’ll be slow and it’ll be frustrating, but all the hard work will be worth it. And, after all, what could possibly go wrong?
Well, obviously loads could go wrong. Loads has already gone wrong. I just tried making my own cheese. It went horribly. I am, it transpires, lactose incompetent.
Things started promisingly enough. I went online and received my halloumi, goat’s cheese and mozzarella kits the next day, and they were beautiful – simple and well-labelled, containing all the items you need and some very clear instructions. All I needed to do was follow those instructions and then buy the right sort of milk. Shamefully, I did neither.
If you’re making cheese, you must buy unhomogenised milk. This is vitally important. The homogenisation process breaks down the fat globules in milk that allow cheese to form. If you make halloumi with homogenised milk, you’ll always just have homogenised milk. I’m mentioning it because – despite repeated warnings to the contrary – I tried to make halloumi with homogenised milk. The result? Four litres of warm, funny-smelling milk that made me gag.
So halloumi was a bust. But who needs halloumi anyway, the squeaky bastard? I still had my goat’s cheese kit, which was much more accommodating to homogenised milk. It’s an easier cheese. It’s remedial cheese. All you do is mix some citric acid into your milk, heat it up to 80C, let it rest for half an hour, strain it through a muslin and that’s that. A monkey could make chevre. It probably wouldn’t eat it – because just-strained goat’s cheese is the exact size, shape, texture and temperature of a human brain – but making it would be a breeze.
However, I still had one last chance to redeem myself. Mozzarella. This time I actually read through the instructions. Mozzarella needs unhomogenised milk too, but I’d done my research. I looked up brands of unhomogenised milk. I located stockists. I refused to let myself be beaten by something that the lanky tit from Blur can knock up by the truckload.
And, by God, it worked. In terms of production, mozzarella is a weird hybrid of halloumi and chevre. There’s citric acid, but there’s also rennet. There’s precision heating, but then you have to microwave it in 30-second bursts at the end. Providing you follow the instructions to the letter, you’ll end up with a big lump of rich, creamy – if slightly tougher than usual – mozzarella. It’s exceptionally satisfying to do things correctly. Who knew?
I draped my cheese across the top of a homemade pizza and I didn’t immediately die. I know it’s early days, but this new lifestyle choice might not be so dumb after all.
