Cheese please!

Cheese please!

I’m not sure where my interest in cheese began apart from always loving to eat it. Raw in chucks, as a child picking cocktail sticks out of an orange decorated with cubes of red cheddar, grated on salads, burgers or pasta, melting on flat-crust Italian pizzas or, my favourite, oozing and bubbling from the grill on old-school cheese-toasties. Bliss!

The flavour, texture and, even when I was younger, the smell drew me in. On our many holidays ‘down the country’ the first thing which made me aware we had reached our destination, whether it be Cork, Kerry, Galway or some other wonderful new piece of Ireland I could explore, was the smell. I would inhale the heavy scent of manure in the air and instantly think of cheese. I still do!

That’s me on the donkey!!

The history of Irish farmstead cheeses is an ancient story.  The Irish word for cheese – cáis – is itself an ancient term, and throughout Irish history milk and milk products – referred to as ban-bhia, or white-meats – were central to the traditional Irish diet.

References to cheesemaking can be found in early Irish literature. One particular twelfth century document entitled Aisling Mhic Chonglinne (Vision of the Son of Conglinne) tells the story of how a poet-scholar travels throughout the south west of Ireland trying to rid the gluttonous king of a hunger demon ‘An Craos Deamhain’. In the text the author refers to and gives descriptions of a number of cheeses, including the ‘sweet soft smooth cheese Maothal’ and ‘a firm, dry Tanach’. There is also evidence that when Irish monks such as St Gall travelled across Europe reintroducing many lost skills during the medieval period that they also brought with them cheesemaking skills.

(http://www.sheridanscheesemongers.com/irish-farmhouse-cheese-history/)

“The Irish are the greatest lovers of milk I ever met”, wrote the traveller and writer John Stevens at the end of the 17th century and, in addition to cow’s milk, the Irish also milked deer, goats and sheep.
From the milk they made a number of varieties of cheese, including tanach, a hard-pressed cheese made from skim-milk; tath, a soft cheese made from heated sour-milk curds, which was likely similar to many modern Irish farmstead cheeses. There was also gruth, a curdy cheese made from buttermilk; mulchan, where buttermilk was beaten to form a soft cheese which was then set in a mould, and milsean, a sweet milk curd cheese eaten at the end of the harvest festival.

And yet, despite this rich culinary tradition, the art of Irish farmstead cheesemaking effectively disappeared at the end of the 18th century.  Potatoes had become the staple of the diet, taking over the sustaining role of cheese.  Farmstead milk was used to make butter, which was exported to earn much-needed income, and whilst some cheesemaking may have taken place in monasteries and nunneries, hand-made farmstead cheeses vanished as a staple of the Irish diet.

This history is explored in an excellent program on TG4 ‘Bia Duchais’ - the Story Of Ireland's Best Loved Foods. The six-part documentary series covered six of our best-loved staples; Pork, Salmon, the Potato, Grains, Cheese and Honey, traces how these foods have run the gauntlet for over a thousand years to remain staples in our kitchen cupboard up until this day showing that the very same flavours that sat on the taste buds of our ancestors are still an active, real part of our lives. 

Cheese was thought to have been discovered accidentally several millennia ago when goat herders in North Africa or the Middle East stored milk in a container made from the stomach of a ruminant, resulting in the milk being turned to curd and whey by the rennet remaining in the stomach.

This became a common method of preserving milk which soured quickly without the aid of a cool room or fridge, especially in hotter countries. 

This method made its way to Ireland and we preserved our milk by making various cheeses and butter which we commonly stored in bogs to preserve it over winter. On April 29, 2011, there were press reports of a find of approximately 100 pounds (45 kg) of bog butter in Tullamore, Co. Offaly thought to date back about five millennia.

It wasn’t until the 1900’s that Irish agriculturists began to look at cheesemaking again. At this time the farmers’ co-operative movement began and cheese production focused on supplying the Irish and particularly UK market with large scale production cheddars; these have now developed into our famous creamery cheddars. The larger societies such as the federation of creameries in Limerick known as Golden Vale or the more closely integrated Mitchelstown Creameries in north Cork diversified into a new range of products, cheeses, milk powder and dairy engineering.

The emphasis, however, was on quantity over quality thus brands such as Galtee and Calvita are what we associate with the cheese we ate in the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s.

 But a change began to immerge in the quality of our cheese for a number of reasons:

Farmers were looking at ways of using their excess milk (due to EU quotas) to supplement their income and people (some Irish, some from already established cheese-making countries) who had decided to turn their backs on city-living for a simpler, more grounded pace of life turned to cheese as a way of making an alternative living or income.

They began making farmhouse cheeses, some based on old traditional Irish cheeses and others on methods from abroad.

This leads to a second reason why the quality of cheese began to improve. Our appetite for excellent cheese was wetted when traveling abroad and we now wanted to enjoy these cheeses at home. Thus a market for good cheese was born. We started to import Brie, Camembert, Mozzarella, Gouda, Edam Parmesan, Feta and many more from countries such as France, Italy, Switzerland and Holland where cheese was a huge part of their culture and identity.

Fortunately these forward-thinking farmers and cheese-makers in Ireland seized this opportunity to start making Irish farmhouse artisan cheeses to match the quality of the cheese we were importing. 

These reasons partnered with the fact that we have an outstanding quality of milk due to grass-grazed animals and world-class farming methods led to the beginning of a revolution in Irish cheese which continues to flourish and grow today. 

The history of cheese in Ireland and the success being enjoyed today brings me back to my interest in cheese. While looking at ways of moving career and figuring out how I could earn an income from food I began to look at cheese as a possible way of doing so. 

I bought the wonderful book ‘Farmhouse Cheeses of Ireland – A Celebration’ by Glynn Anderson & John McLaughlin which is a must for any cheese-lover. It is an index for all our wonderful cheese-makers and explains the cheeses they produce and recipes using this cheeses.

My curiosity in how cheese is made led me to submitting an application to the Farmhouse Cheese-making course ran by Teagasc, which is a wonderful organisation responsible for the research and development in farming, agriculture and the dairy industry in Ireland. 

This is how I found myself driving into Teagasc in Fermoy, Cork one sunny November morning where I had thankfully been accepted onto the course along with 14 other cheese enthusiasts. 

It was a 3-day course and covered everything from how cheese was made to the composition of milk, microbiology, how to design a cheese-producing premises, what packaging to use, health and safety, different types of cheese, the sensory aspect of cheeses and what makes consumers pick different cheeses. 

It was extremely detailed but I remember thinking how lucky I was to be there surrounded by similarly passionate cheese-lovers while being taught by some of the most learned and passionate people in the industry. 

We made some cheese by hand on the first day so as to understand the process to follow, timing involved and tests (pH and temperature) involved. 

On the second day we were brought to the Cheese Parlour where we made 2 batches of cheese – a Cheddar and a Gouda-type cheese, both using 450 litres of pasteurised milk. It is important to note that whether cheese is made in a pot on a farm or in an industrial size plant it is a science which must follow the same process, just on a different scale.

Without going into too much detail here is the process followed - 

***The most important factor to consider when making cheese is that milk is variable - pasteurised/non-pasteurised/time of year/time of milking, etc, i.e. it is never the same twice. Therefore great lengths must be taken when putting a process in place and learning the skill involved in understanding your milk. 

Example of a Flow Chart of Cheese Manufacturing Steps

(Ref: FSAI Farmhouse Cheesemakers Workbook Section 5: HACCP P.28)

Raw milk production

• Raw milk purchase and transport
• Raw milk storage
• Milk pasteurisation
• Milk ripening (incubation with starter)/Acidification
• Rennet addition
• Cutting and stirring
• Cooking
• Draining
• Moulding and pressing
• Brining/salting 
• Ripening 
• Packaging 
• Storage

Et voila! You have a wonderful cheese to enjoy and, hopefully sell to hungry and eager customers.

The course gave me an appreciation for the hard work, skill, time, patience, pride and love that go into these farmhouse cheeses which are becoming more readily available in shops and markets around the country. 

But it is up to the Irish people, us, to support, buy, spread the word and embrace cheese as part of our own Irish culture and history – past and present.