So I asked the guy, does "raw milk" mean the cheese is unpasteurized? His answer was so soft-spoken and his accent so heavy I could not understand his answer. I asked again, he answered again, I did not understand him again. So I rephrased my question from interrogative to declarative because now I'm afraid he'll know I'm a little bit slow on the uptake, I go, "I'm looking to try new unpasteurized cheese." His eyebrow lifted, he moved like a stoat from behind his counter and positioned himself next to me, swept the selection with his arm as if introducing new friends. These are the French cheeses and these are the Italian. That I could see for myself, but I still did not know if "raw" implied unpasteurized. So I bought a package by way of experimentation. I think it does mean unpasteurized. He said something about aging for sixty days, that did not compute and it did not answer my question.
Here, let me ask this internetthing. Search: [explain raw milk cheese] Ah. Right off the bat. On Slate. They're reliable, sometimes. On the American Cheese Society's 20th annual conference, with an annual competition held in San Francisco likened in the article to Christopher Guest's dog show movie, Best in Show, Sara Dickerman writes,
| ... And, most controversially, pasteurized or raw? Milk must be heated to be pasteurized, and heat unravels proteins, which in turn affects the flavor of the cheese. Cheese made with raw milk is consistently described by cheese aficionados as more "alive" than its pasteurized cousin: The flavor of milk, and thus the cheese, the argument goes, is full of the fragrance of the herd's food and also full of microflora specific to the farmland. Pasteurizing milk, to make a bad pun, homogenizes its flavor. (There is also the as-yet unproven argument that consuming microflora in raw milk products helps habituate human bodies to microbes and thus boosts immunity.) But the options for selling raw-milk cheeses in this country are limited. By law, unpasteurized cheeses on the market in the United States must have been aged at least 60 days (aging cheese changes its chemistry and makes it less friendly to pathogens). Farmers who make younger cheeses often try to pasteurize their milk in a slower, lower-heat manner in order to disturb its proteins as little as possible. It's worth noting that a lot of good cheeses are made with pasteurized milk, including the prizewinning Red Hawk. |
Well. There you have it. Yes, "raw milk" means unpasteurized, and that would explain the stench of the cheese I put into this omelet. Not really a bad thing, but not for everybody. For an omelet, I don't recommend it, and I wouldn't serve it. That's my judgement kicking in, and my concern for your well-being and for your satisfaction. For you, I'd pick something much milder. But I'm not crossing it off my list.
"So the argument goes." Argument? How about "so the facts go?" This is what I mean about Slate and their sometimes reliability. They seek the advice of experts then phrase their received wisdom as arguments. That's just one thing. Their writers also sometimes mistake coincidental statements of fact as puns, but that's another irrelevant complaint. Anyway, I got my answer, and I'm happy for that.
Incidentally, there was another customer there who overheard all this and suddenly became interested in unpasteurized cheese too. I told him that they would, logically and reasonably, possess more flavor, not having it all killed off before having a chance to develop. This idea intrigued the gentleman and he too began scanning for the tag "unpasteurized,' and now we can look for the word raw milk.
* Livradois Raciette with raw milk. Used in moderation but I may have well used a whole pound. The taste is still in my mouth even after brushing with crest. I'm going to have to gargle before I go out in public.
* mini portobello mushrooms sautéed in olive oil with thyme and marjoram and finished with wine and butter. Poor little things, they're on their way out.
* adorned with a tiny tomato diced.
* Celtic sea salt.
* two eggs, which is meager for an omelet, but that's the way I roll.
* used the shake-the-pan-vigorously method instead of push-the curd-inward method, because I was feeling frisky and a little bit violent this morning.
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