A few quick notes about feta

Feta is defined in the Lantanaland big book of cheese as - a bloody easy cheese to make when you have not much time and lots of milk. Luckily we use lots of it, The Wife makes a especially good silverbeet, salami and feta pie but I have been making a slightly different one from a recipe given to me by cheese maker @highlandorganic.

The standard feta I make is very simple. Get your freshly milked milk, at cow temperature and add a dash of flora danica and 2mm of rennet and whack it in the dream pot (like a big camping thermos) for the day. That night the milk will have set into a big cylindrical curd, so I drain the whey around it off and then using a big slotted spoon, take slices out and layer into a big plastic cube with holes in it. Once all the curd is layered in I put another container with water on top to lightly press it. By the next morning it will have reduced to a quarter of the size and I cut it into big cubes and put it in a weak salt solution.

You end up with a nice soft feta, that has flaky layers it in. I really like it and it is amazingly quick and easy to make. But I really like the even softer feta that you get in marinated feta. (the flaky one still makes great marinated feta). A chat with a cheese maker on twitter gave me another, slightly more complicated recipe to follow. Apologies to @highlandorganic if I have it completely wrong.

Take you freshly milked milk at cow temperature and add a sprinkle of flora danica. Let that sit for 30 minutes or so then add the rennet. Once you have a firm set, cut the curd into two cm cubes, gently. Let it sit and heal for a while, then remove the whey with a ladle over the next few hours. Keep doing it until the curd is about two thirds to a half of the original. Then gently place in the molds. I use bits of poly pipe with holes drilled into them. I was using plastic draining trays but they are hopeless, the pipes keep falling over, so I've just bought six wire cooling racks. Let sit for 30 minutes to settle, then turn every hour till you go to bed. You'll end up with a cheese about half the length of the poly.

The cheese then goes in a weak brine for at least a day. You can store it in there for ages, or roll it in dried herbs and place it in oil for that soft marinated feta. I have given away all the first batch but I'm keen to see if the texture is heaps creamier than my layer method. Either way, feta is the simplest, no fuss way of dealing with lots of milk. With 5L a day, feta is always on the menu.