Zillertaler Bergkäse, or Bergkäse for Bergpeople

How far are you willing to go for cheese? To what lengths would you strive to satisfy a craving for the best bite, the king of curd, the champion of cheese? Cheese is, after all, not for the faint of heart, for those content to know nothing but marble cheddar and mild gouda. The pursuit of cheese will take one far beyond the safe harbors of cheese sticks and ‘mexican four blend’ and lead him into alien and unknown seas with nothing but wits and the audacity to dare to guide him. And maybe also this blog. This blog would probably also be a decent guide. 

This summer I posed myself this very question, as a trail map betrayed a dairy up and away from the beaten path. I was on a hiking trip in the Zillertal in Austria, and although I had not planned on any particular culinary diversions life sometimes surprises you in the most charming way. So it was that, on a cold, rainy, utterly cloud-bound day my companions and I set off up a dirt road following signs for “Stoankaser’n”. 

Would it be open? 
Would it be closed? 
What awaited us at the end of the trail?

The sound of our boots was all we could hear over the gently falling rain, visibility came and went as we broke into and out of one fog bank after another. As we climbed higher and higher spirits began to falter, we had been hiking for 5 days already through snow and rain and intense heat. As we rounded a hillside we caught sight of some fellow travelers we’d been smelling for the last kilometer or so; a great herd of dairy cows. This was a good sign. Like the sirens of the Odyssey, they managed to derail a number of our group from the task at hand to take obligatory cow selfies. The rest of us pushed forward, our eyes searching longingly for a gently puffing chimney and the lighted windows of a cozy ‘Alm’. 

The well kept forest that had originally made up our surroundings gradually gave way to low shrubs and pasture grasses rolling up the hillsides and out of sight into the clouds. Now and then great and violent rocky outcroppings would tower over us only to sink away into the grass a few steps up the road. We came to one building that looked promising, just beyond a cattle gate, but were let down to see there was no one home. The road continued on, though, and so did we. 

Finally, near the top of this narrow valley we’d been tracing, just as the two sides met and began their steep final climb to the ridge above, we saw it: The Stoankaser’n. What does ‘stoankaser’n’ mean? I have been learning and speaking German now for ten years and I hesitate to answer. My German friends who were with me that day couldn’t do much better. In this context, though, it meant ‘victory’. The finish line in sight, our spirits soared and we strove on with a new warmth in our wet and weary bones. 

Upon poking our heads through the door and out of the rain and into the warmth of the Alm, we knew the journey up had been worth it. A few other brave adventurers were gathered around their tables laughing and talking about their hikes, but our party of 10 easily found seats; the weather had kept the more timid away that day. A family operation, using milk exclusively from the dairy cows we had passed on our walk up, this dairy/alm combination was something from a fairy tale. Not just because it was warm and had a large ceramic oven to dry our clothing on. Not just because you can peek in to the one-room, one-man dairy and see the monumental Bergkäse forms that the husband fills every morning. The menu was traditional Alm fare, including an egg-noodle and cheese dish called Spätzle and great big slices of cured pork belly. The coffee drinks and hot chocolate were made with the raw milk from the local cows and tasted decadent and one of a kind. The service was friendly and food was filling. 

And you could buy cheese there, too. So naturally I did. That is the story of how I came to be in possession, if only for a short time, of a true jewel of a Bergkäse, a testimony to its title, Stoankaser’n Zillertaler Bergkäse.  

Origin: Junsbachtal, Zillertal, Austria

Rennet: Animal

Milk: Cow, unpasteurized

Affinage: 8-12 months

Notes:

Looks like Bergkäse. Is Bergkäse. These are not cheeses to be daintily put on a pedestal or made up with garnish. They call for honest beer and plain talk. The dairy cooperative in the valley is remote enough that the family usually doesn’t even overnight at the Alm but travels in from home to help with the patrons. 

Thoughts:

This rich and full fat cheese welcomes you with notes of mushrooms and sweet grass, not so much caramel as the greener sweetness of sugarcane. Towards the end hints of garlic rise and fall and overall you get a complex but perfectly blended cheese, delicious and full bodied. There is no drama to this cheese, but it is truly a stand-alone and worthy example of the style.

The photos don't even do it justice, this was truly the tastiest Kasspatzen in the most delightful setting, and all you had to do was hike uphill (bothways?) through the rain and fog. So worth it. Never have I been more glad to own rain pants and a rain jacket. I also had the buttermilk and a raw milk hot chocolate. So choice. Mouth currently watering. 

Gołka, or Finally A Cheese In the Shape of a Barrel!

Sometimes you have to look far and wide to find your next cheese. As far as the local farmers market and as wide as will fit in your fridge. Sometimes the cheese comes to find you! That is the story of today's cheese; Gołka! Two brave travelers brought these Polish cheeses back from a recent holiday and, after initially being intimidated by the spiky-barrel shape right out of a Mario game, I finally dove in. Now, I freely admit that I don't speak or read a word of Polish, which made deciphering the label somewhat of a puzzle. Fortunately, as the old saying goes, I've been to the rodeo before, and this is my kind of puzzle. I employed every trick up my sleeve and determined that this is, indeed, a cheese. We were given one plain and one smoked, both fairly identical looking except for the coloration.

Origin: Poland
Milk: Cow, pasteurized? Conflicting Reports
Affinage: 2-3 months

Notes:
There is a sheep milk version of this cheese that I'm now itching to get my hands on. I guess both this and the cow versions that I tasted are typically holiday cheeses, name controlled even, and as a result only really to be had at certain times of the year. Also the curd is salted! Which, I mean, may go a ways to explain the flavor. Also some sources say this cheese is a raw milk cheese... but I believe my label said pasteurized? Hard to say.

Thoughts:
Plain:
Slightly squeaky and tart like a cheese curd. It is a primarily salty cheese, but develops as the fats break down to a grassy sweetness, like a raw cheddar. The beginning is a neutral milky flavor, but builds ever more as you chew until at the end notes of meat and onions pop up. Doesn’t taste like health food, rather it is heavy and savory and rich. Definitely tastes tart and wild like a raw milk cheese, but that label? My vote is on raw.

Smoky:
The smoky aroma wafts over the palate as you bite into it, and really presents throughout the entire bite. Just as salty than its unsmoked relative, but more balanced due to thesmoked treatment. The smoke is not that gasoline-awful-artifical flavor, but rather a complex and constantly evolving addition to the cheese. The texture of the smoked rind is also a nice variation from the otherwise one-dimensional paste. Make no mistake, this is also a hearty and meaty bite. It wants a crisp beer like cats want to knock things off tables.


Possibly the first Polish cheese on the blog? Very possibly. I'd buy (or be gifted) it again in a heartbeat though! That sheep cheese also sounds really good, and just the other day I was alerted to a whole range of balkan cheeses. Auspicious times are ahead for this Functioning Cheese Addict! 

Obatzda, or Frischkäsezubereitung

Ja Hallo, einen schönen Guten Tag wünsche ich euch alle, liebe Leser. 

Heute bringe ich euch was sehr besonders, eine Frischkäsezubereitung aus unsere aktuelle Zuhause; Bayern! 

Ja, Bayern: wo die Kühe freundlich sind und der Käse herzhaft. 

Wie alle gute Deutschsprecher(leser) wissen, Obatzda gehört genauso viel zum Biergartenkultur wie... also, Bier. Und Gärten. Eine absolute Schatz an das Leben hier in Bayern ist, dass viele Nachbarläden ihre eigene Rezept dafür haben und dir auch frische Brezen dazu verkaufen wird. Also gönn dir! 

Origin: Bayern, Germany

Rennet: Animal

Milk: cow

Affinage: n/a

Notes: Comes in a tub. Orange. Orange with white splotches and other rando pieces of stuff in there, to be more precise. Smells pretty strong. Did I mention it gets spatula-ed into a plastic tub? Eaten traditionally with pretzels or good brown German bread. Home-made all over, your mileage may vary. 

Thoughts: Wowzers. It’s not every cheese you smell increasingly strongly before you take your first bite This one is powerful, though. If it were an animal in the wild, it’d have big colorful stripes or badges to ward off predators. Or, you know, some sort of pheromone producing gland.  Eaten alone (for sciences’ sake), it is overwhelming. Creamy, spicy (but not hot), a little warming in the aftertaste, almost a blue-cheese like funk, and that familiar sensation when you know you are now in 100% cheese breath mode. Usually this takes a lot of cheese eating, but with Obatzda, one bite is all you need. Now for some more orthodox tasting, spread on a pretzel. OK, so let’s talk about salt. Now, pretzels can have a lot of salt on them, sometimes you may be asked by your local baker if you want a normal or lightly salted pretzel, I’d put these today firmly in the 6/10 in their saltiness. This is important because salt also happens to be one of the few ingredients of cheese after milk. This particular ‘cheese’ also has some paprika and other spices added to it, so…. this is a very salty bite is what I’m trying to say. Those of you who know and love Germany will not be surprised by this. It is 100% normal here to bring a hardboiled egg as a snack with you on a hike, but only if you also bring a tiny single serving package of salt for to salt said egg after you’ve shelled it (Do you ‘shell an egg’? Peel an egg? Release an egg?). I digress. Obatzda! Dang this stuff is delicious. It is actually very very sweet and creamy, which acts as the perfect vehicle for the paprika and onion and, well, salt, providing a great contrast and basically making you want more and more. Salt and fat. Salt and fat. Garlic is in there, onions poke up here and there, but really this is classic bar food. Bavarian style. I love it. Cheese breath forever!!!

i bim bloß a gloana Kasbuam! 

Three Year Parmigiano Reggiano, Caseificio Sociale San Salvatore, or The Dirtbag Grand Tour pt. 1

Have you ever had baked beans in Boston? How about deep dish pizza in Chicago? Have you ever longed to try sourdough bread in San Fransisco or the midwest’s most confusing submission to the US national cuisine, Cincinnati Chili, in Cincinnati? That is admittedly a very US-centric list. Eh… how about a single malt on the Isle of Skye? Lángos in Hungary? Kürtőskalács in… Hungary? Feta in…. I feel like there is no good way to continue this train of thought without offending entire countries.

What I’m trying to say is that today we’re sticking to the hottest new diet craze ever to come out of an obscure and sparsely updated cheese blog: The Do The Thing In The Place Diet. Trademark The Functioning Cheese Addict. (Thats how you register trademarks, right? I declare a trademark!). I swear there’s something about cheese here somewhere. Parma! Today, and despite all evidence to the contrary, I’m writing about Parma. The city, the legend, the birthplace of (food) kings.

Years ago, when the world was young and the US had a fully funded government, I traveled to Parma with my wife and best friends as part of a camping and cheese tasting trip through northern Italy. Like a dirtbag-y Grand Tour that constantly smelled like cheese. All we were missing was a DIY converted camper-van. It was without exception breathtakingly beautiful, and I’ll have to mention the valley of Taleggio sometime later, but today prize of place goes to Parma and the King of Cheeses: Parmigiano Reggiano.

We traveled miles and miles south of the alps, across the Po River valley, and very nearly were thwarted by a downed bridge, but just when we were near to giving up we stumbled upon Caseificio Soziale San Salvatore. We were late arriving and walked in just minutes before the riposo began, but the staff were legends and not only sold us their wares but also gave us a tour. A tour of their beautiful beautiful aging room. A tour of the (already finished for the day) vats. A tour of the brining room. We walked past and gawked at a small fortune’s worth of Parm, and as the photos give evidence I was completely overwhelmed. I speak, of course, effectively no Italian, but as it so happens having 100% of your vocabulary in a language be cheese related makes you fairly well situated to talk to a cheesemaker. We purchased a three year reserve Parmigiano Reggiano and a tub of Ricotta Fresca, thanked the man profusely, and retired to a nearby park to descend upon our bounty.

That is the story. Here is the cheese.

Origin: Parma, Italy

Rennet: Animal

Milk: Cow, unpasteurized 

Affinage: 3 Years! Woop Woop!

Notes: 3 Years of aging technically makes this a ‘Stravecchio’ example of its kind, but here’s the real hot tip: They definitely had more aged versions there in that beautiful, beautiful cheese case. So if you are all about adding some -issimo to your Stravecchio (proof that I don’t speak Italian), go to the source. That being said, is the 12 month version also fantastic? Abso-lutely. Only, make sure you’re getting the genuine article. Parmesan need not apply. Not even ironic-hipster artisan-revival Parmesan in redesigned chic green bottles. Just trust the stuff with the seal on the rind. 

Thoughts: Ok. So you’ve had Parmigiano Reggiano before. Cool. The big spoiler alert here is that this also tastes… like Parmigiano Reggiano. I mean, it should, because it is that same cheese that you had at 12 months but this one has been aged and flipped with decreasing frequency for another couple trips around the sun. Does it taste more… intense? Yeah, probably. How often do you just eat a plain slice of Parm? A little goes a long way. A lot goes a long way, too. Too much probably goes all the way to the hospital. This is not health food, no matter how pretty it looks on your Insta. Of course the flavor of the 3 Year is somewhat more concentrated, the texture noticeably drier, and the bite of that unpasteurized milk ever present. The truth is, dear reader, we tore into it like it was our last day on earth and didn’t look back. That half kilo of Parma Gold lasted us a good long while and was the star of many an appetizer and pasta dish, but to sit down and describe it today feels… cheap. It deserves poetry, it deserves fanfare, it deserves to be hunted down and bought from the kind man behind the counter in the white apron. It’s a good cheese. You will like it.

The train trip through the alps from Germany to northern Italy is absolutely stunning. Even if the destination wasn't a wonderland of freshwater lakes and mouthwatering delicacies, which it definitely is, the ride itself would be a worthy vacation.  

Keens Traditional Unpasteurized Cheddar, A Story of England

Great News! 

My last encounter with West Country Farmhouse Cheddar left me feeling a little over-sold and underwhelmed. This was likely no one’s fault but my own, buying as I did such a cheddar wrapped in black wax and shipped over an ocean. Today’s cheese, however, is really turning the page on cheddar in general and West Country Farmhouse Cheddar in specific. I’m not sure anyone anywhere was really waiting for this particular reputation to be redeemed, but here we go anyways. 

Keens Traditional Unpasteurized Cheddar. Wouldn’t you know it? It is all of those things. Let me take you on a journey now, to a magical land. The sound of the subway, the glare of the florescent lights, the smell of coffee on that guy’s breath, it’s all fading away. In its place is a world of hedgerow-lined roads barely wide enough for one car, thatch-roofed pubs promising ‘good food and real ale’, and a lot of people calling me ‘boss’. Yes, England. I honestly did not know what to expect from this quick weekend trip, my first to England. A friend’s wedding meant seeing some familiar faces and a rental car meant getting to explore south-west England on the day before the wedding. This day was full of surprises. Not only did I not get into an accident from driving, but the weather was gorgeous and the food was delicious. We set off after breakfast for a day of sightseeing and cheese, full of bacon and beans and egg and fried bread. It could only be a good day. Like any responsible cheese traveler I’d done my homework and found out, to my great delight, that the wedding and reception (and our overnight stay) were pretty close to Cheddar country in England. West Country Farmhouse Cheddar, as you might remember, can only be made in a few counties in England. Fortuntately, the website of the group that maintains this tradition is very informative and gave me an address at which to buy some of this famed curd. 

One visit to a large stony tourist attraction later, we piled out of our rental car in the small parking lot of a farm. I had somehow thought there would be a place sit and get some lunch, maybe tour the dairy, but what we found was better. Doing the classic “we don’t know where we’re going, we are not from around here’ walk, we made our way up to what looked like main buildings. As far as we could tell, the only person around was a fellow smoking a cigarette, seemingly on break from doing some maintenance. Graciously he opened up the dialogue with a knowing ‘you all looking to buy some cheese?’. Yes. Yes we are. This kind man led us to a fridge, industrial in size and build, inside of which we found a beautiful collection of cheese and butter from the farm. Thinking better of buying a whole wheel of cheese (we’re not made of money after all), we bought a half wheel. More precisely, our friends bought us a half wheel of cheddar. You should keep the kinds of friends who buy you cheese. 

OK, enough story time. You’re here for the cheese. Keen’s Cheddar is true farmhouse operation, meaning they have their own herd, grazing solely on their own land. Land which also houses the cheese making operation. This means, as their website proudly states, that they don’t ever have to transport the milk more than 50 yards, that the cheesemaking process begins within 12 hours of milking, and that the unpasteurized milk they use is about as close to the freshness of that English hillside as you can get. They have a herd of 250 Friesian cows, and the entire cheese making process, from stirring and cutting the curd to cheddaring to flipping the wheels while aging is done by hand.  

Origin: Somerset, England

Milk: Unpasteurized cows milk cheese

Rennet: Animal

Affinage: Between 12 and 18 months

Ah England, where it is always this sunny

Notes: An unassuming little wheel of cheese. The half wheel we got had a lightly textured rind with the pleasant grays and tans of a natural rind. From appearances it is not quite like other cheddars I’ve had, neither the clear calcium crystals of the more aged cheddars nor the rubbery texture of lesser cheddars. Smells like a raw milk cheese, a promising straw-white colo(u?)r and hints of the kind of strata that you get in an extra aged Gouda. 

Thoughts: That it is a raw milk cheese is apparent from the first, indeed this cheese is almost tart as it first hits the tongue, the acidity of the milk never having been blasted away or blended out on a commercial scale. It’s also chewy, almost in the way that cheese curds or Halloumi are chewy. At first I was afraid the cheddar was going to be too dry, lacking in that satisfying fatty rush usually associated with whole milk cow cheeses. Nor is there the usual glut of salt, a hallmark of most cheddars. To be honest, I actually look forward to this combination when I get a good cheddar, or even a bad cheddar, because salt and fat pretty much sell themselves as a flavor combination. That said, Keens Cheddar does not disappoint so much as it proudly stands for what it is, a Cheddar in a class of its own. All of the textural and flavor notes change moments after the first bite, washing the palate in a complex richness. This stands out in comparison to other cheddars, other very good cheddars, in that the tasting notes are recognizably cheddar but unlike anything I’ve had before. Perhaps this is the Westcountry Farmhouse Cheddar difference? For example, there is no horesradish in this cheese, and yet just before the wave of rich nutty sweetness hits you get a tickling of the tip of the tongue of just that; horseradish. This is also the most notable flavor in the aftertaste, which is delightful. 

Week 2 of the relaunch! This is a 100% improvement on my previous streak in the past 6 years. Going to go eat some celebratory cheese.