Cheese

by Vicki Reich, from the January 2002 Newsletter

For many people, the New Year is a time to make resolutions and I'm pretty sure the number one resolution that people make is to lose weight. Gyms gear up for this influx of people trying to stick to their resolution and diet pill sales skyrocket. As many of you know, I am a lover of good food, so the idea of going on a diet is not one that appeals to me. (If it won't come off with regular exercise then it was meant to be there, is my philosophy.) Instead of telling you about all the healthy and low-fat food we have available at the Co-op (and we do have lots of those), I thought I'd talk about a food I love that is definitely not on the list of diet foods: cheese.

Legend has it that cheese was discovered about 4000 years ago when an Arab traveler put her day's milk in a sheep-stomach canteen and headed out across the desert. When she got to her destination, she discovered that the milk had turned into strange-looking white curd. Being quite hungry as well as thirsty, she tasted the stuff and was very pleased with her discovery. Of course, she told all her friends about it and thus began the wonderful new industry of cheese making. I have a feeling that cheese making has been around longer than 4000 years. There is evidence that it's been around since about 9000 B.C., and the first cheese was probably started from leaving milk out too long (you know how old milk curdles when you pour it in your coffee, thereby starting your day on the wrong foot).

What happened to the milk in the sheep bladder canteen is that it mixed with a digestive enzyme called rennet in the stomach lining which sped up the process of curdling. Cheese making has come a long way since then and many factors go into making good cheese. You probably wouldn't like the results of just putting some milk into a sheep stomach and carrying it around all day. Factors such as the animal the milk comes from, the type of pasture the animal grazed, whether the milk is raw or pasteurized, what type of cultures or enzymes are added, how long the cheese is aged, what flavors or herbs are added to it, what the outside of the cheese is coated or cured with, all add to the flavor of the final product. You can see why there are so many different types of cheese and how a cheese as basic as cheddar can be made in so many different ways. The possibilities seem endless. You could travel the world eating cheese and never have to have the same cheese twice. (Maybe that's what I'll do when I retire!)

There are specific categories of cheese. They are: Hard cheese, like Parmesan; Semi-hard cheese, like Swiss; Semi-soft cheese like Muenster and Mozzarella; Soft ripened cheese, like Brie and St. Andre; and Soft Cheese, like Cream Cheese and Chevre.

The Co-op carries a wide variety of cheeses in all of these categories. We carry your basic cheddar as well as not-so-basic cheddar and unusual cheese such as Manchego, a sheep's milk cheese from Spain and one of my favorites. I recently brought in some new cheeses for the holidays but I liked them so much I'm going to keep carrying them. They are: Stilton, a glorious and fairly famous blue cheese; Port-cured goat cheese, a semi-hard cheese with a wonderful maroon colored rind; and Mirabo, a brie-like German cheese with walnuts. Try all of them—together they'd make a beautiful cheese plate. But I have to say that my all time favorite cheese is the triple cream (read: triple fat, triple delicious) St. Andre. It's what I buy if I've had a bad day. It's also what I buy when I've had a good day. It's totally luscious, creamy, and delectable, but it's really meant to be eaten by itself on an Ak-mak (Read about Ak-mak in our cracker review). So I still have to get some cheddar to grate onto chili and some mozzarella to put on pizza and some blue cheese to crumble on my salad and some Swiss to…

[Vicki can't ever finish a sentence with her mouth full. If you want to hear more about cheese, review her article about different types of cheddar carried by the Moscow Food Co-op! – The Webmaster]

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