We’ve got a bit of a cheesemaking deadline on our hands. We found some bottles of vegetarian rennet in the supermarket on Friday night with a best before date of the end of February. They were knocked down and going cheap, so we snapped one up.

Rennet is key – essential – to successful cheese making. It curdles the milk and, along with the starter culture, actually makes the cheese. Or, more accurately, makes the cheese hard. The trouble is, regular rennet is an acid taken from a calf’s stomach, so if you’re a vegetarian (like me) most cheeses aren’t actually something you ought to be eating.

Vegetarian rennet does the same thing, but without the dead animal.

So, we have about five weeks to make our first batch of cheese and put the VegeRen to use before it goes off. That means getting online and ordering some starter culture. We had a look in town today at all the most obvious places – Holland and Barrett, Julian Graves, Wilkinsons and so on – but none of them had it, so I’m going to try Ascott Dairy, which for £1.80 will sell you enough starter to cheese up a full litre of milk.

And how much rennet do you need in that? Two drops. We’re going to have a lot left.

My cheese book recommends starting with house cheese which is, it says, ‘a simple, hard cheese ideal for the beginner that lends itself to experimentation. This recipe is so-called because it can easily be adapted to fit in with the maker’s daily routine.’

I’m liking the sound of that.

Related posts:

1. How to make cheese starter
2. Making cheese, day two
3. Cheese Making by Rita Ash: Review