Valencay Mess

The Valencay I made with goat's milk was/is interesting.  The curd is quite soft, and you don't cut it into smaller curds.  Instead, after 18 hours setting up in the pot, I took thin slices out of the bulk of the curd mass and placed it in the pyramid molds.  It took 2 hours to do because I has to wait for the curd to drain a bit to fit all of it into the 8 molds.

After sitting in the molds at room temperature for 2 days, they shrunk down to occupy about 2/3rds of the mold.  With some coaxing, they came out.  They are soft, somewhere between gelatin and pudding in consistency, kind of like softened cream cheese.  It was a trick getting them out while keeping the pyramidal shape.  The worst part is dusting them with vegetable ash.  That stuff is so fine, it gets everywhere.  I put newspapers down all over and still, it got on the floor, under the newspapers and onto the table, all over my hands.  I may not do another vegetable ash ripened cheese for quite some time.  And, I'm not thru handling these messy mounds.  I will have to remove them from the container, put them on ageing racks, put them back into the container, and into the wine refrigerator.  But I don't have to worry about that until tomorrow.  For now, they stay at room temperature on the paper towel for a day.  It'll give me time to wipe down the area again for the fourth time to make sure I cleaned up all the ash dust in the kitchen.