Adventures in Cheesemaking

So, Latvians have a holiday called ‘John Day.’

As you might imagine, being in a relationship with a Latvian named John is very exciting when this holiday rolls around.

Technically the holiday is called Jāņi, and it celebrates the summer solstice. The traditional celebration involves wearing flower crowns, singing songs, staying up all night and jumping over bonfires. I suppose there’s a bit of alcohol involved, too. All in all, a pretty sweet holiday.

And there’s one more major Jāņi tradition: Jāņu siers. Or, literally translated, John cheese.

My fiancé has been talking about John cheese since we first started dating, telling me how a woman is supposed to make her Latvian man this special cheese from scratch on John Day.

At first I laughed it off thinking it was mostly just a folktale sort of thing. But then I met more and more of Johnny’s Latvian friends and family who asked me if I’d made John cheese for him yet. They were serious, I realized. Making cheese on John Day was a thing.

Last year, after failing yet again to make the cheese (I mean hello, this is not like picking up a Betty Crocker cake mix and popping it in the oven), I promised him this would be the year.

Welp, I lied. John Day 2017 came and went, sans cheese. I could tell Johnny was legitimately disappointed, and I felt terrible!

I knew I had to finally take the John cheese plunge, and I couldn’t let another full calendar year pass before doing it.

On a random Tuesday I gathered the ingredients. I’d ordered cheesecloth, caraway seeds and a sieve—all required for this endeavor—ahead of time on Amazon. I had the recipe (there are many, but this is the one I selected) pulled up on my phone. I was ready.

There was one major problem. Though I’d been to many Latvian events and family gatherings, I had still never tasted or even seen John cheese. Aside from the photos online, which ranged from chunky bright yellow blocks to whitish, soft looking wheels, I had no idea what it was even supposed to look like.

But off I went.

Because I knew it could either turn out really amazing or completely disastrous, I documented the whole thing (you may have seen it unfolding live on Instagram stories).

Here’s a look.

The process involves boiling a milk and cheese mixture until it starts to curdle, which the recipe says should take around 15 minutes. After 25 minutes with no sign of curdling, I started to get impatient.

It seemed like this was a lot of milk and cheese for my normal-sized pan to handle, so I cranked up the heat and promptly did what any good chef would do—walked away from the stove and started scrolling through Facebook.

Not two minutes had gone by when I heard a loud hissing sound coming from the kitchen. The mixture had finally gotten hot and was boiling over, all over the stove and the floor.

At least we were finally making progress!

I cleaned up from the minor milk explosion and got the recipe back on track. Everything else went, shockingly, exactly according to the recipe.

I have to admit, I felt like quite the colonial badass as I formed the soft curds into a wheel of cheese and wrapped it tightly in cheesecloth.

It was kind of crazy seeing a bunch of random ingredients transform into (hopefully) a block of cheese before my eyes.

Eight hours later, just before Johnny was set to get home from work, I pulled it out of the fridge. It was the moment of truth…

I unwrapped the cheesecloth to find a solid, legitimate wheel of beautiful looking cheese.

John was pumped. I served it with honey according to what the traditional recipe suggested, and also with sliced bread and salami because America.

It was pretty darn good if I do say so myself.

Now that I’m a cheesemaking pro, I think I’ll make Jāņu siers an annual tradition. I might even venture into other varieties of the delicious dairy product. Who doesn’t love a good block of cheese, and what would be more amazing than having an on-demand supply in the fridge, 24/7?!