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Cheese

Rancho Cortés

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We had been told by many people that we needed to visit Rancho Cortés to sample their cheese and olive oils. However there is no one person who seems to know exactly where this rancho is located. Driving around Mex4 we finally talked to someone who knew where it was and gave us good directions.

This is a family owned farm dating back 40 years ago. The father who started this farm, actually went over to France to learn the art of cheese making as well as to buy French cows to be used in the cheese making process.

The Cavas of Rancho Cortez

The Cavas of Rancho Cortez

We started with some of their Queso Fresca, which is aged in the cava for one month. It is a soft cheese but very good.

We then moved on to trying their Gouda cheese. These use cultures from Europe and are a much firmer cheese.

The Queso de Gouda at Rancho Cortéz

The Queso de Gouda at Rancho Cortéz

The third cheese we based was Queso de Guadalupe which uses a mold aging process, is more flavorful and also uses cultures from Europe.

Queso de Guadalupe at Rancho Cortés

Queso de Guadalupe at Rancho Cortés

We then moved on to the Queso Añejo which is the gouda but aged much longer. Excellent.

Queso Añejo at Rancho Cortés

Queso Añejo at Rancho Cortés

The final cheese we tasted was the Queso de Parmesan which is aged 8 months, although in most years it is aged one year. The reason that this was less than the normal aging time is just because the cheese has been in such demand that they sold out of the last production batch and they felt that the cheese had aged sufficiently. It was excellent.

Queso de Parmesan

Queso de Parmesan

So after buying a number of these pieces, we then tried their olive oil, which we found to be very good and very reasonably priced.

Misiones de Baja California, the olive oil of Rancho Cortez

Misiones de Baja California, the olive oil of Rancho Cortez

Rancho Cortés

Phone: +52 (646) 113-4425

Making Fresh Mozzarella

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Sunday morning and Jo Ann and I are still too ill from this virus we are fighting from our trip back from Minnesota. So too ill to ride our bikes we decided to make some fresh mozzarella.

We purchased five liters of fresh cows milk (fresh from the cow this morning) and started by heating up the milk.

After getting the milk properly heated and after adding the rennet, the milk started to separate into the curds and the whey. Once everything has properly heated we were able to separate the curds from the whey and drain them in a clean cheese cloth.

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From here we squeezed the curds to get all of the whey out of the curds and let them settle in one large slab.

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We have have a great slab of mozzarella cheese that just needs to be stretched into the smaller balls.

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The final result looks pretty good for our first time.

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Tonight we have fresh linguine with fresh mozzarella and our freshly picked tomatoes. Can’t get much fresher than this and of course it is clearly all locally grown and produced.