I recently learned of - but have never tried - a cheese from the Himalayan region of South Asia that is reputed to be the "hardest cheese in the world". Apparently it is exported to the West as a dog treat.
Yes, my dog loves this. I think there’s essentially no scenario I could imagine a human could eat this save treating it like hard candy or rehydrating extensively before consuming. It really is extremely hard.
> When you talk with cheese aficionados, it doesn’t usually take long for the conversation to veer this way: away from curds, whey, and mold, and toward matters of life and death. With the zeal of nineteenth-century naturalists, they discuss great lineages and endangered species, painstakingly cataloguing those cheeses that are thriving and those that are lost to history.
Me? I'd love to travel to the home of Camembert, even though I've never been to France. A pretty mundane life goal. But it brings joy to my heart knowing people like this exist.
Living in Switzerland I've come to realize that it's pointless to obsess about cheese. Every tiny village has its own varieties. There are probably thousands. It's better to try something new whenever you can - but there are some like Sbrinz that you have over and over.
(Similar feeling about wine - as long as it's a chasselas I'll try anything and there's enough producers to last a lifetimes)
I can fully understand the love of cheese, however, there is a hidden cost to it, that I have experienced but only recently acknowledged.
The places they show on TV and in articles such as this is analogous to showing posh West End made-to-measure tailors and pretending that those SHEIN garments from Bangladesh are made the same way, with no 'slavery' involved.
I worked in a cheese factory as a student, taking up the job with an attitude that it must be 'women's work'. How wrong I was. Twelve hour shifts, with 'every object' weighing (or wheying) upwards of 25Kg and every one of your senses brutally assaulted, always with the potential to lose life, limb or another finger in a moment of lapsed focus. Just surviving became the intellectual challenge, with many not making it past two hours before throwing in the towel. Mastery was my goal and I put in the sleepless 'nights' with relentless 'tennis elbow' to get there, achievement unlocked.
Because I was a student, this was not a forever job, and there was a higher tax threshold for students, making it financially tough but worth while.
On a trip down memory lane I looked the old place up, to discover it had shut down due to numerous health and safety violations, which made me chuckle. That was the culture, and the rule, for example, those chemicals that have huge warning labels, to read such a label after getting nervous ticks after using it, would be moral cowardice. Or, if you needed someone's attention, because the machines were so loud, you would casually throw a 25 Kg object at them (a cheese or a bag of salt) as a 'gentle tap on the shoulder'.
On reflection, there is this small matter of the human cost to cheese. PETA might shock people with cheesy animal welfare issues and cardiologists might not be entirely positive about the consumption of 'saturated fat laced with salt', however, few have experienced the harsh reality of working in the industry, to have the strength to write about how extreme and ultra-violent the production of this harmless product can be.
I am not saying 'boycott the product', just 'value it more'.
I was a janitor at a Cabot facility in college. It's an industrial product like anything else. Tanker trailers drain go into one side of the factory. Reefers of finished product exit the other.
Highly recommend G.K. Chesterton on cheese: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/9656/9656-h/9656-h.htm#link2...
I recommend Chesterton on everything.
I recently learned of - but have never tried - a cheese from the Himalayan region of South Asia that is reputed to be the "hardest cheese in the world". Apparently it is exported to the West as a dog treat.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chhurpi
Yes, my dog loves this. I think there’s essentially no scenario I could imagine a human could eat this save treating it like hard candy or rehydrating extensively before consuming. It really is extremely hard.
I've seen it called Yak Cheese in the US, and it's quite popular with my dogs.
Reminded me of "How a Cheese Goes Extinct" by Ruby Tandoh, my favorite essay about cheesemaking: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/annals-of-gastronomy/how-a...
> When you talk with cheese aficionados, it doesn’t usually take long for the conversation to veer this way: away from curds, whey, and mold, and toward matters of life and death. With the zeal of nineteenth-century naturalists, they discuss great lineages and endangered species, painstakingly cataloguing those cheeses that are thriving and those that are lost to history.
Me? I'd love to travel to the home of Camembert, even though I've never been to France. A pretty mundane life goal. But it brings joy to my heart knowing people like this exist.
Living in Switzerland I've come to realize that it's pointless to obsess about cheese. Every tiny village has its own varieties. There are probably thousands. It's better to try something new whenever you can - but there are some like Sbrinz that you have over and over.
(Similar feeling about wine - as long as it's a chasselas I'll try anything and there's enough producers to last a lifetimes)
I guess he didn't get to Corsica. Casu martzu. Don't look it up unless you have a strong stomach!
Sorry, I consider cheese to be bacteria poop only, with no additional "processing". Casu martzu is just fly shit.
Venezuelan beaver cheese?
"You must be joking.."
I can fully understand the love of cheese, however, there is a hidden cost to it, that I have experienced but only recently acknowledged.
The places they show on TV and in articles such as this is analogous to showing posh West End made-to-measure tailors and pretending that those SHEIN garments from Bangladesh are made the same way, with no 'slavery' involved.
I worked in a cheese factory as a student, taking up the job with an attitude that it must be 'women's work'. How wrong I was. Twelve hour shifts, with 'every object' weighing (or wheying) upwards of 25Kg and every one of your senses brutally assaulted, always with the potential to lose life, limb or another finger in a moment of lapsed focus. Just surviving became the intellectual challenge, with many not making it past two hours before throwing in the towel. Mastery was my goal and I put in the sleepless 'nights' with relentless 'tennis elbow' to get there, achievement unlocked.
Because I was a student, this was not a forever job, and there was a higher tax threshold for students, making it financially tough but worth while.
On a trip down memory lane I looked the old place up, to discover it had shut down due to numerous health and safety violations, which made me chuckle. That was the culture, and the rule, for example, those chemicals that have huge warning labels, to read such a label after getting nervous ticks after using it, would be moral cowardice. Or, if you needed someone's attention, because the machines were so loud, you would casually throw a 25 Kg object at them (a cheese or a bag of salt) as a 'gentle tap on the shoulder'.
On reflection, there is this small matter of the human cost to cheese. PETA might shock people with cheesy animal welfare issues and cardiologists might not be entirely positive about the consumption of 'saturated fat laced with salt', however, few have experienced the harsh reality of working in the industry, to have the strength to write about how extreme and ultra-violent the production of this harmless product can be.
I am not saying 'boycott the product', just 'value it more'.
You write well. I get the sense you have some interesting stories from your time in the cheese factory!
I was a janitor at a Cabot facility in college. It's an industrial product like anything else. Tanker trailers drain go into one side of the factory. Reefers of finished product exit the other.
What do you think about bryndza? I want external opinion.