Evolution is inevitable. Things change. It is not just children that grow up. Our ideas, concepts and creations also develop. Suddenly The Cheeseboard has come of age and is moving out of home.
The bloke is getting excited about getting the garage back. Understandingly, but to be honest even amongst the overwhelming logistics of the move I am feeling a small sense of loss. The Cheeseboard is no longer a fledgling, it is becoming a solid start up with its own character, needing more than I can offer to help it grow. Like rising a child, it takes many people to bring a dream to reality. The Cheeseboard is no different. The logistics of building a cheese cave and shipping container shop is not a common project. Fortunately, the team involved have met the challenge with enthusiasm instead of bemusement. It is a project that has it challenges and I am constantly in awe of the creativity of the designers, the builder (my Dad), the tradies and our friend’s in the health and food safety department. Without them and their clever ideas things would be going a lot slower. Even with all the help of family, friends and professionals my days are hectic and varied. As well as affinage and cheese cutting I find myself coordinating contractors, writing food safety plans, painting walls, business planning, selecting equipment and being a builder’s labourer. This is the joy of small business. You get to have a go at everything. With the excitement of building and moving, time spent in the cave is a reprieve. It is where I regroup and reconnect with what The Cheeseboard is all about.
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Cheese and beer as a couple back on the A list. It is not new to enjoy cheese with beer, we just got side-tracked with wine and cheese. The pairing has been around since the invention of both cheese and beer by Neolithic man in about 6000 BC. Ancient cheese and beer may have tasted OK, but its pairing was perfected by medieval monasteries and abbeys many centuries later. Making both gave them the opportunity to wash cheese in beer to make it sticky, stinky and savoury.
Washed rind is the classic beer cheese, but all cheeses can be paired with a beer. Especially now with the explosion of craft beers to choose from. The main reason cheese goes so well with beer is the bitterness of the hops. It can lift and balance the flavour of cheese. Just like adding lemon juice to vinegar to lighten a sauce. You won’t get this wow moment with all cheese and beer pairings, but with a bit of experimenting you can get a good idea of what works for you. The first rule of cheese and beer pairing is own your taste buds. The second is try each combination at least twice. With those rules, the only other things to think about are: Match intensity Beers with strong flavours will over power delicate cheeses and vice versa. Big beers need a cheeses with a full and long lasting flavours. Spicy and salty cheeses such as Berrys Creek Tarwin Blue stands up to an IPA while a mushroomy brie like L’Artisan’s Extravagant pairs well with a pale ale. Balance Balance in flavour and texture, including the alcoholic weight of the beer, identifies a good match. Balance can be achieved through complementary or contrasting flavours and texture. A good example of complementary flavours is a chocolate stout that brings out the nutty and caramel flavours of Section 28’s Monforte. A contrast is the hopsy bubbles of a Belgium style beer that cleanses the savoury creamy flavours of a washed rind, such as Bunya Red. Anyone can be an expert at beer and cheese pairing. All you need to do is start tasting, be bold, try the unexpected and buck convention. Most of all enjoy the way that beer changes the taste of cheese. A common questions is “What type of cheese do you make?” I feel a bit of a fraud admitting that I don’t actually make the cheese. I mature it. Maturation is part of the cheese making process, but it is not where the alchemy happens. It is not turning liquid milk into curds that can be mounded into shape. Cheese maturing is the part where the cheese, already formed, spends most of its time sitting in a cold dark room.
While it looks like not much is happening, this is an exciting time in the development of a cheese. During this time the rind is formed and taste develops. It is a stage where the microbes are busy breaking down the proteins and fats to create the distinctive flavours and aromas. It is the stage that makes cheese taste and smell like it does. My days are filled with rubbing, washing, turning and brushing cheese. Giving each and every one, the care and attention they need. I could say that I am a mother of baby cheeses, a bacteria farmer or cheese wangler. Fortunately the French have a term for people who mature cheese, an affineur. Technically I am an affineuse, but that is getting a bit too French and gender specific for us Anglophones. In Europe people with skills in affinage are recognised as part of the cheese industry. Some affineurs work in big caves specialising in a single cheese such as parmesan or comté. Others have caves that mature cheeses from small producers. Providing specialist skills and facilities needed to develop the flavour and quality of the cheese. Over time there is a trust developed between the cheesemaker and affineur. There needs to be, the affineur is taking a young and raw cheese and developing it to be the best it can be. It just goes to show that it takes a village to raise a good cheese. We hear it all the time. Artisan beer, artisan salami, artisan bread and artisan cheese. But what does it really mean? Dictionaries define artisan as a noun to describe skilled craftspeople who use their hands to make things. Before the industrial revolution, almost everything was artisan. The industrial revolution not only changed the way we manufactured everyday objects like crockery, couches, towels, clothes, shoes and pots but also the way we manufactured food. The concern about losing the traditional skills used to bake bread, brew beer, preserve meat and make cheese gathered momentum in the self-sustaining fever of the 70’s. Since then more and more people have committed to learning and mastering traditional food production skills.
Today, artisan food has come to mean high quality ingredients and traditional, non-mechanised methods of production. While we generally associate artisan with small scale producers making things by hand, this is not always the case. In the cheese world, artisan cheese can mean that the whole production process including, stirring the curds, ladling the curds into hoops, turning hoops and rubbing cheese is all done by hand. While this is a reality for many small producers such as Little White Goat Cheese in Wamuran, not all artisan cheese is made by hand. Artisan is fashionable. In marketing hyperbole it can simply mean that the cheese was turned by hand during maturation while the entire production was mechanised. To me artisan cheese means more than production by hand or machine. It is more about the skill of the cheesemaker. The way they have mastered their craft, work with the milk, understand their environment and respect the seasonal differences to create unique cheeses. Another way of describing it is real cheese. Cheese made from real milk by real people. Most importantly cheese that tastes good, like real food. A subset of artisan cheese is farmstead cheese. Cheese that is made on the same farm that produces the milk. While farmstead cheese adds pasture management, animal husbandry and milking to the long list of cheese making jobs, it gives the cheesemaker more control about the volumes and quality of the milk. This can create exceptional cheese that reflects the place it is made. In Australia we have many farmstead cheeses, a local example is Frolicking Goat. Artisan and farmstead cheese, real cheese, gives you, the cheese eater, a paddock to plate connection. It gives you a chance to eat quality ingredients produced with skill that reflects the place that it is made. It also helps keep the 11,000 years of cheese making tradition alive. April 22nd is raw milk appreciation day. Like odd sock day, gratitude day, ugly truck day or speak like a pirate day, it promotes a special interest. But how can you not get excited about a day that celebrates thousands of years of cheesemaking tradition.
Raw milk appreciation day was developed by the Old Ways Cheese Coalition, a not for profit advocacy group based in Boston USA promoting traditional cheese. It is a celebration of unique flavours, history, animal husbandry and cheesemaking. Like all good celebrations it involves eating. On Saturday, you can try raw milk cheese at shops, farms and creameries around the world. Organised tastings and classes are being held in New York, London, Paris, Johannesburg, San Paulo, Auckland, Sydney, Melbourne and Fremantle. You can also have your own celebration at home. Raw milk cheese is made with unpasteurised milk. Pasteurisation heats milk to kill microbes that can be harmful to human health. While pasteurisation is common practice today, it is a new kid on the block in the history of cheese. Raw milk cheese has an unbroken tradition that started with Neolithic farmers in the Fertile Crescent. Today raw milk cheeses are still legally made around the world, including Australia. A well-known example is C2 made by Bruny Island Cheese Co. Others are imported. You may have eaten comté, parmesan, manchego or roquefort made from raw milk. Pasteurisation is a good thing and over the last century it has saved many lives. It is effective and kills most microbes. Including those that are important for flavour in cheese. For this reason, raw milk cheese can have greater complexity and interest. The indigenous microbes and enzymes in the milk are a product of the soil, climate, season, pasture and breed of the diary animal. Drawing on tradition and skill a cheesemaker can use raw milk to create cheeses that are unique to the place they are made. Or to use the French term, have the taste of terroir. I grew up drinking raw milk. We drank fresh creamy milk, ate beautiful homemade butter, but the cheese my mother made was terrible. This experience taught me two things. The first is respect for raw milk. Clean practices are important in the dairy industry, but you need to be extra vigilant with raw milk. The other thing it taught me is that cheese reflects the quality of the milk, but it is the skill of the cheesemaker that makes it good. Eating raw milk cheese is a personal choice. If you are game, join the celebrations and enjoy the history and tradition of artisan cheese. Easter is a celebration of new beginnings. To me, pure white fluffy ricotta, embodies renewal more than any other cheese. Even its name, derived from recocta, Latin for re-cooked, tells a story about a fresh start.
The art of making whey ricotta was mastered by the Sicilians sometime between the birth of Jesus and the Romans becoming Christian. They discovered that heating whey, a by-product of cheesemaking, with a bit of acid, such as lemon juice, vinegar or soured milk, encouraged the remaining protein to form cloud like curds. Curds that are delicate, sweet and hard to stop eating by the spoonful. Especially when fresh. Recently a friend asked me to make some ricotta and because sourcing a vat of whey is difficult, I decided to make the ancient whole milk version. One that has been made by Italians since the Bronze Age. I had never made whole milk ricotta before, but I like to think of myself as a diary women and was up for the challenge. Besides it used to be made in bronze pots over a fire. What could go wrong? To be honest, not much can go wrong. Poor technique may change the taste and texture of curds and reduce the yield, but you will always get some type of ricotta. And the ricotta you make will always taste better than the tubs you get in the supermarket. Simply because it is fresh. A fail safe recipe for whole milk ricotta is: Combine 6 litres of full cream milk with juice from about 5 lemons or 180ml vinegar in a large pan. Heat, stirring often, until it is just about to boil and curds begin to form and float to the surface. Remove the pan from the heat and let it set for 10 to 15 minutes before gently scooping the curds into a colander. Drain for at least 30 minutes. The difference between ricotta made with lemon juice rather than vinegar is subtle. Ricotta with lemon juice produces softer sweeter curds that take longer to drain. Ricotta made with vinegar has a higher yield with stronger curds. Both make a ricotta that remind me how good simple fresh food can be. A revolution is brewing. You can see signs of it in dairy’s, at farmers markets, in restaurants, delis and cheese counters across Australia. It started so innocently. We became used to seeing gouda, jarlsberg and brie sitting next to the coon. Then the French arrived. Fancy cheeses with history, tradition and foreign tastes. Some daringly unpasteurised. It changed our palates. We started to enjoy Munster that smelled like sweaty socks and the salty creamy spice of Roquefort made from ewe’s milk.
Now we better appreciate cheese. Small cheesemakers who have been making cheese for our Greek and Italian communities are joining forces with a new brand of cheesemaker. A cheesemaker that is inspired by European cheeses with centuries of history, such as comté, teleggio, manchego or stilton, but are not tied to tradition and have no desire to copy. By adding good quality local milk to thousands of years of cheesemaking knowledge Australians are making their own cheese. Cheese that reflects their local area and the tastes and lifestyle of the people who live there. These cheeses are creative and bold. Some of these cheeses, such as Frolicking Goat’s Liesel, is similar to its European cousin. It reminds you of the goat’s cheese that you would find in a walnut salad in the Loir Valley, but there is something different. It might be the hint of eucalypt from the trees nibbled by the goats or it could just be the creaminess of the milk. Other cheeses like Holy Goat’s La Luna are unique. Great Aussie cheeses like Bay of Fires Clothbound Cheddar, Bruny Island Cheese Co. C2 and Berrys Creek Riverine Blue are leading the charge. Fuelled by the deregulation of the dairy industry, the revolution is gathering momentum and more local cheeses are being made. You too can join the revolution. It is as simple as buying and eating Australian artisan cheese. If you want to be more involved tell your local cheesemaker what you liked about the cheese. Perhaps you might also tell them, respectfully and delicately, what you think could be improved. As the revolution is not just about making local cheese it is about making great tasting Australian artisan cheese. It is a good day in the cave when I get to crack open a wheel of Bay of Fires Cheddar. Carefully cutting through the tough but thin layer of cheesecloth rubbed with lard and then slowly pulling it off is like peeling the first mango of the season. It has the same sense of anticipation. The main difference is that it sends specks of cheese dust flying and fills the cave with an earthy musty smell before revealing a mottled rind imprinted with the texture of the cheesecloth.
Cutting the wheel in half leaves me with two half cylinders that smell like barn just filled with fresh hay. I cut it in half again before slicing off the point. Now the fun really begins. I get to taste it. But first I like to remind myself that this is the real thing, made by Ian Fowler who learnt the art of making cheddar from his father, who in turn learnt from his father. The knowledge has been passed, father to son from about the 1860’s when the men of the family put science to the skill and intuition of the dairy women of the farm. Ian, who brought 400 years of family cheddar making to Tasmania, makes a cheese that challenges what we expect from a cheddar. It is not sharp or crumbly like mature cheddars we know. Instead it is subtle, grassy, earthy and creamy. Each wheel I pull from the shelf is distinctly a Bay of Fires Cheddar, but has its own character reflecting its age and the season it was made. That’s the beauty of having a cave. It allows me to taste and sell cheese at different ages. As the cheese matures the flavours blend and it tastes nuttier with hints of caramel. Something you expect in Comté, rather than a cheddar. Some people like their Bay of Fires Cheddar like this, others prefer the meadow freshness of the cheese when it is about a year old. However you like it, Bay of Fires Cheddar is another great Australian cheese that draws from European tradition and blends it with quality local milk to create something unique. I enjoy the look on people’s faces when ‘I have a cheese cave in my garage’ casually pops up in conversation. Sadly, it is not like the limestone caverns of Roquefort or a recommissioned train tunnel in the French countryside or an old lagering tunnel of a Brooklyn brewery. Instead it is an insulated room with a modified air conditioner, fluoro green wind sock and a humidifier. From the outside the cave looks like a cold room. While it is not traditional or hip, it is a great space to mature cheese. I know it is working because every time the door is opened I am hit by a distinctive milky musty yeasty smell that is common to all cheese caves. Inside the cave is a room of my own. One that I designed, help build and modify to get the right climate for maturing cheese. An environment that is perfect for moulds, yeasts and microbes to grow. These critters are important to help form the rind on the cheese, break down proteins and most importantly develop the flavour. The main inspiration for the cave came from what I learnt from Laurent Mons and Sue Sturman at Academie Opus Caseus in St Haon le Chatel, France. Theory is one thing, but applying it to a real project is another. The brains and skills of friends and tradies made it all happen. You all know who you are, but a special thanks goes to Geoff, Alex, Trevor, the water filter guys and the bloke who lives with my obsession and parks his car on the street. |
About the AuthorWendy studied affinage in France. Working in the Mons caves at St Haon le Chatel and many years of travelling has exposed her to cheeses from around the world. She enjoys and respects all cheeses, but her passion is Australian cheeses. Especially unique cheeses made by small producers. Archives
May 2017
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