This week we cut the first wheel of our new cheese which for good or bad has the name The Bastard.

It is made from 50% cow’s milk and 50% goat’s milk. To my knowledge this is the first mixed milk cheese made in Tasmania. It is aged for about 4 months and is a semi-hard cheese with a slightly open texture.

The flavour is amazing! It has the savoury, mouth filling robustness of an aged cow’s milk cheese with a delicate, palate clearing flavour from the goat’s milk.

We only made a couple of batches, so there is not heaps of it. And if the staff stop eating it, you might be able to find it in the Hobart shops in the next few weeks.

As a general rule I have always kept a pretty wide berth of Cheese Competitions.

Having been a judge at a few of them, I have come to this position via an informed route. Perhaps it is just ego and my fear of rejection. But the official line is that “I am am the best judge of my cheese and no one else” and there is a big part of me which believes this.

And then there is the awful problem of which category do my cheeses belong in. Where do you put a cheese like Oen? Where do you put a cheese like The Bastard - is it a cow’s milk cheese?… is it a goat’s milk cheese?… is it both?

Well, we had abot of a chat about it and decided to this year enter a few of our cheeses into the Royal Hobart Fine Food Awards. I was reluctant as being a formed judge at this show I knew that it is mostly supported by the more commercial end of the industry and my cheeses look pretty feral and fualty when they are put next to some of these cheeses. I guess i did not expect to do all that well because of this.

But I was wrong… and now I love entering my cheeses into Cheese Competetions!! (I was right, it was my ego!)

Lewis - GOLD Medal (one of only 12 in the whole show and the highest scoring goat’s cheese)

Tom - Silver

C2 - Silver

The Bastard - Silver (incidently, it ended up in the Any Other Catergory!)

1792 - Bronze

“Oh”, she cried as she entered the room. “Havarti?”
“Gouda”, he replied, sweeping her into his arms.
“You know I camembert it when we are apart. I’ve been in a blue vein since you left. I cheddar a tear every night”, she sobbed.
He clasped her hands to her chest. “But darling, don’t you know how fondue I am?”
 

 What is ‘fondue’?
Most people know fondue as the national dish of Switzerland. However, if you look up ‘fondue’ in the Larousse Gastronomique, the French dictionary of food and cooking, you will find that  fondue can be a vegetable preparation that is cooked in butter or oil until it is reduced to a pulp.
Yet another interpretation of fondue is given by an 18^th century gastronome, Brilliat-Savarin, whose recipe for fondue is nothing more that scrambled eggs with cheese!
All these types of fondue have on thing in common – they all involve the melting or blending of ingredients.
The French word “fondre” means exactly this, to melt or blend.
What are the origins of fondue?
The typical Swiss cheese fondue, from which all other fondues are derived, is the traditional Neuchâtel Fondue and in each canton of Switzerland there is a regional variation on the recipe.
Fondues originally came into existence because of the geography and climate of Switzerland. In winter, when the mountains where covered with snow, the cheese makers in the alpine chalets were cut off from the villages for several months at a time, forcing them to rely on its own resources. The local produce of mountain villages is mainly bread, cheese and wine.
Fondue not only allowed these ingredients to be combined but it also provided an outlet for the cheese that was drying out as the isolation progressed. It is also a very warming dish and perfect for alpine climate.
Fondues are cooked and served in one communal pot. The traditional pot is made of earthenware and is wide and shallow. In France and Switzerland it is called a ‘caquelon’.
What do you serve with traditional fondue?
Traditionally, fondue is served with bread. Each person spears a piece of bread on the end of their fork and swirls it in the fondue in a figure of eight fashion. If each person stirs as they dip the fondue will stay creamy until the end.
Pickles and sometimes thinly sliced meats are also served with traditional fondue. These are thought aid in the digestion of the fondue.
Wine is also served. The wines of the French and Swiss mountains are generally white wines that are dry and heavily wooded. Chardonnay, in Australia, make a good alternative.
 Tips for making the perfect fondue.

• An earthenware caquelon is definitely the best pot to use but a heavy cast-iron pot is also very good. Copper and stainless steel pots may be used but the cheese will burn and stick to the pot far more quickly.
  
• Use the best, most mature, cheese you can buy and grate it very coarsely.
  
• Use a dry white wine; Riesling or chardonnay. The more acid there is in the wine the better the cheese will melt. If you are in doubt as to the acidity of the wine a squeeze of lemon juice can be added.
  
• Make sure the wine is just starting to simmer before you add the cheese
  
• Stir continuously in a figure of eight motion until the cheese is completely melted
  
• Always keep the flame low – the cooking should be a slow gradual process
  
• If the fondue starts to curdle it can be saved with the addition of a few drops of lemon juice and some vigorous stirring
  
• If you think the fondue is too thin, either add some more cheese and melt this in or also add some cornflour dissolved in some warmed wine.
  
• Use one day old bread – it stays on you fork better.
  
• Bring the fondue to simmering and allow to bubble gently – do not let it boil.
  

The Traditional Bruny Island Fondue Recipe.

Serves 4

• 1 clove of garlic
• 1 ½ cups dry white wine
• 1 teaspoon lemon juice
• 2 cups grated Tom
• 2 cups grated C2
• 1 tablespoon cornflour
• 3 tablespoons kirsch
• white pepper, grated nutmeg and paprika to taste
• bread for dipping – baguettes are good
  
• rub the inside of the pot with the clove of garlic
  
• heat the wine with the lemon juice carefully
  
• gradually add the cheese, stirring continuously in a figure of eight motion
  
• combine the kirsch and cornflour, and when the cheese mixture starts to bubble gently, stir this in
  
•  cook for 2-3 minutes
  
• season to taste
  
• dip in!
  

You can tell it’s winter here by several measures.

Firstly, and most obviously, I have had time to start a blog of our days filled with edible adventures on Bruny Island.

But there is more than one way to read the mercury; the constant flow of people to our Cellar Door has slowed to rate which lulls us into a feeling of being in control, the range of antique apples we sell juiced has dropped to just a few, the penguins on the Neck are all but gone, an email from the neighbour behind declares their first commercial olive harvest to be a success (200 jars is the guess, and yes we will take them all Owen), the Saint is different - a result of the seasonal change in the milk I’m guessing, the globe artichokes are shooting, the windows upstairs are permanently frosted disguising the fact that I still have not got round to washing them, the garlic is in the ground, the wild slippery jacks across the road are finished (not a great season…where did all the rain go?), the chickens are starting to show a poor return on investment and the majority of the washing up in the sink is soup bowls.

And just a couple of weeks away from the shortest day. The Pagen days are always a lark on Bruny - bumped into Ikea yesterday at the organic stall in the market and he told me there would be a bit of a knees-up at his joint and the north end of the bay. The usual bunch of hippies and ferals. Music, dancing, fire. Great fun. Ikea tells me he is building a labarynth especially for it. I really don’t know what that means.

The colder it gets the more I want to stand around the stove, stirring a pot for hours on end. Of course, I am usually lucky if I have enough time to stir it to prevent it from burning. Instead I end up spending hours scrubbing the burned bottom of the pot.