1 minute read
Johan Robertson
NEW CHEESE
I was brought up on a croft in Westray. In summer there was always plenty of milk fresh from the cows to make cheese.
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New cheese was one of our food treats.
It needed a bucketful of milk, you put it in a big pot and warmed it to blood heat then you stirred in some cheese rennet. Leave it to set maybe twenty minutes then cut the curds, warm it back up to blood heat.
Pour off the whey, it was cut and drained a few times then salted. Line the wooden cheese cogue with a white clean cloth, pack in the cheese, cover with the ends of the cloth. There was two cylindrical pieces of wood to put on top of the cheese cogue weighted down with a big stone. There was holes in the cogue for drainage.
Open it up at tea time and enjoy with bread and homemade butter or bunno’s* – eat to your hearts content.
In summer there was so much milk my mother made more cheese than we could eat so a lot was dried for winter use. It was mature then and a very different taste, but equally good.
So many things that was familiar to us then is just gone. Lost to the world meantime.
That is me story of new cheese we sometimes called it skreeking cheese, it made a slight squeek when we cut it.
- Johan Robertson
