By Jean Mansfield, How to Make Cheese When I first tried to make cheese more than 20 years ago, most of the results were so bad even the dog wouldn’t eat them. Today, making cheese is my passion: I have a special fridge just for my own home-made cheeses, I teach beginners almost every weekend during the milking season here in NZ, either at my Waihi farm or my Auckland home, and every year I have the honour of being a judge at the NZ Champion of Cheese Awards. Best of all, I’m now a published author with my first book, How to Make Cheese. But back then it was very frustrating. I love to cook, I’ve preserved fruit and vegetables my whole life, and I had access to some of the most beautiful, fresh, Jersey cow milk direct from my own herd. The book I had back then was very basic, it had no illustrations, not a lot of detail, so I had to make up a lot of stuff as I went along. I was failing more than I was succeeding and I didn’t know what I was doing wrong. I scour the world for cheesemaking books and I’m pretty sure I have every one ever printed, but I’ve never found one that really spelled out the little techniques and tips that make for successful cheese for a beginner. I can’t be in everybody’s kitchen, so in How to Make Cheese I’ve tried to take away a lot of the uncertainties that people have when they haven’t got me to hold their hand. Today, you can tuck into my gooey Havarti and most people can’t stop themselves from sampling another slice while the first is still a creamy aftertaste coating their mouth – my friend Nadene took a chunk of my last block home and worked out later she and partner ate about $20 worth in two days, it was so irresistible! My farm kitchen has its own special fridge dedicated just to cheese, and I think of it as the ultimate treasure-hunt for the cheese fan, full of beautiful golden wedges wrapped in plastic, little blues tucked away in folds of paper, and waxed balls of my latest creations. Sharing my cheeses brings me great joy. Life is pretty busy for me, my husband Dave, and our four-legged companion Tess. I teach cheesemaking most weeks, and then during the NZ winter when our cows are not milking, we travel to Europe to meet and learn from their cheesemakers. One week of every year is spent sampling hundreds of New Zealand’s best cheeses in my role as a judge in the NZ Champions of Cheese Awards. It’s hard work eating that much cheese! I meet so many people who want to try making cheese for themselves but who are put off by what they see as the mysteriousness of the process, a lack of access to fresh milk, or what they perceive to be a high cost hobby. But it’s no harder to make cheese than to bake a cake! When people come along to my courses, they can’t believe they’ve made cheese in one day, in some cases less than a day, and they can do it using supermarket-bought milk if they don’t have their own fresh milk supply. Sometimes it takes less than half an hour to create a cheese which is quite mind-boggling to them. How to Make Cheese gives you all of the basic knowledge you’ll need to get started and be successful right away. However, mistakes happen and I’ve included a chapter on what can go wrong and why. But when you’re successful, you’ll catch the bug and realise just how much fun it is, how satisfying it is to show off your own delicious aged cheddar or a tangy blue, and the bonus is how much money you can save at the same time. You’ll be making very expensive cheeses to buy in the shop and it’s very simple. © Jean Mansfield, author of How to Make Cheese