Tiny mites spark big battle over imports of French cheese (2013)
npr.org
npr.org
(I did a production of this book as a nice epub for Standard Ebooks: https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/charles-babbage/passages-f... if you want something for your reader.)
So I looked it up on wikipedia. And learned about the mites.
When I looked closely at the rind of the the cheese I'd bought-- sure enough, it was busy with tiny, transparent crawlies.
I still like mimolette, but there's something in the back of my brain that cannot forget the mites. The innocent bliss of that first experience is impossible to recapture.
It's my favorite cheese. It's as if three year sharp cheddar and proper Parmigiano Reggiano had a delicious, sharp, salty baby that comes apart with the flaky dry texture of mica almost.
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2019/05/21/7250878...
The punch line for it is casu marzu.
While cheese mites are 0.45–0.70mm, the offspring of Piophila casei are about 8mm long.
The wikipedia page is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casu_marzu which goes into some of the intricacies needed in the "consumption" section.
I've had worse critters along for the ride.
Another interesting thing to now is that raw milk cheeses have an intense life of their own, but they're less susceptible to host bad bugs : the existing fauna and flora keeps the nasty ones out. OTOH, a pasteurized cheese must be either almost sterile, or may rapidly host all sorts of bad microbes.
Fellow compatriot spotted ;)
Just FYI, “eventually” != “éventuellement”.
Also, do you want to tell them about Corsican cheese, or should I?
I watched a history video about England and it seems many children died from tuberculosis infected milk. According to the show, "Boracic acid was believed to 'purify' milk, removing the sour taste and smell from milk that had gone off".
(Even home made yogurt is frequently pasteurized at home. IMO the tastiest yogurt is made by first holding the milk at 180F or so for half an hour, at which point it’s pasteurized. Then the milk is cooled and a starter is added. The result is not sterile and has a respectable shelf life.)
The Kraft/cracker barrel style Cheddar and stuff doesn't even come close to resembling even mild Cheddar in that section and has a consistency closer to rubber than cheese, even the apparently old and extra old cheddar of the Kraft/cracker barrel kind.
I find it hard to accept that it's even really cheese and i've never really gotten to experience really nice cheese like some of the other commenters here have mentioned.
The Kraft/cracker barrel cheeses go mouldy in a completely different way the other cheeses do. The mould itself even looks different. I'm not sure exactly what pasteurization/sterilization methods are used on those cheeses vs the others, but there's a noticable difference not only in taste and texture, but during the actual moulding process which would be directly affected by any kind of pasteurization or sterilization.
https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfcfr/CFR...
If you look in the cheese section of a decent store, you’ll find many real cheese with ingredients like “pasteurized milk, salt, enzymes, cultures”. These contain living cultures but not raw milk, and many of them have long shelf lives.
My point is that, while you’re unlikely to find raw milk in a sterile so-called cheese product, actual cheese is not sterile despite often containing pasteurized milk. And that pasteurizing the milk isn’t necessarily done for food safety reasons — some cheese recipes call for raw milk and some call for cooking the milk.
I wholeheartedly agree with this. Most Kraft products like the singles and cheese wiz and shit, the 'modified milk products' are not even close to cheese.
What i was talking about are all those cheeses most people buy from the fair section, there's usually a mild, medium, old Cheddar selection, a mozzarella, lately i've seen Monterey jacks. Those are what I think of as the sterile 'cheese' made with pasteurized milk and lacking in active cultures. I'm guessing, like you say, they're likely closer to those modified milk products than real cheese, but for many, many people, that's the cheese they know, buy and eat.
I've had raw milk cheese before and i've eaten plenty of active culture cheeses, the difference between them isn't really that noticable, they're all actual cheese.
According to Wikipedia, traditional mozzarella is, in fact, cultured.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_irradiation
[2] https://www.fda.gov/food/buy-store-serve-safe-food/food-irra...
What's the difference between mites in this cheese and bacteria in yogurt? they are both intrinsic to the process of producing respective foods.
cockroaches are pretty huge disease vectors. they're known to spread salmonella.
There's no official ripe date, and French cheese-mongers typically state the date of packaging to give the customer a general idea of what to expect. Young and aged mimolette have significant differences in texture and taste.
I would expect freezing to potentially alter the cheese's consistency in undesirable ways, but removing the oxygen for a time should be fine, right?
They mix in a raw egg and some other spices and eat it raw. It’s called steak tartare (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steak_tartare), and it’s pretty good. It helps when you have sane agricultural practices (except for that time they spread prions to people—ooops—and I still can’t donate blood in the US because I was in Europe at that time) and a culture of gastronomie.
Comparing the number of salmonella deaths/cases between (for example) the UK and the US is rather interesting/amusing depending on ones perspective.
This is a myth. There are different sanitary requirements resulting in tradeoffs (i.e. longer fridge life in US due to the rapidness with which eggs enter a fridge, longer shelf life out of fridge in europe), but in both cases the risk comes from salmonella in the yolk before the shell forms and would be unaffected by the differences in sanitation of the resulting egg. I would think the risk of raw eggs would be approximately the same.
The downside being that you should wash them before use in Europe but in North America they are safe to use from the fridge.
We raise our own eggs, and leave them on the counter unwashed.
That said, I respect clearing out that fridge space!
https://www.foodsafetynews.com/2019/11/uk-bears-brunt-of-mul...
I'll happily eat a rare burger at my local butcher; they'll grind the meat right in front of me and serve it with a side of beef fat fries. One of the things I intend to immediately enjoy again once lockdown is over.
https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/coronavi...
https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/85340/fig-pollination-in...
https://www.kansascity.com/living/liv-columns-blogs/chow-tow...
https://www.dairyreporter.com/Article/2013/04/17/FDA-dismiss...
French raw milk cheeses are still banned, though.
Do the mites taste worse if they're dead? Seems they could be killed relatively easily by placing then in an oxygen free container for a while?
— The article is subject to refusal of admission pursuant to Section 801(a)(3) in that it the article appears to consist in whole or in part of a filthy, putrid, or decomposed substance or be otherwise unfit for food. — https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/importrefusals/index....
There are actually a bunch of things that are not entirely compliant with EU regulations but get some kind of exemption because they are traditional, and usually not produced in large quantities. Sometimes they can be produced but not sold, like the casu marzu mentioned elsethread.