It starts almost suspiciously easy, with warm milk, a splash of acid, and twenty minutes later you're draining real curds for fresh cheese.

Then you try anything aged and the difficulty cliff appears: temperatures that must hold within a degree, humidity you can't quite control, and wheels that mold wrong or crack while you wait weeks to find out.

Cutting into one that came out right, though, tastes like a small act of alchemy you pulled off in your own kitchen.