| Cheese 2005 The small Piemontese town of Bra has been host to Cheese 2005, a bi-annual fair of 'milk in all it's forms', as the organizers the Slow Food Foundation describes it. Culinaris was fortunate to participate and we have discovered a different world of cheese than we have imagined. It was a feast for cheese/milk lovers, for anybody curious to know more about how cheese is made, about it's history and the overwhelming choice that (still) exists. The region around Bra, Langhe, the central and probably best known part of Piemont, is famous for it's wine: the towns of Barolo and Barbaresco are 20 kilometers away, nearby Asti (of Cinzano fame) and Alba known for it's truffels and beeing the home of hazelnuts and Gianduja. We have decided to stay in the town of La Morra in an on house, lovingly restored by a team of young people. |
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Know you see why Nebiolo - little foggy - is the name of the local grape/wine
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| In Bra, where hundreds of sheppards, affineurs and cheese merchants convened we met the producers of one of our latest cheeses, the Lincolnshire Poacher on the Strada dei Pastori a cheese maker from Campagna with the stongets tasting cheese we have ever tasted (and smelled) - a morsel of which - pleasantly - numbed our tastebuds for half an hour. | |||
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Corso Garibaldi
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Richard, one of the 'poachers'
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'Super cheese man'
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| We have seen and tasted the ur-cheese, brought from Lebanon: the curded milk is stored in the stomach of a young goat. | |
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Goat with cheese inside
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| The relative new invention of cheese made from Yak milk at 4500 meters tastes sweet and mellow like a sugary Gruyere. | |
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The proud Tibetans
and the beginning of a cheese making tradition |
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| One thing we have learned and would certainly have caused a rage with regulation obsessed is that modern household fridges literally kill the cheese and in Bra most fridges where decorum. | |
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Ragusano from Sicily
- no fridge in sight |
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| Last, but not least a cheese family that not even the French authorities would allow to be exported - made by Marayn de Bartassac farm, traditional and forgotten cheese, made for hundreds of years, by aging outdoors, by far our favorite in Bra. | |
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Cheeses from another time
and it's maker |
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More to follow soon....