Tasting Notes:              MR. PALOMAR
                                    MILK:    goat                TYPE:    surface ripened, washed rind
MR PALOMAR AT THE CHEESE MUSEUM
By Italo Calvino
Mr. Palomar is standing in line in a cheese shop, in Paris. He wants to buy certain goat cheeses that are preserved in oil in little transparent containers and spiced with various herbs and condiments. The line of customers moves along a counter where samples of the most unusual and disparate specialties are displayed. This is a shop whose range seems meant to exemplify every conceivable form of dairy product; the very sign, “Specialites froumageres,” with that rare archaic or vernacular adjective, advises that here is guarded the legacy of a knowledge accumulated by a civilization through all its history and geography.
Three or four girls in pink smocks wait on the customers. The moment one of the girls is free, she deals with the first in line and asks him to express his wishes; the customer names or, more often, points, moving about the shop toward the object of his specific and expert appetites.
At that moment the whole line moves forward one place; and the person who till then had been standing beside the “Bleu d’Auvergne” veined with green now finds himself at the level of the “Brin d’amour,” whose whiteness holds strands of dried straw stuck to it; the customer contemplating a ball wrapped in leaves can now concentrate on a cube dusted with ash. At each move forward, some customers are inspired by new stimuli and new desires: they may change their minds about what they were about to ask for or may add a new item to the list; and there are also those who never allow themselves to be distracted even for a moment from the objective they are pursuing and every different, fortuitous suggestion serves only to limit, through exclusion, the field of what they stubbornly want.
Mr. Palomar’s spirit vacillates between contrasting urges: the one that aims at complete, exhaustive knowledge and could be satisfied only by tasting all the varieties; and the one that tends toward an absolute choice, the identification of the cheese that is his alone, a cheese that certainly exists even if he cannot recognize it (cannot recognize himself in it).
Or else, or else: it is not a matter of choosing the right cheese, but of being chosen. There is a reciprocal relationship between cheese and customer: each cheese awaits its customer, poses so as to attract him, with a firmness or a somewhat haughty graininess, or, on the contrary, by melting in submissive abandon.
There is a hint of complicity hovering in the air: the refinement of the taste buds and especially of the olfactory organs has its moments of weakness, of loss of class, when the cheeses on their platters seem to proffer themselves as if on the divans of a brothel. A perverse grin flickers in the satisfaction of debasing the object of one’s own gluttony with lowering nicknames: crottin, boule de moine, bouton de calotte.
This is not the kind of acquaintance that Mr. Palo-mar is most inclined to pursue; he would be content to establish the simplicity of a direct physical relationship between man and cheese. But since in place of the cheeses he sees names of cheeses, concepts of cheeses, meanings of cheeses, histories of cheeses, contexts of cheeses, psychologies of cheeses, when he does not so much know as sense that behind each of these cheeses there is all that, then his relationship becomes very complicated.
The cheese shop appears to Mr. Palomar the way an encyclopedia looks to an autodidact: he could memorize all the names, venture a classification according to the form—bar of soap, cylinder, dome, ball—according to the consistency—dry, buttery, creamy, veined, firm— according to the alien materials involved in the crust or in the heart—raisins, pepper, walnuts, sesame seeds, herbs, molds—but this would not bring him a step closer to true knowledge, which lies in the experience of the flavors, composed of memory and imagination at once. Only on the basis of this could he establish a scale of preferences and tastes and curiosities and exclusions.
Behind every cheese there is a pasture of a different green under a different sky: meadows caked with salt that the tides of Normandy deposit every evening; meadows scented with aromas in the windy sunlight of Provence; there are different flocks, with their stablings and their transhumances; there are secret processes handed down over the centuries. This shop is a museum: Mr. Palomar, visiting it, feels as he does in the Louvre, behind every displayed object the presence of the civilization that has given it form and takes form from it.
This shop is a dictionary; the language is the system of cheeses as a whole: a language whose morphology records declensions and conjugations in countless variants, and whose lexicon presents an inexhaustible richness of synonyms, idiomatic usages, connotations, and nuances of meaning, as in all languages nourished by the contribution of a hundred dialects. It is a language made up of things; its nomenclature is only an external aspect, instrumental; but for Mr. Palomar, learning a bit of nomenclature still remains the first measure to be taken if he wants to stop for a moment the things that are flowing before his eyes.
From his pocket he takes a notebook and a pen, and begins to write down some names, marking beside each name some feature that will enable him to recall the image to his memory; he tries also to make a synthetic sketch of the shape. He writes pave d’Airvault, and notes “green mold,” draws a flat parallelepiped and to one side notes “4 cm. circa”; he writes St-Maure, notes “gray granular cylinder with a little shaft inside,” and draws it, measuring it at a glance as about “20 cm.”; then he writes Chabicholi and draws another little cylinder. “Monsieur! Hoo there! Monsieur!” A young cheese-girl, dressed in pink, is standing in front of him while he is occupied with his notebook. It is his turn, he is next; in the line behind him, everyone is observing his incongruous behavior, heads are being shaken with those half-ironic, half-exasperated looks with which the inhabitants of the big cities consider the ever-increasing number of the mentally retarded wandering about the streets.
The elaborate and greedy order that he intended to make momentarily slips his mind; he stammers; he falls back on the most obvious, the most banal, the most advertised, as if the automatons of mass civilization were waiting only for this moment of uncertainty on his part in order to seize him again and have him at their mercy.
Mr. Palomar is standing in line in a cheese shop, in Paris. He wants to buy certain goat cheeses that are preserved in oil in little transparent containers and spiced with various herbs and condiments. The line of customers moves along a counter where samples of the most unusual and disparate specialties are displayed. This is a shop whose range seems meant to exemplify every conceivable form of dairy product; the very sign, “Specialites froumageres,” with that rare archaic or vernacular adjective, advises that here is guarded the legacy of a knowledge accumulated by a civilization through all its history and geography. Three or four girls in pink smocks wait on the customers. The moment one of the girls is free, she deals with the first in line and asks him to express his wishes; the customer names or, more often, points, moving about the shop toward the object of his specific and expert appetites. At that moment the whole line moves forward one place; and the person who till then had been standing beside the “Bleu d’Auvergne” veined with green now finds himself at the level of the “Brin d’amour,” whose whiteness holds strands of dried straw stuck to it; the customer contemplating a ball wrapped in leaves can now concentrate on a cube dusted with ash. At each move forward, some customers are inspired by new stimuli and new desires: they may change their minds about what they were about to ask for or may add a new item to the list; and there are also those who never allow themselves to be distracted even for a moment from the objective they are pursuing and every different, fortuitous suggestion serves only to limit, through exclusion, the field of what they stubbornly want. Mr. Palomar’s spirit vacillates between contrasting urges: the one that aims at complete, exhaustive knowledge and could be satisfied only by tasting all the varieties; and the one that tends toward an absolute choice, the identification of the cheese that is his alone, a cheese that certainly exists even if he cannot recognize it (cannot recognize himself in it). Or else, or else: it is not a matter of choosing the right cheese, but of being chosen. There is a reciprocal relationship between cheese and customer: each cheese awaits its customer, poses so as to attract him, with a firmness or a somewhat haughty graininess, or, on the contrary, by melting in submissive abandon. There is a hint of complicity hovering in the air: the refinement of the taste buds and especially of the olfactory organs has its moments of weakness, of loss of class, when the cheeses on their platters seem to proffer themselves as if on the divans of a brothel. A perverse grin flickers in the satisfaction of debasing the object of one’s own gluttony with lowering nicknames: crottin, boule de moine, bouton de calotte. This is not the kind of acquaintance that Mr. Palo-mar is most inclined to pursue; he would be content to establish the simplicity of a direct physical relationship between man and cheese. But since in place of the cheeses he sees names of cheeses, concepts of cheeses, meanings of cheeses, histories of cheeses, contexts of cheeses, psychologies of cheeses, when he does not so much know as sense that behind each of these cheeses there is all that, then his relationship becomes very complicated. The cheese shop appears to Mr. Palomar the way an encyclopedia looks to an autodidact: he could memorize all the names, venture a classification according to the form—bar of soap, cylinder, dome, ball—according to the consistency—dry, buttery, creamy, veined, firm— according to the alien materials involved in the crust or in the heart—raisins, pepper, walnuts, sesame seeds, herbs, molds—but this would not bring him a step closer to true knowledge, which lies in the experience of the flavors, composed of memory and imagination at once. Only on the basis of this could he establish a scale of preferences and tastes and curiosities and exclusions. Behind every cheese there is a pasture of a different green under a different sky: meadows caked with salt that the tides of Normandy deposit every evening; meadows scented with aromas in the windy sunlight of Provence; there are different flocks, with their stablings and their transhumances; there are secret processes handed down over the centuries. This shop is a museum: Mr. Palomar, visiting it, feels as he does in the Louvre, behind every displayed object the presence of the civilization that has given it form and takes form from it. This shop is a dictionary; the language is the system of cheeses as a whole: a language whose morphology records declensions and conjugations in countless variants, and whose lexicon presents an inexhaustible richness of synonyms, idiomatic usages, connotations, and nuances of meaning, as in all languages nourished by the contribution of a hundred dialects. It is a language made up of things; its nomenclature is only an external aspect, instrumental; but for Mr. Palomar, learning a bit of nomenclature still remains the first measure to be taken if he wants to stop for a moment the things that are flowing before his eyes. From his pocket he takes a notebook and a pen, and begins to write down some names, marking beside each name some feature that will enable him to recall the image to his memory; he tries also to make a synthetic sketch of the shape. He writes pave d’Airvault, and notes “green mold,” draws a flat parallelepiped and to one side notes “4 cm. circa”; he writes St-Maure, notes “gray granular cylinder with a little shaft inside,” and draws it, measuring it at a glance as about “20 cm.”; then he writes Chabicholi and draws another little cylinder. “Monsieur! Hoo there! Monsieur!” A young cheese-girl, dressed in pink, is standing in front of him while he is occupied with his notebook. It is his turn, he is next; in the line behind him, everyone is observing his incongruous behavior, heads are being shaken with those half-ironic, half-exasperated looks with which the inhabitants of the big cities consider the ever-increasing number of the mentally retarded wandering about the streets. The elaborate and greedy order that he intended to make momentarily slips his mind; he stammers; he falls back on the most obvious, the most banal, the most advertised, as if the automatons of mass civilization were waiting only for this moment of uncertainty on his part in order to seize him again and have him at their mercy.

Alan Scott died last week aged 72 after a prolonged illness.

Alan holds legend status here at the cheesery. I met him a couple of years ago when I was holed up at the house, hammered with the flu and trying to care for a 18 month old at the same time. It was while the cheesery was being built and despite the CLOSED sign being permamnently out, the determined or beligerent or vague still knocked on the door wanting to taste some cheese. Alan was one of them.

On this occasion I decided shock tactics were appropriate, so stumbled out of bed and downstairs in just my jocks, screaming kid on my hip, to inform the intruder they were out of luck. It is impossible to shock Alan… or dissuade him from his course. He introduced himself and it was of those special moments of synchronicity – I was suddenly slighty awe struck, as this was the guy who wrote the book I was currently reading. And I was standing in front of him in my undies.

Alan talked his way into lunch and left about six hours later having facinated me with stories of his Bohemian, Beatnik, Artisan life.

A week later he rang me to tell me he wanted to build me an oven.

Alan’s life was often a rage against beuracracy and unnessesary regulation. He espoused the Ghandian principles. he beleived that a healthy respect for oneself and the welfare of one’s neighbours was all that was needed and the dumbing down of society through excessive authority was a tragedy.

I have spent a lot of time in the past few months thinking about what an artisan is and what it means to be an artisan. To me, Alan, was the definitive artisan. His passion, his beliefs was evident in all aspect of his life. His bread and his ovens was simply an extension of himself. I have never met anyone more true to themselves. Alan, over the course of several dinners and fireside chats tought me a great deal about what is to be an artisan. And for this I am eternally grateful to him.

Thank you Alan, for all that you shared wth me.

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.