I found this book at the library the other week,
Mastering Basic Cheesemaking by Gianaclis Caldwell. It was one of about half-a-dozen cheesemaking books that I checked out, and it's been an excellent read. Her approach is pretty much the opposite of
David Asher's. Where he uses raw milk and natural ingredients, her ingredients and techniques are very modern. Makes for an interesting contrast, and I'm learning a lot by comparing the two books.
One of the concepts she discusses in this book is
terroir (tare WAH).
Terroir is a French word often used in association with wine, beer, coffee, sourdough, etc., and cheese. It describes the uniqueness of foods based on their specific local factors: soil, weather, microclimate, growing and production techniques, microbial activity, and for cheese, even the kind of animal the milk came from along with its diet.
Terroir describes the specialty of the place in which the food was grown and created. It is the reason some people are connoisseurs, because they appreciate the multiple international nuances of the foods they love.
Terroir also explains why we home cheesemakers can never truly replicate the cheeses in the recipes we follow. My Cheddar will never taste like it was made in Somerset, England, nor can I ever make a mozzarella that tastes like those from the Italian Mediterranean. At best I can follow the recipes and hope I'm happy with the results.
Now, if I were someone trying to master all the basic kinds of cheese, the concept of
terroir might be discouraging, because I can never authentically replicate any kind of of cheese. In reality, I find it quite freeing; as long a cheese turns out well, then it isn't wrong, even if it nowhere resembles the cheese in the recipe I'm following.
On another level,
terroir is important to something that I've pondered for a number of years now - that of homestead cuisine. Most of us know that cuisine (another word from the French) refers to a particular style of cooking influenced by local foods and cooking techniques. We all have our favorites: Mexican and Cajun are a couple of mine.
When I planned my first garden on our homestead, I thought of all the things we loved to eat. I thought I would grow everything we needed to continue loving those foods. But the reality of it is that not all plants grow well here. My climate and soil means it takes a lot more work to grow some things than others. If all I had to do was the garden, then I might be able to do just that. But as a homesteader working toward self-reliance, my time and energy are spread out over many things. To truly work smarter not harder, I must stick with things that grow well here with the least inputs from me.
In terms of homestead sustainability, this means learning to work with what I've got. It means that Dan's and my diet will be more limited than the modern diet, also more seasonal, and definitely about as local as one can get. The challenge for me, then, is to work toward variety through creativity; in other words, learn to develop my own homestead cuisine.
This is definitely a project in progress, but probably one of the most rewarding I've ever taken on. Because nothing is more satisfying that sitting down to a meal that is 80, 90, or 100% homegrown.
