Hiking the world in search of rare cheeses
bbc.com
bbc.com
I can fully understand the love of cheese, however, there is a hidden cost to it, that I have experienced but only recently acknowledged.
The places they show on TV and in articles such as this is analogous to showing posh West End made-to-measure tailors and pretending that those SHEIN garments from Bangladesh are made the same way, with no 'slavery' involved.
I worked in a cheese factory as a student, taking up the job with an attitude that it must be 'women's work'. How wrong I was. Twelve hour shifts, with 'every object' weighing (or wheying) upwards of 25Kg and every one of your senses brutally assaulted, always with the potential to lose life, limb or another finger in a moment of lapsed focus. Just surviving became the intellectual challenge, with many not making it past two hours before throwing in the towel. Mastery was my goal and I put in the sleepless 'nights' with relentless 'tennis elbow' to get there, achievement unlocked.
Because I was a student, this was not a forever job, and there was a higher tax threshold for students, making it financially tough but worth while.
On a trip down memory lane I looked the old place up, to discover it had shut down due to numerous health and safety violations, which made me chuckle. That was the culture, and the rule, for example, those chemicals that have huge warning labels, to read such a label after getting nervous ticks after using it, would be moral cowardice. Or, if you needed someone's attention, because the machines were so loud, you would casually throw a 25 Kg object at them (a cheese or a bag of salt) as a 'gentle tap on the shoulder'.
On reflection, there is this small matter of the human cost to cheese. PETA might shock people with cheesy animal welfare issues and cardiologists might not be entirely positive about the consumption of 'saturated fat laced with salt', however, few have experienced the harsh reality of working in the industry, to have the strength to write about how extreme and ultra-violent the production of this harmless product can be.
I am not saying 'boycott the product', just 'value it more'.
Nowadays there is absolutely no dairy in my life. No cheese, no milk, no chocolate and not even butter. Yet, as an white Brit, I have to acknowledge that my ancestors owe a lot to dairy and I probably would not be here, had it not been for dairy farming. The Romans documented how 'Celts' drank milk and were quite disgusted by it. The Romans were lactose intolerant, and from a warm climate where milk just went sour, so they could not believe what they saw.
The history of tin comes into it too, the Phoenicians brought the recipe for clotted cream to Britain ('land of tin') some three thousand years ago, enabling year-round calories for tin miners. They got their copper from Afghanistan to make bronze in the Levant, to found an empire on that.
In Europe and the UK there are many protected foods, including many region specific cheeses. All of them have fabulous history stories, really well written, and in public domain documents. For example, 'Orkney Cheese' is a WW1 innovation, when many ships were based there, with many sailors to feed.
If you want to avoid processed foods then it helps to know about the protected foods. For example, a 'Cornish Pasty' is available in petrol stations and other 'food deserts' where your options are limited. However, a 'Cornish Pasty' can't contain any junk in it, if it has 'Cornish Pasty' written on the packet.
> When you talk with cheese aficionados, it doesn’t usually take long for the conversation to veer this way: away from curds, whey, and mold, and toward matters of life and death. With the zeal of nineteenth-century naturalists, they discuss great lineages and endangered species, painstakingly cataloguing those cheeses that are thriving and those that are lost to history.
> Others fall out of favor because they’re simply not good: one extinct Suffolk cheese, “stony-hard” because it was made only with skimmed milk, was so notoriously bad that, in 1825, the Hampshire Chronicle reported that one ship’s cargo of grindstones was eaten by rats while the neighboring haul of Suffolk cheese escaped untouched.
I don't know why nepali version is dried so much, but it becomes impossible to rehydrate and hence, unusable.
Despite the initial stick shock on the price, we've found them very effective dog chews, threading the needle on lasting a long time but also retaining interest over time relatively well. Also threading the needle on being designed to come apart safely, yet not instantly disintegrating. In late-stage capitalism part of what you're paying for in that price is that you won't need to buy them very often, if you get the correct hardness level for your dog.
(Similar feeling about wine - as long as it's a chasselas I'll try anything and there's enough producers to last a lifetimes)
(Well, tbf also edam, maasdam, geitenkaas, limburger)
Sure would love a good Monterey jack or cotija though.
"There's uh, shrimp-kabobs, shrimp creole, shrimp gumbo. Pan fried, deep fried, stir-fried. You can barbecue it, boil it, broil it, bake it, saute it. There's pineapple shrimp, lemon shrimp, coconut shrimp, pepper shrimp, shrimp soup, shrimp stew, shrimp salad, shrimp and potatoes, shrimp burger, shrimp sandwich."
The owner would travel around Europe finding amazing cheeses.
If you enjoy cheese and ever get the chance I'd highly recommend visiting. I've never found another store of similar calibre.
If the Fast Show was still running, this would spawn a whole new character and a season of skits. Some great one-liners in it!
"In cheesemaking, if two hearts want to connect, they'll find a way."
"Uncomfortable foods open doors."
Thats Jessie's diet right there -
https://youtu.be/sw18OafeQiM?is=Y6M2-Si8xKHI5nQ7
And many other great lines! Lol!