Blahgging & Cheesy Reads

Not much to report as far as farming and cheesemaking goes. Later today we'll head out to the farm to water and hay the animals--Abbe and Anderson are out of town and we're filling in...

Overall, this has been a blah week. The staggering 90-degree heat and especially the thick humidity has made it too annoying to enjoy the outdoors. Instead, we've mostly been indoors enduring sickness (both Rheinhart and Shelly are recovering from strep throat) and staving off boredom with toys, books and (crappy) movies.

In addition to the Georgics, I'm now reading The Cheese Chronicles, by Liz Thorpe. Thorpe graduated from Yale, moved to New York, and when she had enough of her cubicle job, she started working in cheese. She took a minimum wage job behind the counter at Murray's Cheese and worked her way up to become one of the top purveyors of artisanal American cheeses in the country. The full title of the book is The Cheese Chronicles: A Journey Through the Making and Selling of Cheese in America, from Field to Farm to Table, and that pretty much sums up what it's about...

Here's Thorpe's scientific breakdown of what turns some people off the taste of goat and sheep cheese:

"Citrusy. Spicy. Piquant. Peppery. Zingy. Sharp. Goaty. Bucky. Bitey. Sheepy. Woolly. Lanoliny. Mouth-watery. Tangy. Hot. Intense. Bracing. Zippy. Prickly. I have used all those words, at one time or another, to try to describe the uniquely sharp/animal intensity of certain goat and sheep cheeses. Even the sharpest cow milk Cheddars don't have it. It's a peculiar high note of flavor (and aroma) that's almost vibrational. And there's a reason: short-chain free fatty acids.

Milk fat is made of glycerol molecules bonded to chains of fatty acids. Fatty acids themselves are chains of carbon atoms. More than ten carbon atoms qualifies as a long-chain fatty acid. Less than ten, and it's a short-chain fatty acid. Goat and sheep milk have more short-chain fatty acids than cow milk does, and these are responsible for piquant flavor when their bond to glycerol is broken by lipase enzymes as the cheese ages. Separate them, and they become free. Short-chain free fatties are desirable in the proper proportion for zip. Too many or in the wrong proportions, and you get rancid cheese. I've found that some people do not like the intensity of flavor of goat and sheep cheese because it tastes sour, or "off." The aroma and flavor should always be balanced, but these cheeses may not be immediately pleasing to folks used to cheese from cows."


...So yeah, she knows her stuff...

Shelly finished reading the Chronicles a few months back, and she's been pushing me to open it up and give it a try; I'm glad she did, because it's good. Meanwhile, she's reading a book recommended to her by our friend Molly called Goat Song: A Seasonal Life, A Short History of Herding, and the Art of Making Cheese, by Brad Kessler. So far so good, according to Shelly.

And I would be remiss if I didn't mention that we also picked up the summer issue of Culture, a publication all about cheese. If you think the title of articles like "Remains of the Whey" is compelling, then I highly recommend it.