Here is a somewhat humorous description of one British reporter’s struggle to comprehend cheese making via Home Cheese kits he has mailed away for. One precious line that experienced cheese makers will enjoy is:
“The ripening of the cheese culture will take 20-24 hours,” says a bit of paper. My heart sinks. Twenty-four hours? It’s already 11pm…
As I reported to the Guild last year, there is a lab at Harvard that is taking an unprecedented look into the microbial communities that make up the rind on aging cheese and they are finding astonishing interactions as well as residents that all help to create the local identity of our local foods. Now Dr. Rachel Dutton, a Bauer fellow at the FAS Center of Systems Biology, has piqued the interest of many gastronomists by studying the cheese rinds at The Cellers At Jasper Hill’s aging caves, and then opening up her appreciation of microbiological societies to look at other food fermentation processes like sourdough and yogurt. Her efforts have now been noticed by the New York Times Dining Pages quoting chefs that believe she is unlocking the mysteries of what makes the taste of place — what is terroir.
At the ACS conference last month we learned how animal welfare for dairy animals can be very troubling, and what is being done to correct bad practices on a local and national level. Many folks misstated that USDA Organic rules say nothing about animal welfare (yes, even Temple Grandin got it wrong when it comes to pasture requirements for organic dairy animals), leading many dairy farms to consider other certification choices specifically on that aspect of their husbandry. At the same time it’s always nice to read the positive side of dairy farming, the way we want to think about the farms who supply us with milk, which Nicolas Kristof provides in today’s NY Times.