Rounding up the CHEESE ...forged in July!

Hello Forgers!!!  I don't know about you, but July seemed to fly by for me....zooooom!  We had three current challenges on the board, and of course forging any of the past cheesy challenges is always encouraged!  I am so excited to welcome a new forger to the line-up this month, too!  Let's not waste any more time...I'm excited to share all of the wonderful cheesiness we forged in July!

First up we have Andreas from Delta Kitchen forging Yogurt Cheese!  He strained his yogurt overnight and then stirred in a bunch of finely chopped chives to spread on his Whey Bread (which he made with the whey that resulted from making the yogurt cheese!!)...a perfect food for a summer day!

Next up is ap269 from Family & Food & Other Things...a first time forger (with us) this month...welcome!  She forged both one of our past challenges and one of our current ones.  First up she brings us her Paneer, saying "I’ve never heard of Paneer before – it is a fresh cheese common in South Asian cuisine. This cheese was really easy to make. It reminded me a lot of making tofu. You just curdle heated milk with lemon juice or other food acid."  And I, for one, am totally intrigued by the idea of making my own tofu...hmmm.

Ap269 also brings us her Yogurt Cheese this month and then "used the yogurt cheese for making muhammara which is a roasted red bell pepper & walnut dip".  YUM!  She then served it up with some homemade Turkish flatbread.

Next up we have Alicia of Foodycat, who brought us both Yogurt Cheese AND Gouda...rolled into one fantastic, cheesy post!  FC started off by saying "Now, yoghurt cheese, or labneh, is just about as easy as a cheese can get. You take a pot of yoghurt, drain it until it is really thick and then eat it. Seriously, that is all there is to it. No cultures, no thermometers, no weights. Just a bit of time and a bit of gravity."  So true!  She then proceeded to use it in a salad, marinate it, use it to stuff things...top things...you name it!

FC's gouda also turned out fabulously in the baby gouda mold that she purchased just for this challenge.  Despite challenges posed by weighting and wiping away mold, in the end she thought "It was really good. It was very pale in colour - South African gouda tends to be a lot yellower than mine turned out; I think they add annato colouring - but the texture was a perfect sliceable, fine-grained hard cheese, and the flavour was just spot on. Very gratifying!" Nice.

Now, we have Rebecca of Grongar Blog who bringing us her Yogurt Cheese.  Rebecca used Goat Milk Yogurt (awesome!) to make her yogurt cheese and let it hang overnight tied onto the faucet in her sink.  "The resulting cheese was tangy and goaty, soft and spreadable, delicious spread on bread. It even made a respectable dip for tortilla chips. I imagine if I had added some onion, it would have almost made a home-made french onion potato chip dip!"  Sounds mighty tempting, if I do say so myself!

Rebecca's Gouda is nothing short of beautiful!  Seriously, I am super impressed with her wheel of cheese...I want to hang a picture of it in my kitchen!  She pressed it in a mold that she bought on eBay and then "or the next 25 days, we turned it daily, and rubbed all the surfaces with a salt water solution. From time to time, a tiny amount of blue/green mold appeared on the rind — just a few spots — but we rubbed that away with the salt water and the mold never progressed beyond that."  How exciting...and gratifying!

Next up is my cheesing-partner-in-crime, Natashya of Living in the Kitchen with Puppies and her Gouda.  A bit frustrated by the fact that she didn't have a flat-bottomed mold... "I realized the hard way that I really needed to start pressing my cheese in something with a flat bottom - because every time I had to flip this one over and re-press it, it got a little crumbly with the reshaping. Ultimately that gave mine a porous texture, and I would like to try it again with a different mould, but the flavour was mature and very tasty nonetheless" ...she did NOT let that stop her!  She forged on and made a major-tasty looking cheese...she added mustard seeds to hers...mmmmm.  And not one to be easily deterred...she went out and MADE w/ the help of her handy hubby herself some molds!! Be on the lookout for them in her Cheddar-ing post! 

And I (Heather) of girlichef am bringing up the rear with my Yogurt Cheese.  Okay, it may be simple...but I am completely enamoured by it!  It's like cream cheese...only tangier...it can be used in place of cream cheese (which I've actually made before, but probably won't again since this is the easiest thing on earth to make)...it's fabulous shmeared on a bagel or a sammie...YUM!  If you're wondering why I'm taking the easy road and sticking with the simple cheeses, it's because we're a bit low on funds right now since I'm not longer (regularly) working.  I haven't been able to replace my cultures, but I'll catch up one of these days and include those in future round-ups...that's the beauty of being able to link up any of the past challenges during any given month!!!  Oh. You weren't wondering.  Well, there ya go, anyway ;-)

Everybody did an absolutely amazing job...I am sooooo impressed!  Also, I want to thank everybody who forged this month for continuing to fuel my fire for Cheese, Glorious Cheese!!!  I look forward to seeing what everybody forges next month!  And if you are new here or haven't yet joined in...what are you waiting for!?  We'd love to forge with you!

***Natashya & I have decided to add a monthly post that will contain the LINKY for you to add your link from any cheese you forged during the current month.  It will follow this post later on today...and will always be accessible from the sidebar via one click!  Watch for Natashya's next challenge...coming soon!!