Know a thing or two... CHEESE
A DELVE INTO DAIRY CREAMS THAT OFF THE BEST FACTS
Cheese is a food that arouses strong passions. Not just because it offers an almost endless variety of textures and complex flavours, but because it is the most symbolic of speciality foods. During the past half century artisan cheesemaking in Britain has flowered from near extinction to a thriving craft scene, reflecting a wider movement to champion authentic foods and old techniques, from real bread and real ale to heritage veg and charcuterie.
A piece of handmade cheese is a slice of history. There are more than 700 named cheeses in Britain, and many of them are unique to particular places, particular dairies, even particular herds. Some have pedigrees dating back hundreds of years, such as the crumbly Caerphilly that provided calorie-packed portable lunches for Welsh miners – the thick rind made it easier to eat with coal-black fingers. Or the blue cheese named after the East Midlands town of Stilton, which was already “famous for cheese” in the 1720s when writer Daniel Defoe described its “English Parmesan… brought to the table with the mites or maggots round it so thick that they bring a spoon”.
The accompaniments are better these days: we prefer our Stilton with a nice pear and walnut chutney, thank you very much. But the stories and skills behind every truckle, wheel and wax-paperwrapped wedge are as vivid and precious as ever. From the zestiest fresh Wensleydale to the runniest, smelliest Stinking Bishop, what’s really amazing about cheese is the sheer variety of end results from the same single raw material. Cheesemaking is alchemy: the best ones are unique products of history, geography, microbiology, farming, creativity, hard-won skill and a little bit of magic.
WHAT IS CHEESE?
Essentially, it’s fermented milk. Like sauerkraut, salami and beer, it originated when our agriculturalist ancestors worked out that by using fermentation – the conversion by microorganisms of natural sugars into alcohol or lactic acid – they could preserve fresh produce so that it could be safely stored (in the days before fridges) and consumed in times of need.
One theory goes that cheese was ‘invented’ when Nomadic tribes used the stomachs of their dead livestock as bags for carrying liquids. They noticed that milk stored in this way coagulated – ie, split into solids (curds) and liquid (whey) – but didn’t sour. We know now that was because of the enzymes present in young ruminants’ stomachs to help them digest their mothers’ milk. These enzymes are still a vital component of the cheesemaking process, in the form of rennet (see Glossary).
The journey from milk to cheese starts with acidification, when good bacteria (either naturally occurring or added) convert the sugar present in milk ( lactose) into lactic acid. Then comes curdling, after which the curds are cut, salted, moulded and drained. Finally, the moulded cheeses are left to mature, a process that can take days for fresh cheeses and years for hard, dry cheeses such as classic West Country Cheddars.
It’s the different techniques used at each stage of the process, and the speed at which they’re carried out, that account for the enormous variety among cheeses, from vast wheels of dense, almost crunchy aged Parmesan-styles to silky Camembert-style stinkers so runny they have to be sold in wooden boxes. And that’s before you even get started on cheeses made with goat, sheep and buffalo milk.
“What’s really amazing about cheese is the sheer variety of end results from the same single raw material”
REAL CHEESE REVIVAL
That we now have so many named British cheeses (more than in France, which eats twice as much) is the result of a David-and-Goliath style face-off between tradition and industrialisation, driven by a band of passionate producers and campaigners over the past four decades. Small-scale speciality cheesemaking was a casualty of the Second World War: in 1939 the new Ministry of Food centralised food production and decreed that only a handful of territorial cheeses, including Cheddar, Cheshire and Wensleydale, could be made.
By the 1970s bland block ‘Cheddar’ was ubiquitous and traditional handmade cheeses were heading for the history books. Their saviours were a monocled major turned cheesemonger called Patrick Rance and his contemporary James Aldridge, a London scaffolder who became a cheesemonger and later a cheesemaker. They led a revival of farmhouse and handmade cheeses, not only rescuing small-scale curiosities, such as Blue Vinney, by bringing them to the attention of food lovers, but also nurturing generations of new cheesemakers. Martin Gott and Nicola Robinson, for example, named their esteemed washed-rind sheep’s-milk cheese St James (see over the page) after Aldridge, their mentor.
THE RETURN TO RAW
The best cheeses are, like wine, an expression of terroir. St James is made using raw (unpasteurised) milk from a particular herd of Lacaune sheep that graze a particular corner of Cumbria. Every batch tastes different, depending on the weather, the condition of the grass, the temperature of the dairy and crucially the microbes present in the milk.
Pasteurisation, which kills harmful microbes in milk by heating it to a certain temperature, also kills the good microbes responsible for fermenting milk and imparting unique flavours to cheese. Cheese made with pasteurised milk – or thermised milk, which is heat-treated at lower temperatures – can be excellent (see Tunworth and Dorstone, overleaf). But raw-milk cheese is the fullest realisation of the characteristics of a particular herd or flock. It is a living thing. As Bronwen Percival, cheese buyer for Neal’s Yard Dairy, writes in Reinventing the Wheel: Milk, Microbes and the Fight for Real Cheese: “They connect us to centuries of history and faraway places, to the ecosystems of small farms, and to communities of plants, animals, microbes and people living in balance with one another and the environment.”
And if taste and heritage alone is not enough to convince you that the smelly stuff should be a daily ritual rather than a seasonal treat, it seems that cheese may be a health food, too. Professor Tim Spector of King’s College London, microbiome expert and authority on gut microbes and human health, writes in The Diet Myth that “the regular eating of traditional cheeses could actually prevent some heart and other health problems, owing to the extra microbes”. A truckle a day keeps the doctor away? Well, maybe not a whole truckle… »