Goat Gouda, White Cheddar & Spanish Manchego

You can’t go wrong with a classy cheese.  It can be goat cheese, sheep cheese, cow cheese, yellow cheese, white cheese, orange cheese…it can have gray ash or dried cherries or dried herbs in it.  It can even have blue mold in it.  Whatever its story, top-notch cheeses always have a welcome placemat on my table.

One of the great things about cheese is that it’s delicious served alongside something (or melted into something or sprinkled on top of something) or all by itself.  Another great thing is that there is an astonishing array of cheeses out there — Spain alone boasts over 100 native cheeses.  And nowadays, smaller-scale stores are starting to offer small pieces of cheese amongst the larger chunks.  Samplers, if you will.  (Large chain stores, however, are not good places to explore new fromage frontiers.)  That way, you can get a nice piece of a $15/lb. cheese for $2 and see if you like it.

Whenever I’m poking about in the cheese basket, I go for variety:  I try to find one cow’s milk cheese, one made from goat’s milk, and one from sheep.  Not only is it more interesting to taste the (very!) different flavors each one offers, but it’s also a good way to avoid overdoing it on cow’s milk and risk developing an allergy to it.  I also try to get raw cheeses whenever possible — they’re more flavorful and easier to digest.  (Again, mixing things up helps prevent problems down the line.)  And when you’re talking top-notch cheeses, you’re also talking milk from grass-fed animals, which is another big nutritional and gustatory plus.

The above selection, for example, includes a Benning goat Gouda from Holland, a 12-month Manchego sheep cheese from Spain, and an American St. German artisian white Cheddar.  (My all-time favorite American cheese is Prarie Breeze.)  On that same trip — to my great delight! — I also found a cheese made from cow, goat, and sheep milk…quite an intriguing blend of flavors.  (I ate that wedge before I got a chance to take the picture.  Oops…but yum!)

A few things to remember when serving cheese for yourself or others:  let it come to room temperature, and don’t be afraid of mold.  If it molds, that just proves that you have some very lively cheese.  Cut off the specks and eat the rest before the bacteria beats you to it.  (As a matter of course, you might want to cut off the sides of the cheese that touched the plastic wrap since it can sometimes leave an aftertaste.)  As far as the room-temp thing goes, if you’re not going to eat the whole wedge, it’s best to cut off the part you do want, tightly re-wrap the remainder and stick it back in the fridge, and then let the sacrificial chunk come to room temperature.  (You can speed that process up by slicing or cubing it.  That also makes it easier to eat the cheese.)

If you’re lactose-intolerant, you may very well be able to consume raw dairy products, so you might want to give raw-milk cheese a shot.  (Look at the ingredients to see if it’s made of unpasteurized milk.)  If you have a problem with cow milk, you might be able to consume goat or sheep milk.  Plenty of European cheeses –and some American ones — are made with those.

And if you’re shopping in boutique markets in New York, you might just stumble upon Caravane.  It’s the only cheese in the world made of camel’s milk and it is at the top of my Fantasy Food List.  (Along with Moroccan argan oil and Tibetan yak-butter tea.)  If anyone out there has sampled Caravane, please let me know how it tastes!

We’ve all heard the slogan:  “Milk–it does a body good.”  It can…and it does…but whether it can or does depends on the quality of the milk.  Conventionally-processed milk has been heated to excessively high temperatures (normal pasteurization is done at 165 degrees F, but ultra-high temperature [or UHT ] can go over 230 degrees) and has been homogenized.  The former is a throwback from the 1800s, when American dairies set up shop in crowded cities and fed the cows the leftover mash from the whisky.  The cows were kept immobile in their tiny pens and were never given grass or allowed to walk.  As you can imagine, these dairy cows were very ill and died within 9 months.  (Healthy, pastured dairy cows live 15-20 years.)  Sick cows make sick milk…and the pathogen-loaded milk was responsible for so many child deaths that pasteurization was viewed as a godsend.

The real answer would have been to clean up the dairies and promote sustainable farming.  The quick answer, however–pasteurization–held the day; the dairy industry was loathe to see their profits eroded by the expense of maintaining clean facilities and healthy cows.  This same concept applies to today’s Big Dairy:  better to maximize profits by simply killing bacteria in the milk than go to the trouble and expense of grazing dairy cows.  (Also, pasteurized milk lasts much longer; longer shelf life = bigger profits.)

Pasteurization also results in the destruction of vitamins and enzymes, nutrients that are vital to our health.  Viewed through my qualitarian eyes, then, I snap up raw cheeses (and any other raw dairy products) whenever I see them–not only are raw-dairy products incredibly nutrient-dense, I figure they’re also coming from clean farms with healthy cows who actually graze.  If they weren’t, they would never be sold raw.

Homogenization is another recent innovation.  It consists of force-spraying the milk through tiny nozzles so that the milkfat is cut into such small pieces that our eyes can’t see it.  (Recall the olden days, when the quality of the milk would be judged by how much cream would rise to the top.  Thanks to homogenization, consumers no longer can “see” the quality of their milk.)  While homogenization doesn’t destroy milk as thoroughly as pasteurization does, it is nonetheless another layer of unnecessary processing.  (Bonus point for unhomogenized milk:  you’ll save money by skimming off your own cream!  Basically, you have two products in one.  Use the cream for whipping, making ice cream, or making butter.)

Again, as a qualitarian, I opt for unprocessed, unhomogenized whole milk whenever possible.  Those of us living in Metro Detroit are very fortunate to have Calder’s Dairy Natural Milk, which is exactly that:  unhomogenized, whole milk from local, grass-fed cows who are not given hormone treatments to increase milk production and who are not given antibiotics to compensate for illness-inducing, poor living conditions.  Visit the Calder Dairy website to see where you can purchase their Natural Milk.  (Unfortunately, it isn’t raw–state law stipulates that milk must be pasteurized before hitting retail shelves.  Interestingly, in 26 other states–including California–consumers can purchase raw milk from the corner store.)  Other good places to find top-notch dairy products would be your local farmer’s market, CSA (community-supported agriculture) and co-op programs, or cowshare programs.

So, there you have it:  yes, milk does a body good…that is, whole, unprocessed, unhomogenized, preferably raw milk from grass-fed cows who are well-tended and not given antibiotics or growth hormones.  Here’s to long and happy lives for everyone–the farmers, the cows, and the consumers!