Slow Food - the campaign for Australian raw milk products

I moved to London for a few years and ended up eating way more cheese than I had thought possible. Having grown up with a mild lactose intolerance, I had mostly stayed away from all dairy products, and also in part because locally they just never interested me.

However, since sharing house with a Frenchman, who occasionally received care packages of French cheese, my exposure to cheese was greatly expanded and in a good way! I discovered that not all hard cheeses are made equal .. They don't all have to taste like Coon; my favourite being Beaufort ... Not an absolute favourite though since I also like Gruyere .. Like wine, the age of a cheese influences it's flavour; newer cheese being more mellow, older cheese being more flavoursome. I also learned that Brie and Camembert did not cover all types of soft cheese .. I even managed to find and eat Stinking Bishop cheese! (For those of you who are curious, it does stink - especially after your French flatmate decides to age it in a cupboard - but has a very delicate taste.)

So why the massive difference in cheese varieties? The answer lies in pasteurisation. Pasteurisation involves heating milk to a certain degree to eliminate all micro-organisms. This is to ensure that all milk and dairy products are safe for consumption.

In Australia it's mostly illegal to produce dairy products with unpasteurised milk. These rules are governed by a national body called Food Standards Australia New Zealand ("FSANZ") who is currently assessing the use of raw milk. FSANZ also govern the import of raw milk cheeses from overseas.

Slow Food Australia are trying to lobby for these rules to be loosened so that Australians can enjoy the benefits of being able to work with raw milk. I read about their campaign and signed their online petition, but have since been notified that the initial draft assessment issued by FSANZ seems to be in favour of further restricting the use of raw milk. To further their cause, they will need the support of many more people! So here is where you come in ...

You can read more about this campaign here.

You can sign an online petition here.

I am all for ensuring that products are made safe for consumption, but since there is a long tradition of unpasteurised cheeses overseas, surely we can be trusted to make our own judgements on what we choose to eat?

Sugar and spice and all things nice,
la chouquette sucrée

Cheese Expectations

Bonjour monsieur, bonjour mademoiselle. Ca va? Making your own cheese. Who would have thought that was possible? Surely not I, until some extremely thoughtful friends presented me with a camembert making kit! Country Brewers is a small little shop next to Thornleigh station that supplies brewing equipment as well as sausage, jerky, and cheese kits.

Steps to make cheese. Create a starter. Add the starter to 7 litres of milk warmed to 32 degrees. Add rennet and allow to turn into curds and whey. Divide the curds into molds and turn repeatedly to drain out excess whey. Then you put them in a container and leave them at 9 to 15 degrees and wait for the mould to appear. C'est Tout!

It's a surprisingly simple process. All it takes is some common sense and a heck of a lot of patience. I created the mother of all double boilers to hold the 7 litres of milk and keep it at a constant 32degrees, for approx. 4 hours. Once the milk reached temperature I could turn off the stove and the double boiler did the rest so there's no messing around trying to keep the temperature consistent, even though I did compulsively check the temp every 10 minutes (hey it's my first batch of cheese, excuse me for being paranoid!).

So 4 hours later enter stage right, curds and whey. Before dicing it up into cubes as you can see here, it looked a lot like pannacotta (but didn't smell like it!). Scooping the curds into draining moulds which are just pvc pipes with holes drilled into the sides, then comes the hours of turning and turning which compacts the curds into a solid cottage cheese type consistency and drains out the excess whey.

The path of life has many twists and turns. Well on the journey of making your own cheese there are certainly more turns than anything else. Into the ripening container they go and daily turning is required until the cheese is
completely covered in the mould spores. If you
have ever sprouted alfalfa from seeds and cotton wool, ever grown your own mushrooms or owned a chia pet, you will understand the pride and pleasure that comes with cultivating your own little living wonders. Each tiny little white fluffy mould spore is becoming a soon to be tasty wonder of nature. Once they have completely developed, then you wrap them up and let the mould eat their way into the cheese to create that smooth creamy texture that we all know and love.

The aging process complete, I find myself sitting in a rocking chair on the front porch reflecting on the life of my cheese. Like most things, upon reflection, there are things that should have been done differently. There was a moisture problem from the start, using baking paper rather than the provided cellophane would probably have worked better. Take utter care when turning the cheese. If pieces start to fall away from the main body, they will turn into crusty brown pieces. Don't wait too long, you can see from the picture that it was over developed, which produced an intense, salty, mushroom flavour. Eat it fast and eat it early! Next time I will try it after 3 to 4 weeks. It doesn't have to be perfect, just shared with friends and enjoyed. Because that is what it's about. (Actually what it's all about for the first batch is surviving the experience which I can safely say I did).

Merci Beaucoup mon pote SMS for the french lessons. Much love.