25.07.12 - Cheese 101

More waiting for emails and none arriving, read the local papers to see if there was any inspiration there and to avoid staring listlessly at my screen. The office was very quiet today, most people working at home or away. I find it much more relaxing when it’s quiet. The interns have ended up all having lunch together recently. They are 19, 20 and 21. I think that they are too afraid of embarrassing me to ask me how old I am.

Tonight’s excitement was a Cheese 101 Tasting Course. It was at the SF Cheese School; one of the first places to champion real cheese on the West coast. I had discovered it when I read the obituary of the founder in the local paper. They espouse cheese appreciation, so I thought that it sounded like my kind of thing.

There were about 30 people there, we got 8 cheese tasters, 2 glasses of wine, sweet baguette, a little membrillo, strawberries and a few almonds. The ‘cheese monitor’ professional, talked us through cheese production and different techniques. Here are some cheese facts.

1. In the USA all raw milk cheese (made or imported) has to be aged for at least 60 days, so only hard cheeses here are ever made of raw milk. We had two raw milk cheeses, a Spanish Manchego and a Dutch Nylander and you could really taste the difference in strength of flavour.
2. You can make rennet from thistles and cardoons. And any vegetarian who eats non-veggie cheese should reassess their morals on animals. Although you can get a lot of rennet from one baby animal but it does have to die. American meat portions have actually put me off meat so I’m a moderate vegetarian at the moment. The thought of my pastrami sandwich, belching forth endless slices of pink cow, is gross.
3. To make ricotta cheese the curds are cooked twice; i.e. recooked, re cotto!
4. How was cheese discovered; her theory was that hunter gatherers/nomads carried milk in animal stomachs, leading to the rennet naturally making a form of cheese.
5. Gouda is the most popular cheese at her shop, gouda! In NYC it was Cheddar. Dear me.
6. To recreate naturally occurring European moulds, little vials of frozen cultures are transported to USA to produce the same moulds.

I hate to compound cliches but...for me, the French and Italian cheeses were on another level to the others. A great cheese can transport me to another level of enjoyment, it is the best food ever, mostly because, in concept, it should be horrible, but when it’s good it’s mind blowing. I’m not exaggerating when I say that eating fresh mozzarella in Rome changed my life. The door was opened on what great cheese should taste like, an epiphany moment. For some that comes from God or Shakespeare, for me it’s moldy, aged milk. And Gouda is horrible, rubbery and greasy, no matter what you flavour it with. It made me think of eating great cheese from Jeannine’s special cheese container with a glass of wine in a tumbler and the slate kitchen table. Good times. 

The cycle back was awful, I had to walk up five hills, and pushing a bicycle up a hill is almost as hard as cycling. I did get a great view over the city from the top of one of the highest hills though. The twinkling lights and dying rays of the sun lighting up the clouds a sweet pink. 

I am really enjoying my book which I realised I said was a biography of A.J.P. Taylor but it’s actually of Hugh Trevor Roper, I mixed up my historians! I often write down little extracts from books that I like. Here are two.
At age 29 he is advised by his elderly friend Logan Pearsall Smith “I take it you are about 30, a turning point in life, when one has more or less to decide on the future path one wants to pursue. Here we are in life, something has to be done about it; one has ventured on various paths which have seemed to lead to nothing; snatched at fruit which has turned sour; knocked at doors which have either remained shut, or, if they have opened, have led into what seemed likely to be prisons, or penitentiaries, or bordels, from which one must flee to save one’s life,” Not exactly how I feel but  sometimes on the fringes.
And here’s one for my headstone; “Though (s)he did not achieve great things, yet did (s)he die in their pursuit”, Sancho Panza’s eulogy on his master.