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Vagabond Cheese Enthusiast: Report from Scotland
by Porter White
To the traveler with a taste for British cheeses, a trip to the UK requires certain pit stops and pilgrimages. Surely the experimental Neil’s Yard Dairy would rank high on the list of places to see, as would one or more of the six farms licensed to make Stilton. And add to the itinerary an acquisitive visit to a cheesemonger selling a range of cheeses from Scotland. Artisanal cheese production in Scotland has expanded vastly in the past decade and a half—since 1994, the number of Scottish cheeses entered in the British Cheese Awards has more than tripled, with the 2009 show judging 95 varieties.
Marc Duarte: Tantalized by the Technology
by Susan Marquis
“OK, now, who’s ready to make some cheese!?!”1 And so Marc Duarte opens up another session with a group of cheesemakers at the Vermont Institute for Artisan Cheese at the University of Vermont. Whether hosting a visiting cheesemaker from Greece, Spain, or Italy, or introducing students to the finer details of cheese technique and technology, Marc Duarte is the hands-on-guy at VIAC. Marc is the one who takes what is taught in VIAC’s classroom and makes it real for students in the cheese room. Seeing the increased viscosity of milk as it reaches the point of flocculation, holding the harp and cutting the coagulant to just the right size, and feeling the curds to know when they have reached the appropriate dryness and acidity level are essential to cheesemakers’ understanding of the chemical and physical changes occurring when they convert milk to cheese. Marc encourages students to use all of their senses in identifying these changes, and offers his enthusiasm and patience to guarantee the success of the program.
So Were There Cows at the Nativity?
by Christopher Thompson
A quick look at Biblical history tells us that there were plenty of dairy animals in Palestine in ancient times, but most were probably goats and sheep. These were easier to keep alive during the harsh temperature changes of the Middle East, took up less stable room, and didn’t need as much grazing as bovines. But there were certainly bovines, as we know from the Levitican laws regarding restitution paid for injured or killed oxen, which were then as now castrated males trained as draft animals. Some scholars think it likely that some households also had a house-cow, for milk purposes. Whether there was one such cow at the Nativity depends upon what sort of place Joseph and Mary settled in for the night. Travelers at an inn in town would most likely have used the stable for draft and ridden animals: horses, donkeys, and oxen. But if it was the stable of a household, there could have been a dairy cow or other dairy animals the family kept. And the question as to how the animals—traditionally an ox and an ass—might have dealt with the divine presence in their stable was addressed in a 15th-Century homily by John Mirkus, at the time a monk of Gloucester Abbey in England; quoted here from his Festiall.
Do Try This At Home: The Ins and Outs of Ricotta
by Susan Marquis
In the last issue of Cheese Enthusiast (CE 6), we promised we’d get back to our readers regarding ricotta. The topic was triggered by a letter we received asking if we had ever heard of making ricotta using boiled seawater. Not having heard of such a thing ourselves, we immediately sent the question out to several of our revered sources, including Marc Duarte at the Vermont Institute for Artisanal Cheese (Marc is featured elsewhere in this issue), Jim Wallace at New England Cheesemaking Supply, and Giuseppe Licitra at the Consorzio Ricerca Filiera Lattiero Casearia in Ragusa, Sicily.
Do Try This At Home: The Ins and Outs of Ricotta
by Susan Marquis
In the last issue of Cheese Enthusiast (CE 6), we promised we’d get back to our readers regarding ricotta. The topic was triggered by a letter we received asking if we had ever heard of making ricotta using boiled seawater. Not having heard of such a thing ourselves, we immediately sent the question out to several of our revered sources, including Marc Duarte at the Vermont Institute for Artisanal Cheese (Marc is featured elsewhere in this issue), Jim Wallace at New England Cheesemaking Supply, and Giuseppe Licitra at the Consorzio Ricerca Filiera Lattiero Casearia in Ragusa, Sicily.
Turning On To Rain, and Turning Off The Tap...55 Gallons At A Time
by Molly Selvin
If Los Angeles’ rainwater harvesting program could put a barrel at each of the city’s 800,000 residential parcels, demand for tap water could drop by about 800 million gallons a year.
I joined the city’s rainwater harvesting program in October, when fierce Santa Ana winds made the notion of any rain, not to mention enough to “harvest,” seem fanciful to say the least. But last week’s glorious pelting rains filled my new storage barrel to the brim, along with those of several of my Mar Vista neighbors.
Book Review: The Home Creamery
Kathy Farrell-Kingsley
Reviewed by Christopher Thompson
Storey Publishing specializes in, to use their words, “publishing practical information that encourages personal independence in harmony with the environment.” These worthy folks have given us landmark texts such as Ricki Carroll’s Home Cheesemaking. Kathy Farrell-Kingsley, author of The Home Creamery, is a food generalist, having founded a bakery in Connecticut and written magazine articles on various kinds of healthy cooking. She is also the author of cookbooks covering vegetarian interests, great chocolate cakes, and the like. She brings something of a generalist’s mindset to The Home Creamery, whose section headings comprise “Cultured Dairy Products,” “Soft, Unripened Cheeses,” and “Recipes from the Home Creamery.” These lattermost recipes are for all sorts of things, from pancakes to hors d’ouevres to beef stroganoff, collected together because a dairy product one might have made in sections one or two is to be used somewhere therein.
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