I want to try my hand at a parmesan. All the recipes I have seen say to use 2% milk, but the only low-fat milk available here (that I’ve been able to find so far) has been processed to death and would probably refuse to turn into anything even vaguely resembling cheese. A few weeks ago I bought some full-fat non-homo milk and then had to leave it sitting for a few days (life getting in the way) in a polystyrene cooler box. When I opened the cartons, the milk and cream had separated out and I had to literally scrape the thick cream off the sides of the cartons. Could I do the same again, this time deliberately leaving the milk to sit for a while (overnight in the pot? Would it go off? Nighttime room temps of around 25C), skim off the cream and use what’s left to make parmesan?

Could I use the cream to make marscapone? (How much cream would 16 litres of full-fat milk yield?) Cream cheese? Rich ‘n’ creamy ricotta (mixing it in with the whey)? A trifle? Ice cream? I found a recipe for Cheshire cheese that used creme fraiche as the starter - could I culture the cream and use that?

The parmesan recipes also all seem to call for the use of lipase, which I’m not going to use on account of I’m a vegetarian. Will the lack of lipase have a very big effect on the taste of the cheese? Is there anything non-beast-based that I could/should use as a substitute?

Would a 16l batch make a cheese large enough not to need waxing while it ages? My cave has a bowl of water in it, but the humidity rarely gets higher than around 70%.

Lots of questions….

I would use the whole thing, i would not leave it out at room temp. I use 2% because its the least processed, if i could get higher cream content i would, well I add 18% cream to add fat content.
I have not used Lipase either since i dont eat meat (poultry the odd blue moon), you dont need to. Parmesan was the first hard cheese i made. 16l would be fine, wax it real good since you will need to age it a year for the flavor to develop. A year gos by fast when its at the back of the fridge and you have other cheeses on the go

Denise,

I had an idea if you do skim off the cream.  Around here the department stores sell a container used for iced tea and the like.  It has a spout at the bottom.  You just keep it in the fridge and pour off a glass when you want it.  If such an item were available where you are, you could put your milk in it, let it chill overnight, and then drain off the milk from the bottom without disturbing the cream on top.

I’m kind of with Neal on using all the cream in my cheese.  I really like the richer flavor.

Thank you both for your replies. But now I’m confused; all the recipes say to use 2% / semi-slimmed milk for Parmesan, one place I read that if there was too high a fat content the cheese would be soft and wouldn’t turn into a proper Parmesan. Does full-fat milk still make a good firm Parm fit for grating? Am I worrying about nothing? I don’t want to wait a year for something that won’t grate properly over my pasta.

Good to hear I don’t need to use lipase.

I’d never experienced milk separating out like that before (don’t usually buy expensive non-homo just for drinking or putting in coffee) - at first I thought it had gone off in the heat, though I had been very careful to keep the cooler boxes supplied with lots of fresh ice packs, replaced at least three times a day (we have a big fridge, but at this time of year it’s full of stuff from the allotment - no room for 16 extra litres of milk). Once I realised the cloggy stuff was cream, I got very excited about the naturalness of it all and began to daydream about different ways to use it.

I’m at an age where the years are going by way too fast anyways - scary! Maybe making lots of long-aging cheeses is one way to slow time down.

I’ve not yet made a Parmesan, so I can’t answer your question about the dryness of the finished cheese; although I suspect it is true that a creamier cheese will be more moist.

As for time slowing down - forget it, you cannot slow time.  The older we get the faster time seems to slip by.  I think it has to do with the comparison between one year and five years of life to one year and 50 years of life.  In any case, scientists who measure the speed of light say that it has actually been speeding up.  It is apparently not the constant that mathmaticians have always thought it was.  Since the speed of light is the standard used to measure time, time really IS speeding up!  Hope that doesn’t cause a panic attack.

The older we get the faster time seems to slip by.

Yes, but when there’s a (hopefully) yummy cheese in the cave that won’t be ready for a year, the months seem to stretch out for ever into the future…..!

Then I guess you can be very thankful for the lengthening of your life.  Besides, anticipation heightens the pleasure!