Cheesemakers -- Seriously? or Seriously Cheesemakers

I declared an all about me day!!! Shouldn't we all do that now and then?  I had already gotten tickets for the Trace Adkins concert a month ago for that evening and so was trying to figure out what to do for the day.  Of course, let's make cheese.  Isn't that the first thing that comes to YOUR mind?  Well, fortunately for us, the Mozzarella Company is located here in Dallas and amazingly enough they had a class for that day and had  two openings left.  I snatched those up and off we went.

We were not even in the building yet (which is located down in Deep Ellum) when  Paula Lambert came walking down the sidewalk towards us.  She is terrific!!!  Everyone there made us feel so welcome and actually seemed excited for us to be there.  Paula, herself, taught the class and was busy cracking jokes and taking pictures all during the event.  The place is incredible and the cheese is dang tasty as well.

We started out the class by donning aprons and ever so attractive hair nets and washing hands.  Then we were ready to get started and did so by getting the milk steaming for a ricotta.  A quick tour of the factory while the milk heated (pretty amazing -- 1,000 lbs of cheese a day!) and then to juice a big pile of lemons.  We then added the juice to the hot milk and voila --- ricotta cheese.  It was so simple and so very delicious.


Here we are scooping out the ricotta cheese from the whey and placing it in strainers to set up.  Then we moved onto working with mozzarella.  Since the curd takes 8 hours to make, we started with the mozzarella curd and chopped it up and put it in a bowl to which we then added hot water and stirred until the cheese was stringy and ready to be shaped.  First up, balls!





Mister was a natural at these -- mine were not near so nice.  Second, Queso Oaxaca -- a long strip of mozzarella rolled up like a ball of yarn.  Last was a olive roll in which the cheese was rolled out like dough and covered with an olive spread and then rolled up like cinnamon rolls.  All very yummy.

For some reason, I was unable to keep my mouth shut during photos.  Oh well, that won't surprise anyone.

The class ended with a wine and cheese party and some social time getting to know Paula, Mitchell (the manager) and classmates.  All in all a good time.