Of Washed Rinds and Eliot

Sorry for the silence over the past few days.  I’m just back from that testament to environmental irresponsibility, Las Vegas, where the American Association of Geographers held its annual meeting.  I’m not sure which bright spark thought it would be a good idea to hold the meeting in Vegas, but given the number of seriously angry geographers walking about the halls of an extraordinarily depressing casino hotel, I suspect they’ll be out of a decision-making position fairly soon.  I’ll be back with the second half of our “Of Cheese and Nightmares” tale soon but in the meantime, here’s a tiny literary quip to tide you over.  Eliot, famous for the phrase  “Never commit yourself to a cheese without having first examined it”, among others, commonly used cheese as a parodic device to confront the self-importance of English ‘culture’.  This letter’s no different.

From the TS Eliot Society newsletter, No. 51, 2003.

TSE ON CHEESE: A NEWLY DISCOVERED LETTER

Editor’s note: Dr. Erwin Welsch, our indefatigable collector of Eliot books and researcher into lost and forgotten Eliot documents, sends along the following:

There is a fun, tongue-in-cheek letter from TSE that is not cited in Gallup; it is listed in the Papers of the Bibliographical Society.

CHEESE

Sir – Mr. David Garnett (reviewing Mr. Osbert Burdett’s book [i.e. A Little Book of Cheese, London: Gerald Howe, 1935, which was intended "to aid the reader in the choice of cheese"]) is in error in supposing that there is no tolerable American cheese. There is a delicious Port Salut type made by Trappist monks in Ontario. But Trappist monks, like their cheese, are the product of “a settled civilisation of long standing,” and I fear that there is little demand for either. Americans seem to prefer a negative cream cheese which they can eat with salad: and American salads are barbaric. I wish Mr. Garnett would take the initiative in founding such a society as he suggests; and I for one would be glad to buy a Double Cottenham, if he could put me in the way of it.

Oxford and Cambridge
T. S. Eliot
University Club
Pall Mall, S. W. 1

The letter is in The New Statesman and Nation, December 21,1935.

I can only think that Eliot is referring to Oka, which was actually produced by Trappists in Quebec, and not Ontario.  Oka was one of those bedrock cheeses for me.  I can remember stopping in at the monastery on one of our camping vacations when I was a kid.  One taste and I was hooked.  Long before the current Quebec cheese renaissance, it was Oka that hinted of a wider cheese world just waiting to be explored.  For those of you who missed the pleasure of tasting this cheese in your youth, it’s a modified version of the Port Salut recipe developed in the 17th century by Trappist monks in Brittany.  When the order was expelled from the Abbaye de Bellefontaine in Bégrolles-during the Third Republic, a group of the brothers were invited to settle in Quebec and set up shop at the Lake of Two Mountains near the village of Oka. They called the property La Trappe and developed an agreement with the Université de Montréal, to create an agricultural school called the Oka Agricultural Institute. For years the Abbey supported itself by running the school and making Oka, but in the mid-1970s they sold the production rights to an outside interest. Agropur – a large Quebec dairy conglomerate that has altered the recipe and is making different versions of the cheese – now produces it.  It’s still good. But not as good as I remember tasting when I was a kid.  The monks have actually just moved out of the monastery into a new property in Joliette and the original abbey has been taken over by a heritage foundation with plans to turn it into a hotel.

Of Cheese and Nightmares

Cheese it is a Peevish Elfe,
It digests all things but itself

(Old English Proverb).

I had a bad dream the other night.  I suppose it was a nightmare. It wasn’t really terrifying; no blood and gore,  just oddly disturbing.  One of those dreams in which the social order of your life is radically dismantled and leaves you certain that you’ll never be able to put it together again.  Sort of a humpty dumpty moment.  I always wonder what brings on dreams like this.  And when they happen I tend to ponder stresses in my life, particular things that might provoke anxiety so I can explain them away. But I also think back to my childhood and my penchant for eating toasted cheese sandwiches before bed.  If my mother caught me, she had a threat ready.  “That damn cheese!”, she’d say,  “it’ll give you nightmares.”

Nightmares and cheese?  Now, I’ll admit that I occasionally imagine Mr. Kraft’s demonic creations as the food of Beelzebub, but not the delightful morsels that I usually gorge myself on.  And yet, according to Caroline Oates in a somewhat disjointed essay published in the journal Folklore, the association between scarfing down cheese and a restless sleep has a history that is traceable to the 17th century – at least among Brits like my lovely Scots mother.  The rest of Europe seems to have no problem sleeping after a late night cheese plate, which makes one wonder if it’s the quality of the cheese that brings on the wrath of the Mare.

While it wouldn’t surprise me to hear some French cheese maker claim that it’s the particular characteristics of British cheese that’s to blame for British nightmares, a more common explanation has revolved around the role of cheese in the kind of meal that brings on indigestion, and – if we’re to believe the dusty old scrolls of physicians like Galen – nightmares (let’s not even start to think about what Frued might have made of cheese and nightmares).  This ultimately became known as the “Heavy Supper Theory” of vivid dreams. As an example, recall that old miser Ebeneezer Scrooge trying to explain away his haunting encounter with his dead partner Jacob Marley – “You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of underdone potato. There’s more of gravy than of grave about you…” (no one delivers this line like Alastair Sim).  His mention of that ‘crumb’ of cheese is a nod to an old proverbial belief that cheese is indigestible.  Want the proof? Crack open an old tome like Wordsworth’s Dictionary of Proverbs and you’ll find some variant of this canny couplet: Cheese it is a Peevish Elfe, It digests all things but itself.

But cheese-induced indigestion seems an all too rational explanation for nightmares – something that those ‘educated’ physicians might come up with to chase away more common, but darker, explanations – that nightmares are caused by Old Hags, witches who leave their bodies at night and travel to the beds of their victims where they sit on the sleepers bellies and bring on terrifying dreams. Now, just think of a nightmare – you have the sense of being awake but can’t move or speak.  You feel a crushing weight on your chest that leaves you gasping for air. You wake in the morning feeling exhausted and haggard (i.e., hag-ridden). Doesn’t that sound more like the result of some old crone sitting on your chest, than that morsel of cheese you had after your dinner?

But, does it have to be one or the other – indigestion or witches?  Maybe not.  How many of you can think back to high school physics class?  Remember Hooke’s law of elasticity?  No?  Well it doesn’t really matter, except that Robert Hooke, that venerable old father of microscopy who coined the term “cell” to describe the basic unit of life, was also a cheese fan.  And he made a entry in his diary for 22 March 1674: “Slept ill after cheese; Dremt of viragoes and other strange phenomena.”  Hmm … now picture Hooke laying in his bed on a fine Oxford spring evening assailed by viragoes – noisy, strong, domineering, scolding women – hags in other words, and blaming it on cheese. Witches, cheese, nightmares?  Is there a connection?  Stay tuned for the second installment.

Oh, and sleep well.

Rind by Chagall

There’s a certain simple pleasure that comes from looking at cheese.  It’s different for each.  An uncut block of cheddar can seem plain but it communicates a rustic strength, as if to say “here I am; meant to sustain you”.  Cheddar is the Barnett Newman of the cheese world (if I could add footnotes to these posts I’d say that a cloth bound is more like Richard Serra).   And what does the surface of a Vacherin Mont D’or look like if not those wonderfully wavy skies in the background of a Munch canvas.  But there’s one cheese, and only one, that conjures up Chagall.  Look at this and tell me that I’m lying.

Those grey blues, snowy whites, and mauve-tinged tans. I could look at them ’til the cows come home.  Good thing, then, that it’s made of goat milk or I’d never get to bed.

This beauty is:

Blue Juliette, Salt Spring Island Cheese, $12.95

David Wood, who once owned a small chain of fine food shops in Toronto, creates this masterpiece at the Salt Spring Cheese Company on B.C.’s beautiful Salt Spring Island. I’ve never met him (though I’ll give it a shot ext time I’m on the coast) but you’ve got to like  a guy who writes this on the front of his webpage:

“Nothing is more patronizing, or – and please excuse the pun – ‘cheesy’ than a company’s finely crafted corporate statement of philosophy, describing in great detail how that company is redefining the standards of earthly humanity. So forgive us for offering a different approach. We simply believe that a better kind of food business is one that reflects both good community and good food, as the two frequently go together.”

Blue Juliette is unusual among blues.  It’s a bloomy rind with the tell-tale mushroomy odour and taste, but it’s made from pasteurized goats milk and is surface ripened. And that gorgeous mottled surface actually is the ‘blue’.  It’s created by adding  Penicillium roqueforti – a common saprotrophic fungus – the ‘active ingredient’ in many blue cheeses, to the milk after it’s pasteurized.  The trick with Blue Juliette, though, is that the cheese is not pierced, like most blues.  It’s allowed to surface ripen so that the mould is activiated on the rind of the cheese but not the interior. Cut into this cheese and there’s no tell-tale blue vein.  On the contrary, it’s a beautiful lucious snowy white, just like those clouds by Chagall.

As much as I love to look at this cheese, the urge to eat it is so much more powerful.  It’s irresistible; especially when you have a round that is just at its peak (typically, like that piece in the picture, just at or after the ‘best before’ date). This is a sumptuous cheese.  Eaten en pointe, it’s wonderfully complex. A well-developed rind covers a paste that oozes over the chalky core typical of a chevre.  Yes, the mushroom aroma and taste are there but so is a wonderful  nutiness just under the rind, and a tangy, slightly citrus, core.  There’s a reward to be had in eating each of these separately – sampling the rind, the core and the wonderful flowing paste that divides them.  But there’s an even larger reward in cutting a good-sized wedge and sliding it onto your tongue.  Close your eyes.  You’ll see Chagall’s clouds, and maybe even his goats.

Once again, if you see it, buy it.

More works of art and reflections soon.  It’s been a horribly busy week.

Of Brebis and Babies …

Ossau Iraty, Vallée d’Aspe Pur Brebis, $79.99/kg

Sunday’s third cheese was a very nice raw milk Ossau-Iraty.  While this Basque cheese is typically known for a supple and creamy paste, this round was firmer and drier indicating that it had been nicely aged.  The smell alone transports you to a beautiful mountain pasture high in the Pyrenees.  It’s in the natural tan-coloured rind, but it’s also echoed in echoed in the off-white, ivory colored paste.  A wonderfully complex cheese, this particular piece had a pleasant salty sweetness but lacked the buttery quality of a younger version. The fruits and nuts were there. But so was a note of liver, but running through it all was a subtle, yet persistent taste of mountain grasses. Sublime!

Ossau-Iraty is one of many similar cheeses classified as Brebis des Pyrenees, all of which look similar and are made from the same recipe.  The AOC designated Ossau Iraty is made by small producers (typically 2.5-3.5 kg., marked fermier or farm-made) or industrial dairies or cooperatives (typically non-fermier), in the Pays Basque of south western France, – the valleys of the Pyrénées-Atlantiques département, that sit right on top of the border with Spain.

As you’d guess from the name, the cheese is made form the milk of Manech (tete noire and tete rousse) and Basco-Bearnaise ewes that graze in the Ossau valley and the beautiful beech forest of Iraty.   After the formation of a strong marketing association in the late 1970s, the cheese received appellation d’origine contrôlée certification in 1981.  But the AOC, like any regulatory process, has come with a certain politics.  Currently, only 32% of the production is sold as AOC and some folk in the know claim that producers of other Brebis des Pyrenees, in fact make better products, but lack the AOC designation.

I keep promising to discuss the AOC issue, and I’ll get to it sometime soon – promise.  But for now there’s one easy way to gauge the impact of an AOC designation on producers.  In the case of Ossau-Iraty, production more than doubled in the 20 years after the AOC was issued and 85% of total production is shipped out of the region.  Not bad for a cheese that has spent most of its long history in the region. Match that with a price premium of about 20% that comes with the certification, and its not hard to see the economic incentive for chasing down an AOC.  Of course part of that demand was driven by the expansion of fine cheese markets outside of Europe (e.g., North America), but the AOC also helps here as well, since it makes it easier for buyers to source products they know they can sell by using the AOC as a marketing tool – just go and check any cheese shop website and you’ll quickly see how it’s used.  There are obvious environmental implications here as well – that increased production demands higher yields, which means more sheep, which means extending the transhumance cycle (ranging over greater areas for pasture), or more intensive grazing on existing pastures.

Oh damn!  I said I wasn’t going to get into it… I’ll stop now, but there will be more later.

What I really wanted to talk about today is the meaning of cheese, and more specifically the way in which people make equations between making cheese and making life; indeed the way they often see them as one and the same thing.   Analogies between conception and cheese-making are not at all new.  Though tough to verify, some philosophers and historians trace the earliest analogy to Aristotle and his depiction in De generatione animalium (The Generation of Animals). Here, for you reading pleasure, is the basic Aristotelian cheese analogy of conception: (Warning – don’t read this at bedtime)

“When the material secreted by the female in the uterus has been fixed by the semen of the male (this acts in the same way as rennet acts upon milk, for rennet is a kind of milk containing vital heat, which brings into one mass and fixes the similar material, and the relation of the semen to the catamenia is the same, milk and the catamenia being of the same nature)- when, I say, the more solid part comes together, the liquid is separated off from it, and as the earthy parts solidify membranes form all round it; this is both a necessary result and for a final cause, the former because the surface of a mass must solidify on heating as well as on cooling, the latter because the foetus must not be in a liquid but be separated from it.” (De generatione Animalium, Bk. II, 739b, 22-31)

“Whereby, too, it is plain that the semen does not come from the whole of the body; for neither would the different parts of the semen already be separated as soon as discharged from the same part, nor could they be separated in the uterus if they had once entered it all together; but what does happen is just what one would expect, since what the male contributes to generation is the form and the efficient cause, while the female contributes the material. In fact, as in the coagulation of milk, the milk being the material, the fig-juice or rennet is that which contains the curdling principle, so acts the secretion of the male, being divided into parts in the female.” (Bk. I, 729a, 7-14)

This explanation of conception isn’t culturally unique.  The same kind of analogies appear in ‘middle age’ explanations of embryonic development throughout the Middle East and South Asia.  This might have something to do with an early Arabic translation of De generatione animalium , or it might just be that cheese making is simply an easy way to envisage conception.

So what does this have to do with Brebis?  For the answer to that I direct you to Sandra Ott’s classic ethnography Circle of Mountains: A Basque Shepherding Community, and her discussion of how cheese-making is central to understandings of human conception held by some Basque communities in the very same mountain ranges that produce Ossau Iraty. What I love about Ott’s work is the way she reveals how this equation between making babies and making cheese continues to resonate in some parts of the world.  It’s a wonderful example of how integrated cheese-making can be into people’s self-representations of who they are,  their social relations, and their conceptions of place and the politics that surround it.

Now…the story

The summer version of Brebis des Pyranees – is made by Basque shepherds who are divided into pasture syndicates called olhak (pl.).  An Olha is also the name of the hut that shepherds and cheese-makers live in while they’re in the high pasture.  I know from my own work in the mountains of northern Pakistan that pastures are fantastical places where the social relations that govern life in valley communities are re-ordered.  This is also the case in the Pyrenees.  Pastures are a man’s world. With the exception of one day, when the animals are delivered, only men inhabit the pasture.  Of course, this means that they have to take on the chores usually done by women.  Men being men, the shepherds take turns at this, each becoming the etchakandere – literally the woman of the house – for a few days at a time.  Each in their turn take on all of the ‘domestic duties’ that would be exclusively handled by women if they were down in the valley – making and serving meals, sweeping the floor of the hut, collecting firewood, keeping the fire going, washing the dishes, and so.  Far from being embarrassed, shepherds are proud of their domestic skills, though Ott claims that they’d never admit it to a woman. Above everything else however the etchakandere is concerned with making the cheese.  And this matters for a man because mountain cheese is more than just food in these valleys, it is an object through which a man is evaluated as a shepherd and a provider, and yes, as a stud!  That’s right.  A man’s sexual prowess is based on the quality of his cheese.  It’s clear after all – a shepherd who knows how to make a good cheese – one that has a solid rind and no holes or cracks in the paste – must be adept at impregnating his wife.

Stay with me now.  There’s a logic to this, but there are some twists and turns along the way. But this is what makes cheese so fascinating to me, and helps to explain why it is so much more than what you put in your mouth.  If anything, that last gasp, the consumption of cheese, is its physical death.  What I’m about to tell you, is its life.

In the Basque communities that Ott studies, people explain human conception in terms of cheese-making.  When a woman becomes pregnant, people greet her with “gatzatü ziok” (fem.), or “you’ve been curdled”. Gatzatü is a verb that describes the action of rennet upon milk and the action of semen upon red blood.  O.K., now here’s one twist.  Traditional Basque physiology recognizes two types of blood – red blood and white blood.  Red blood is said to be formed in the womb when a women begins menstruation and continues to flow in the womb until menopause.  It’s red blood, not the ovaries, that makes a woman potentially fertile.  White blood, on the other hand, is contributed by the man and carries his semen.

Alright, so white blood acting on red blood … So long as the body blood of a man stays hot and his white blood flows, he is said to have indara, or the generative power to curdle a hot liquid (red blood) and its life giving properties.  In order for human semen to curdle red blood in the womb, that blood must be pure and hot.  And it’s only when the the blood has curdled, that the substance of the fetus is formed in the womb.  Hmmm…kind of sounds like making cheese, no?  And sure enough that’s how the Ott’s informants explain this stage of conception – like the shepherd who collects the curdled milk, or kaillatia, at the bottom of the kettle and forms the cheese.   Kaillatia, is also the word for the human fetus.  According to Ott, for the shepherd, human semen isn’t simply like rennet, it’s a direct equivalent.  To make her point, she describes a conversation with one shepherd about coitus interuptus: “what shepherd would put his rennet into the milk if he did not wish to make a cheese.”

So, to put this in relational tems we might say that – Semen: Red blood: Baby as Rennet:Milk:Cheese

In other words, rennet curdles milk to form a cheese in the same way that human semen curdles blood to form a baby.

But there’s still more to the story  (this is the last twist, I promise).  In the Basque worldview, human semen doesn’t just curdle the red blood, it gives substance to the fetus.  It joins with the red blood so that the fetus is made up of both male white blood and female red blood.  And they explain this in terms of cheese making, because in their view, rennet (i.e. white blood) doesn’t just curdle milk (i.e., red blood), it also becomes part of the cheese (i.e., the fetus).  It also contains a particular element that mixes with the substance of the cheese during curdling and gives a cheese what they call ‘bone’ – that hard, dense interior characteristic of Brebis des Pyerenees.

And this is where the babies and brebis come together  – in the birth of a mountain cheese, niñi txipia – ‘the little baby’.  Because of the rennet that solidifies them, mountain cheeses, like babies, are seen to be alive and need to be cared for and nurtured in the early stages of their life.  To develop a strong rind and ‘bone’, the cheese-maker must turn the cheese and rub it down with salt to protect the interior of the cheese.  Until that rind is fully formed, the cheese is said to be ‘as fragile as a baby’.  And  like a cheese, rubbed in salt to form a protective rind, a baby is also given salt at baptism in order to protect its body; a baby is turned in front of the fire to strengthen its bones.  And in days not too long past, a babies and cheeses were kept in the same space  during the first 3 months of life while the bone was soft and easily injured. See, it is Geography!

It’s wonderful pieces of research like Ott’s that continually renew my fascination with cheese and the meaning it holds for people.  If you have other tales, however long or short, I’d be grateful if you’d add them as comments, or drop me a line.

New Cheese from Old Cows

Le 1608, Laiterie Charlevoix, 79.99/kg.

The second cheese from Sunday’s binge (OMG – is it Thursday already???) is “Le 1608”.  This is a new cheese from an old dairy, with a name that celebrates an even older heritage of a very old breed – The Canadienne.

Picture ships carrying settlers across the Atlantic from Ancien France to Nouvelle France in the early 17th century.  And on those ships, picture cattle accustomed to the cozy conditions of the Normandy countryside about to be dropped into harsh Quebec winters.  Those original animals, transported between 1608-1610, were the foundation for the only breed of dairy cattle developed in North America, the Canadienne.  Selective breeding over generations produced an animal well adjusted to the climate and environment of southern Quebec.  It also produced an animal that yields milk high in butterfat and protein – great for cheese-making.  Just one small problem – the Canadienne doesn’t produce a lot of this white gold, so over the years it slowly lost ground to higher yielding breeds like the Holstein.  While there were around 500,000 Canadienne in 1900, numbers dropped through the 20th century as dairy farming became increasingly industrialized. The breed was given a heritage designation by the Government of Quebec in 1999 and their numbers are slowly climbing back. Currently there are around 500 head, about half of them in Quebec’s Charlevoix region in the St. Lawrence uplands, not far from the landing site of their ancestors.

Lucky for cheese-lovers, these beasts are within milk-trucking distance of the Laiterie Charlevoix in Baie-St-Paul. Founded in 1948 by Stanislas Labbé and Elmina Fortin, the Laiterie Charlevoix has been almost exclusively devoted to Cheddar production for most of its existence.  But the new generation of the Labbé family – brothers Jean, Paul, Bruno and Dominique – saw an opportunity in the resurgence of the Canadienne and the cheese-making potential of its milk.  In 2007, they set themselves the task of developing a cheese that could be released in 2008, during the Fêtes de la Nouvelle-France celebrating the 400th anniversary of the settlement of Quebec. In a nod to history, the cheese is made purely from the milk of the Canadienne.  This effort also springs from the establishment of a new association – L’ Association de développement de la race Canadienne dans Charlevoix – devoted to expanding the presence of the Canadienne in Charlevoix, and through a collective management model that seeks to maintain viable, small scale dairy farms in the region, by linking farmers directly to processors like the Labbés.  We owe a debt of gratitude to the Labbe’s and the farmers working to restore the Canadienne.  They have enriched our lives by bringing us a wonderful cheese.

Le 1608 is an easy cheese to approach.  It’s semi-soft, cooked, pressed and aged from 90 to 180 days, with a lovely pale orange rind and a pale yellow paste (from the carotenes in the butterfat).  The aroma is powerful with persistent notes of garlic and the barnyard – bordering on, but not quite, ‘stinky’.  The paste has supple texture with a lovely velvety mouthfeel and a complex flavour that includes hints of apple and cashew nuts.  It melts well and is an easy substitute for a Raclette.  Buy this. And keep your eyes open for Laiterie Charlevoix’s other winner, L’Hercule de Charlevoix.

To Heaven and Back

Alright, I said I’d check in last night and report on the picks but it was just too much after the sensory overload of seven delicious cheeses and a fantastic bottle of New Zealand Cab/Merlot – a 2004 Te Awa Cab/Merlot from Aoteoroa/New Zealand. I was rolling in post-degustation bliss and in no condition to be sitting in front of a computer.

One of the seven was a Fromageries Papillon Roquefort (sorry my American cousins – it’s still ‘reasonably’ priced here) which has enough reviews out there so I won’t bother saying much about it … Ok, jut one thing (famous last words).  I used to be a cheese purist.  In fact, I still am, for the most part.  All of this ‘cheese-with-honey’, ‘cheese-with-truffles’, -horseradish-flavoured ‘whatever” just did nothing for me.  Until one day, my friend Terry at Alex Farms on Queen East, saw me walk in the door and called me over.  He claimed that one of his customers – a man of French origin – had come in and told him that when he was a boy in the French countryside, he ate Roquefort with slivers of fresh butter on top.  Terry loaded up a nice piece of Roquefort and, sure enough, the butter brought out the creaminess of the cheese. It was a lovely combination.

A few weeks later I walked into the shop to find him hawking something that left me a bit more skeptical.  He had just stocked a new product from the Niagara region – Red Pepper Icewine Jelly – and claimed that it was a perfect addition to any blue.  I resisted.  He persisted.  I gave in.  And I’m glad I did.  The combination of flavours was fantastic – the spicy sweetness of the jelly complemented the tanginess of the blue and left me drooling for more.  I’m still not giving in to outright adulteration, but my eyes (and taste buds) have been opened.  Thanks Terry.

Alright, on to Sunday’s selections.  All of our cheeses this week came from About Cheese, the retail outlet of Provincial Fine Foods, a company owned by Cole Snell, a dynamic young entrepreneur who is full of information and enthusiasm about Canadian Cheese.  My knowledge grows by leaps and bounds each time I talk to Cole.  If you’re visiting Toronto and want to experience a good cross-section of fine Canadian cheese, this is the place to be (check the Cheese Shops link for info).  I’ll add the cheeses one by one just so you don’t get bugged down (and to keep you coming back).

BACK FORTY MADAWASKA, Back Forty Artisan Cheese Ltd., $84.00/kg.

Madawaska is reminiscent of a Pierre Robert or a Brillat Saverin, made in small molds with that delightful snowy white bloomy rind.  But inside that rind, Madawaska holds a secret – you’ll see it in the picture – a lovely ivory tinge to the paste.  Yes, this is a sheep’s milk triple creme.  And it’s a delight.  It’s made from the raw milk of ewes who, when the snow’s off the ground, dine out on grasses, goldenrod and apple blossoms. The result is remarkable, with notes of sour cream – but without the tanginess of a Brillat – that quickly transition to the sweetness typical of sheep’s milk, as the paste dissolves on your tongue.

Madawaska is named after a river of the same name that flows south out of Algonquin Park and enters the Ottawa River at Arnprior.  The river was central in the development of the region’s economy in the 19th century, and here’s hoping that Back Forty becomes just as central.  Back Forty is run by James Keith who makes Madawaska by hand and produces a range of other delicious cheese in a little fromagerie in the Lanark Highlands, about an hour’s drive northwest of Ottawa, in the Ottawa Valley.  He sells his cheese at the Carp (pronounced Cairp – if you’re from the valley) Farmers Market during the season, and at Ottawa’s Byward market, but he’s also generous enough to let us Toronto folk lay our hands on some from time to time.  This one’s a no brainer.  If you see it, buy it.

It’s Sunday, This Must be a Cheese Shop

Last week saw the beginning of Lent, but I hope that the good Christians among us sacrificed something other than cheese.  Not being Christian – or particularly good for that matter – denial is not a problem for me, so today will unfold like every Sunday has for the past few years.  You see, Holly and I have a Sunday ritual.  Well, it’s not really a ritual. There’s no blessed cleansing of the sacred cheese knife or other formal obeisance to the cheese gods.  It’s more of a routine.  But it still has meaning. Every Sunday, we take an hour or so and head out to a local cheese shop, drop a bundle on some of the world’s finest, pick up a baguette, come home, open a bottle of wine and slip into a zone of gustatory delight.  There’s nothing quite like it.  Such a simple meal – bread, wine and cheese, but so incredibly rich in historical knowledge, practice and creativity.  It’s like eating the Louvre.

Walking into a cheese shop today in a city like Toronto, where I live, is a microcosmic experience. It is to walk into a small, ordered, world of shelves, typically behind a glass counter, stacked with cheeses organized by country, or even region, of origin. Occasionally the organization might differ and the order may reflect types or categories of cheese, all assembled in a single location, reducing the geographical complexity of production to the micro-globe of the cheese shelf. This, of course is not unique to Toronto. The same general arrangement can be found in Paris, London, Melbourne, Rome, and Buenos Aries.  But I know that in each of those places are people like me.  People who take joy in walking into a cheese shop, scanning those stacked shelves looking for something new, or letting their eyes land on an old favorite and suddenly realizing that it’s exactly what they’re’re in the mood for.  And when they realize it, they can almost feel their mind dredge up the memory of taste so that their tongue can anticipate the sample that’s bound to come, and all those great qualities are in your mouth before the cheese itself.

There’s also something special about being known in a cheese shop – and all good retailers know this; that the relation between the customer and the seller is based on how each understand the other.  If a cheesemonger can’t assess the knowledge base of potential customers and respond appropriately, they risk losing customers.  And customers can learn so much from good cheesemongers, that if they act too aggressive or cautious, they risk ignorance.  But if that mutual understanding develops, a wonderfully social relationship can form. And that can grow to the point where a cheesemonger can develop a taste profile for a customer, know what they like, and can begin mentally preparing offerrings when she sees them walk in the door. And she’s always ready, so that you feel welcome – almost at home – when you walk through the door of the shop and encounter something like this:

“Hey, long time no see” she says, with a big grin on her face, knowing it’s only been a few days since my last visit. She doesn’t ask me what I would like, as she does other customers, but reaches into her mental database, locates my preferences and, as if she’s been waiting all day for me to walk in the door, smiles, quickly draws out a sample, and starts the dialogue that leads to the exchange… “you’ll love this. It’s the last piece of the wheel. I was going to take it home myself, but now you’re here. You have to try this. It’s perfect right now.”

This is just a teaser.  The routine will begin shortly, and I’ll report back later on today’s finds…

Plot Your Favourite Cheese on our Cheesemap

As a boy, Joseph Conrad spent hours staring at maps, imaging the world into being.  This set the stage for his later travels and some of the best literature in the English language.  I’m a bit like that with cheese (though I doubt that I’m going to create any great cheese literature).  To look at a piece of cheese and try to picture its history, how it came it came into being, the intellectual and physical labour that went into its creation, what it means to people who actually live in the places where its made.  Almost every time I put a piece of cheese into my mouth, I want to know more about it – I want to be in the place where it’s made.

I can’t imagine that I’m ever going to fulfill that desire, so I make up for it by staring at maps, looking for those places and imagining them into being.  And now, thanks to Platial, I’ve found a way to plot them.  Look at that map at the bottom of the front page.  It’s interactive and you too can plot your favourite cheese.  I’m still playing with it to see if I can make it a bit easier but if you follow the instructions below, you should see your cheese pop up on the map:

1) Click on the double-headed arrow at the top of the map to enlarge it.

2) Click “add a marker”

3) Adjust the map so that the production location is in the center of the frame

4) In the “type a title” field, enter the name of your cheese, click next

5) Position the courser pver your cheese’s location and click

6) Select the plain blue icon

7) Upload an image of your cheese if you have one

8) Click on the “save” icon

9) Close the expanded map.

Your cheese should show up on the map.  You may have to reload the page before you actually see your cheese marker.

The Politics of Certification: A Lull in the Camembert Wars

Check out this excellent article by Ullrich Fichtner on Spiegel Online International

Just a few short years after receiving its AOC, Camembert de Normandie came under threat in March 2007 as the major producers, French dairy giant Lactalis – the second largest producer of cheese in the world -and the Isigny Sainte-Mère dairy co-operative announced, that they intended to cut production of raw milk Camembert. This was a huge blow given that these companies produce 80% of the Camembert de Normandie (the AOC designated Camembert) made each year and had applied to have the AOC standard rewritten so that thermalized, micro-filtered, industrially processed, cheaper milk would also qualify to be called Camembert de Normandie.  Their argument will be all too familiar to anyone who has followed the raw milk debate. 

The Toronto Cheese Event Calendar

Too often I miss the Cheesy goings on around Toronto, so I’ve decided to create the Toronto Cheese Events Calendar, an ongoing guide to cheese events of all kinds. To access, follow the link in the upper right hand side of the page.

Tastings, festivals, tours, fundraisers; anything to do with cheese, send them in. And not just in Toronto, but where ever you think there’s an interesting event happening.  Lots of us travel, and, heck, some of us even travel just to find good cheese. So, if you send me the information I’ll post your event, and hopefully we’ll all miss fewer cheese events.

Email your event listings to me at cheese – dot – poet – at – yahoo – dot – ca (you know what to do – insert the @ and the .)