INGREDIENTS

INSTRUCTIONS

(a) For those of you who'll be adding chiles:  they should be added
after salting the curd.  If using fresh chiles, you should probably
parboil them (5 minutes or so) to make some kind of attempt at
sterilizing them. Pickled ones seem not to produce any problems, and
neither do dried or powdered chiles.  Additionally, the chile flavors
seem to intensify the longer the cheese is kept.  The problem is
keeping the stuff: the flavor of fresh homemade Jack cheese is far
superior to that of the store-bought kind, and you'll find it won't
last long. NB: cheese which has been aged 8-10 days in the fridge
seems to melt better.  (b)  The trickiest part of all of this is
keeping the temperature of  the milk from jumping too quickly, and
keeping it steady for  prolonged periods. You may want to experiment a
little with your  double-boiler apparatus, with water in the inner pan
instead of milk,  to see how quickly the temperature goes up when you
change burner  settings on your stove.  Some of the trickiness involves
the way temperatures will continue to  "float" upward even after you've
turned the burner down or off.  It is  important not to let it get out
of control:  otherwise the extra heat  will kill the organisms in the
starter.  Residual heat "float" can be  slowed up by slipping ice cubes
into the milk one at a time until the  heat stabilizes.  Don't overdo
this, obviously.  (c) Equally obviously, vegetarians can substitute
vegetarian rennet  for the non-vegetarian kind.  I usually make mine
with vegetarian  rennet, just for convenience's sake.  (d) Cleanliness
in the utensils is very important in this process:  everything should
be freshly scalded out with near-boiling water  before you start, to
keep alien "bugs" from making lie difficult for  the friendly ones in
the starter.  (e) For those of you with livestock:  chickens and pigs
like the  leftover whey mixed with meal or feed.  (f) The quantities
given in the recipe make a wheel of cheese weighing  between 1 1/2 and
1 3/4 pounds. Posted to CHILE-HEADS DIGEST V4 #151  by Peter Morwood &
Diane Duane <owlsprng@iol.ie> on Oct 07, 1997

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