CurdNerds

I recently got an email from a certain "Leon the Milkman", a dairyman from South Africa. I checked out his blog as well as his other site www.dairy-info.org, and they both have a wealth of information about cheese and other dairy products. In fact, if you sign up for a membership at www.dairy-info.org, you receive two free PDFs: a 23-page dairy dictionary and a cheese-tasting terms glossary. Definitely worth checking out!

Cheese is a gastronomic incarnation of human resourcefulness, an example of our unique abilities to plan, to perfect and to persevere. It not only stimulates our senses, it also connects us to one another in the finely woven web of history. It connects us to that first person who was brave enough to eat the milk that curdled in his satchel made of goat-stomach. It connects us to the monks in Europe who channeled their devotion to God into the process of distilling and preserving the elemental mammalian nourishment: milk. It also connects us, in ways we can't begin to imagine, to those who are at the fringes of our society.

In the latest newsletter published by the New England Cheesemaking Supply Company, there is a link to a letter they received from a man who has managed to make cheese in his jail cell, even without the use of rennet or starter bacteria. The milk he uses is limited to the pasteurized, homogenized  read more »

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Australian Cooperative Foods is recalling their Cracker Barrel Extra Sharp 500g cheese due to fears of listeria contamination. Since this cheese is made from pasteurized milk, this outbreak should serve as further evidence that listeria is not just a problem for raw-milk cheeses, but is a larger problem for food safety in general. Read the full story here.

For those of you in New York City (and those not far), the Kosher Wine Society will be hosting a Wine, Cheese, and Chocolate tasting on Thursday March 23, from 7:30 - 9:30 PM. They will be offering samples of 7 different wines from Tishbi Vineyards in Israel. No specifics are given about the type of cheese or chocolate that will be on hand.

Fonterra, a multinational dairy company based in New Zealand, recently introduced chocolate-flavored cheese slices called CHESDALE^TM, in markets across Asia. Within six months of launch in Taiwan, they amassed 10% share of the cheese market according to this article.

The thought of combining chocolate and cheese would make most Americans sick, but it can actually be quite a  read more »