Big cheese urges unique approach
If you don’t know what monello, caciotta or scamorza is, you are not alone.
For many Kiwis, cheese is something bought as a big slab and kept in the fridge for days on end.
That’s a concept world cheese expert Juliet Harbutt is on a mission to change.
Returning to New Zealand with a string of accomplishments from some of the finest cheeseproducing countries, Harbutt now runs tastings and workshops to help Kiwis discover the ‘‘magic’’ of cheese.
‘‘I can’t help but look at cows or sheep or goats in the fields . . . and think ‘how does that turn into mozarella, gorgonzola, feta, brie’,’’ marvels the cheese connoisseur who moved to Hawke’s Bay from the UK two years ago.
For cheesemakers in New Zealand who may be wondering the same thing, Harbutt also offers her expertise.
‘‘I am not a cheesemaker. [But] if they’ve got a problem with a cheese, I can normally figure out what that problem is or why.’’
Harbutt first went to Europe in the early 1980s to find ideas for a cafe delicatessen she owned in Wellington. After discovering cheese, she sold up the business and moved to the UK to focus on its abundant varieties instead.
During the next 35 years she helped introduce artisan cheeses into supermarkets in the UK, set up the British Cheese Awards, judged the Swiss, French and American cheese awards, and wrote The World Cheese Book, which has sold 90,000 copies in nine languages.
Like Harbutt, some cheesemakers in New Zealand had fallen in love with European varieties.
But cheeses like brie and camembert had not been successfully emulated here overall, she said.
‘‘It’s a little bit like the wine industry. When we copied Europe, we did a lousy job. But when we set out to make our own unique-style wines, we made some spectacular, internationally recognised wines.’’
Some cheesemakers in New Zealand were making ‘‘wonderful, unique’’ cheeses, Harbutt said.
Three such producers in the top of the South Island invited her to ‘‘talk cheese’’ to chefs, hospitality workers, and consumers in Nelson and Blenheim this week.
‘‘Cranky Goat are making a wonderful range of goats cheeses, and they’re having fun making them,’’ said Harbutt, of the Marlborough Sounds-based operation.
‘‘They’re inventing cheeses and naming them names that make sense to them [like] ‘The Reginald’ . . . they’re named after family members or people they’ve known or places they love.’’
Thorvold, in Upper Moutere in the Tasman district, was making some ‘‘amazing’’ cheese with local sheep milk.
‘‘Letting the milk speak for itself, rather than trying to kind of force it into a shape it doesn’t want to go in.’’
ViaVio Cheese in Nelson was using ‘‘genuinely authentic’’ Italian recipies.
‘‘What I love about ViaVio is that they’ve taken the traditional cheeses of Italy and determinedly stuck to doing them authentically, rather than dumbing them down for the market.’’
Its caciotta (an ‘‘incredibly simple Italian cheese’’) had ‘‘a wonderful cheese saucy sort of flavour’’ that took her back to Tuscany.
‘‘Their mozzarella, it’s got the right texture it falls apart like cooked chicken breast, you squeeze it little drops of moisture come out of it, it’s what it should be.’’
Flavia Spena set up ViaVio Cheese with her husband, Flavio Donati, after moving to New Zealand from Italy in 2016, and choosing to make their produce from the ‘‘A2’’ milk produced by Nelson farm, Oaklands.
While some of the company’s cheeses were ‘‘quite new’’ for Kiwis, people seemed to appreciate that it was ‘‘local’’, she said.
‘‘Their mozzarella . . . falls apart like cooked chicken breast’’
Juliet Harbutt