Culture Magazine

THE HOT LIS T 202 3 culturecheesemag.com 53 places at once. Being less bound by tradition and able to experiment like this is part of the playfulness of being a cheesemaker in the US." He notes that while "Fermentation Produced Chymosin is very efficient, it gives zero personality to cheese." His popular lactic-set cheese, Intergalactic, is also made with cardoon rennet. As I switch gears from researching to teaching and sharing, I see several ways my findings can benefit cheesemakers in North America. One of the most significant things I found is that there is a wider range of commercial coagulants available to cheesemakers in Europe. I urge American cheesemakers, mongers, and enthusiasts to seek avenues for exploring and promoting coagulants that give nuance and signature flavor and texture to cheese. I also want to share the methods of extracting and preserving abomasums, as many are interested in doing this at their own farms. The big dream is to encourage a revival of domestic rennet-making on a regional scale. In sharing my research and experiences, I hope to encourage looking beyond the simplistic view of categorizing rennet as either animal or vegetarian, and taking a broader look at this crucial component of cheese. c I look forward to presenting my findings on rennet at the American Cheese Society Annual Conference in Des Moines, Iowa, this July. One motive of the endowment behind the DZTA is to encourage and enable cheese professionals to further their careers in the realm of education. In January, I launched a mobile educational endeavor, the Sour Milk School, with a series of five-day workshops in the western US. In these workshops I share how rennet and plant coagulants can be made and used, methods for developing natural starter cultures, and how to work with less industrial materials and practices. QUESO PALMERO This is the signature cheese of La Palma, in the Canary Islands. Working with the rennet made f rom their own herds of goats, the farmer- cheesemakers craft this cheese in a variety of sizes. When it's a few days old, it's typically hot smoked with different plants including pine needles or almond shells. Larger, older wheels take on distinctive flavors f rom artisanal rennet pastes made with salt-cured abomasums containing coagulated milk. These flavors emerge as a savory umami background and can build with aging to a kind of spicy, mouth-tingling characteristic. This blends with and accentuates bright tropical f ruit flavors to create a complex, hard-to-define taste experience. Queso Palmero is a rare cheese that reflects the culture and place f rom which it springs. These are the cheeses I seek, made according to time-tested, slower, regionally appropriate methods. The cheeses, the goats, the rennet, and the people are all voices in a chorus, harmonizing in a poetic ode to the island. The distinctive grill lines on a wheel of smoked Queso Palmero PHOTO: CRDOP_Queso Palmero | Wikimedia Commons

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