Listen to the episode below... (00:43:58)
This week’s episode includes a great interview with my friend David Dawson who lives in Manitoba, Canada. We had a great chat about cheese making in general, including his many wonderful kinds of cheese and where he stores them.
During the interview, David mentioned that he got the confidence to make cheese after watching my cheese making tutorials on YouTube. You can find them all here; http://www.youtube.com/user/greeningofgavin
The news feature is about a raid on Moo View Dairy Farm in South Australia who are running a herd-share operation for their customers.
Listener questions include Camembert ripening and cultures, and how to store cheese after it is mature.
Until next episode curd nerds, Keep Calm & Make Cheese!
I agree with Mr. Dawson that your videos, Gavin, are wonderful, and thank you.
A small memo about the history of cheesemaking in Canada–in Ontario alone, from the latter 1800's, Canadian cheddar was renowned worldwide, even exporting to the UK; it was not, and is not, just in Quebec. It was a major industry and many international awards were won. There has been a wonderful resurgence of artisanal cheesemaking. In keeping with our large immigrant population, there is an ever-increasing variety of cheeses available in most places in Canada; at the last wine/cheese tasting party I attended, I sampled at least 10 different kinds, and this is in a semi-rural area.
I do remember many excellent, small, local cheesemaking operations in my childhood, which seemed to be pushed out of business by the larger corporations. For this reason, I do appreciate the reasons for our dairy supply-management system; it is a way for our dairy industry to exist here in Canada. It would be all too easy for our farmers to just disappear forever, if we were to allow cheap imports of fluid milk from the huge US industry to the south of us. It was pointed out what is happening in Australia with the price of milk. I remember when dairy farming was a hard-scrabble life, and I want our farmers to have a fair income, and be able to afford to stay in business, with no 'dumping' of milk across the border. I do not want US milk here, for many reasons; just one of which is that many US states still allow rBGH to be given to their cows.
Pasteurization became law in Canada, for fluid milk, in the latter 1800s, initiated by Adelaide Hoodless whose son died from contaminated milk, a commonality in those days. Tb and brucellosis was common then, and raw milk can still carry salmonella, shigella, staph aureus, and many others; now we also have a recently mutated strain of e coli, 0157:H7 which is the same strain of ecoli which caused our Walkerton tragedy and from which many who survived remain on dialysis and very ill. While I did drink raw milk in younger days, we knew the herd, and cows were mainly grass or hay fed. At present, I would prefer not to have it in my kitchen at all, having seen up close the ravages that e coli 0157:H7 in particular can cause.
Organic milk in Canada, while pasteurized, must come from cows that are 30% pastured, so that is an option.