The Metrowest Raw Milk Drive Share will be starting bi-weekly in early August (8/7). The pickup point will be in Waltham. Contact Dave Cushing - dcushing84 at aol dot com - to get more information and a copy of the waiver form.
Zman, over at Biur Chametz, is also exploring the wonderful world of kosher cheesemaking. A desire for fresh cottage cheese started his fascinating journey through science, halakha, and camels.
I’m in the process compiling all the info we’ll need for our trip to Israel tomorrow, but I wanted to post a quick update about my cheese-related efforts to acquire raw milk (unpasteurized/unhomogenized) in the Boston area. Details are still being worked out, but a Metro-West drive share group (taking turns going to western MA each weekend to buy milk for the group) will be starting very soon. There seem to be around 11 people interested so far. When things firm up, I’ll post more details on how to get involved.
UPDATE 25-June-04: Dave Cushing is heading up the Metro-West drive share. The group will fetch milk biweekly, and each participant will drive less than once per quarter (at current group size). Pickup is in Waltham. Milk from Chase Hill Farm is $5/gallon. Contact dcushing84 at aol dot com for more information or to get involved.
iGourmet now has its two Israeli cheeses back in stock. Though they’re not listed under “kosher,” the Barkanit sheep/goat cheeses are certified by the Israeli Rabbinate, Vaad of the Gilboa Valley.
KosherToday’s latest issue includes a Category Focus article on cheese (included below for archival purposes) which thoroughly covers the major initiatives in the industry. The piece, by Lauren Kramer, pays particular interest to Anderson International, Atalanta, Ahava, and Cappiello.
What’s especially encouraging is Anderson International’s recognition of the changing tastes of the typical kosher consumer:
“I don?t think people in this country were brought up eating the quality and variety of cheese that people in Europe and Israel are exposed to,” says Anderson?s Mizrahi. ?For example, we?re selling a Danish bleu cheese of excellent quality. The younger generation is ready for a product like this, but the generation brought up on Muenster and mozzarella finds a good cheese too strong for them.”
Certainly, we ba’alei tshuva are doing our part to demand better cheeses from the kosher marketplace.
KOSHERTODAY: June 2004
Cheese
Kosher consumers are no longer limited to lackluster choices in this department
By Lauren Kramer
Wine is not the only kosher product to redefine itself in upscale terms. The cheese category has also been transformed with flavorful, high-quality kosher offerings. Judging by the increasingly varied assortment of kosher specialty cheeses in the marketplace today, the American Jew?s palate is becoming more sophisticated and demanding of finer flavors.
The trend toward more upscale food products is typical of a younger generation of Jews, says Brigitte Mizrahi, a principal at Anderson International Foods in Los Angeles. A private-label distributor and importer of kosher specialty cheese, Anderson has a repertoire of products that include retail and wholesale cheese under the brand names Les Petites Fermieres, Natural & Ko-sher (cholov Yisroel), La Ch趲e (cholov Yisroel) and Monsey Dairy, all OK Kosher certified.
In addition to staples like mozzarella, Muenster, cheddar, Monterey Jack and feta cheese, Anderson sells La Ch趲e Chilean goat cheese in flavors like red pepper, olive and fines herbes.
The newest products this year are a Canadian Brie and Camembert under the Les Petites Fermieres label, a French-made Emmenthaler, an American cheddar cheese under the Monsey Dairy label and Sol Danablu, an imported Danish bleu cheese. The Monsey Dairy line includes Gouda, smoked Gouda, Havarti and pepperjack cheese.
The major players in kosher specialty cheese are Brooklyn-based World Cheese, the market leader, whose lines include the popular Haolam and Miller?s brands; Ahava Foods; and Anderson International. Previously published figures from experts in the industry put 2000 U.S. sales for kosher cheese at just over $50 million, a number that?s still fairly accurate today, says Moshe Vogel, mashgiach at Anderson.
Founded by the Thurm family, Haolam is the trailblazer that introduced kosher consumers to the basic cheeses available in kosher supermarkets, including the best-selling American cheese. Though more companies are entering the kosher cheese market to please the changing palate of younger kosher consumers, Haolam remains the leader in both retail and foodservice sales.
?I don?t think people in this country were brought up eating the quality and variety of cheese that people in Europe and Israel are exposed to,? says Anderson?s Mizrahi. ?For example, we?re selling a Danish bleu cheese of excellent quality. The younger generation is ready for a product like this, but the generation brought up on Muenster and mozzarella finds a good cheese too strong for them.?
In Mizrahi?s experience, the diet of many American Orthodox Jews, the mainstay of the kosher cheese business, revolves around meat. As a result, ?they don?t know how to cook with cheese,? she says. ?We used to sell ricotta cheese in a 2-pound container, perfect for a lasagna, for example. But we found that an Orthodox American consumer didn?t know what to do with a 2-pound container.
?In Europe, by contrast, many meals are based on cheese, and in France, you have cheese as a course at the end of a meal.?
Anderson International uses the facilities of eight cheese plants that are willing to do kosher runs based on its flavor profiles and packaging requirements. The company?s most popular retail cheese is sliced yellow Muenster.
?It?s very creamy, and the slices are really good in sandwiches,? Mizrahi says. Vogel adds that the Danish bleu is the most popular specialty cheese right now.
?It?s been a big new thing, and none of our competition carries this kind of cheese,? he says.
Atalanta Corp., owned by George Gellert, is a multinational importer of cheeses, institutional groceries and specialty foods. The company began importing kosher specialty cheese in summer 2003.
The company is the exclusive distributor of Barkanit, a sheep-and-goat-milk cheese from Israel, and bleu cheese from Denmark (cholov Yisroel).
Other varieties imported by Atalanta are Swiss and Brie cheese from France and mascarpone from Canada.
?The reception has been really good, better than what I thought it would be,? says Carey Franco, who heads up the kosher cheese program at Atalanta. ?People see these cheeses and they want them, because what was once only in the non-kosher area is now kosher.?
Franco is hoping to import Gouda from Holland and more cheese from Israel. ?I think we haven?t even touched the tip of the iceberg with this product,? he says.
Ahava Foods is the only kosher cholov Yisroel company outside of Israel that owns its own plant and farms, according to Ahava spokesperson Rebecca Banayan. Located in Lowville, N.Y., and with a recently purchased plant in Ogdensburg, N,Y,, the company produces milk, cheese and yogurt.
?We purchased these plants because we wanted to be BST [bovine growth hormone]-free,? explains Banayan. ?Our cows don?t get hormone injections to make them deliver more milk. As a result, a lot of people who are health conscious buy our products.?
With a customer base that?s 15 percent non-Jewish, business has ?grown massively,? reports Banayan.
The Ogdensberg plant is a hard-cheese facility producing Monterey jack, Colby cheese, emek cheese, bulk shredded and sliced mozzarella, marble cheese, Parmesan, cheddar, sheep spread and other varieties for retailers and wholesalers.
Another company that produces kosher specialty cheese onsite is F. Cappiello Dairy Products of Schenectady, N.Y. The company?s line of cheeses, under OU supervision, includes ricotta and mozzarella, the latter available in plain, smoked and sundried tomato flavors; and scamorza and smoked scamorza. F. Cappiello supplies cheese to the foodservice and retail markets.
?We started producing a kosher-supervised line 30 years ago for one client and then turned our entire line kosher about 10 years ago,? says Julianne Cappiello-Miranda, co-owner of the company. ?Now we get unsolicited e-mails constantly from people who say they?ve seen the product and can?t believe there?s kosher mozzarella out there that tastes good and is affordable.
?I don?t believe we have much competition,? she adds. ?What distinguishes us from other companies selling kosher cheese is that we don?t have special kosher runs. All our products are made to order, so the product is always the freshest, using quality ingredients.?
The company?s most popular cheese is marinated, braided mozzarella.
Cappiello-Miranda has seen an increased demand for specialty cheese in the last few years, both kosher and non-kosher.
?People are tired of the same old products out there,? she says. ?We?re working on a few ideas for new flavors.?
Anderson?s Vogel agrees that the future for this category looks bright. He describes its growth potential as ?unbelievable.?
?It?s going to take a long time to e
ducate people about what?s available in kosher specialty cheese, but there will be no limit to the growth,? he says.
?It?s going to be a long and steady process, but realistically there?s enough room for everyone to grow.?
Lauren Kramer is a freelance writer in British Columbia
The goals of online retailer David Brawer seem to go hand-in-hand with the Kosher Blog: “We feel that although kosher products are widely available in supermarkets throughout the country, in the gourmet specialty product area there is very little and sometimes nothing available. We are attempting to fill that void.”
Filling the void is KosherItalia.com, which we first “discovered” last month. A month later, they still offer authentic products (with strict Orthodox certification) direct from Italy, but they’ve made a big change — the website. Online ordering is now fully operational, and each item available on the site is accompanied by a short description which includes full kashrut information.
Mr. Brawer asserts KosherItalia.com’s prices “can rival their non-kosher counterparts.” So, to put this to the test, we visited Cheese.com for some comparison shopping. Interestingly, both sites use the same open-source e-commerce platform, so they’re quite similar in that regard; descriptions at Cheese.com are more detailed, and their “Product Metrics” section is very useful. As for prices:
Fontal/Fontina
KosherItalia: $6.89 - 9 oz. ($0.77/oz)
Cheese.com: $6.95 - 8.8 oz. ($0.79/oz)
Pecorino
KosherItalia: $8.79 - 10 oz. ($0.88/oz)
Cheese.com: $6.10 - 8 oz. ($0.76/oz)
Provolone
KosherItalia: $6.49 - 8 oz. ($0.81/oz)
Cheese.com: $5.32 - 10 oz. ($0.53/oz)
By and large, all prices are competitive — that last comparison isn’t entirely fair, as Cheese.com’s offering is made in the US, not Italy.
But what about the important part — taste? Fortunately, we were sent samples of four cheeses — Fontal, Italico, Provolone, and Grana Padano — which arrived cold from thorough packing with styrofoam and a reusable ice pack. The short answer: each cheese was delicious. To taste, I was joined by two friends, Chaim and Kevin (the bona-fide treyf-eye to serve as “control”).
The Provolone (unsmoked) is the first kosher Provolone I’ve ever liked (The Good Life’s “Aged Provolone” was terrible), with a smooth, firm texture and full flavor. We enjoyed eating it in chunks and on crackers, but it would also serve well sliced thin on a sandwich. Kevin noted that on the grand scale of Provolones, it was on the mild side.
The Italico, an ivory-colored cheese with a thin whitish rind, was quite soft and had a delicate flavor.
The Fontal was a bit softer than the Italico (spreadable when room-temp) and had a much more pronounced flavor — Kevin’s favorite. I thought it was like a strong Brie — very nutty, earthy. The very soft red rind had an even stronger flavor, but we found it to be enjoyable. Though Cheese.com equates Fontal with Fontina, this cheese is entirely different animal.
Grana Padano was probably Chaim’s favorite — he happily ate large chunks of this hard cheese which is akin to Parmesean. True to the description, we found it crumbly and well-suited to sit atop pasta or salad, or, like Chaim, eat in chunks with a good wine.
I also had a chance, a few weeks ago, to try some of KosherItalia’s other products, which were available locally at the Butcherie. Their gnocchi, a fun alternative to pasta, was tasty and easy to prepare — altogether equivalent to Bartenura’s gnocchi product. Their vacuum-packed mixed olives were fragrant and flavorful, but I thought they were much too soft (perhaps they were sitting on the shelf too long, presumably not a problem if purchased direct from KI.com).
All in all, KosherItalia is a great addition to the limited number of kosher gourmet outlets, and will be even better as they add new products to their selcetion — roasted peppers and other vegetables, Gorgonzola cheese, and Italian tuna in olive oil are in the works.
As with any site that sells perishables, the shipping rates can be daunting — but the quality of the products certainly won’t let you down. Just get those orders in before sundown Friday — the site actually closes during Shabbat and reopens shortly after nightfall on Saturday.
Some final suggestions:
* Bigger product pictures (and more of them)
* Detailed shipping information should be available before checking out
* Italian salamis, cheese-stuffed cherry peppers, and aged balsamic vinegar would be wonderful, if there are any kosher sources available
* Keep working on the layout, it’s getting better! Some of the colors clash on my screen.
* Fix the broken “osCommerce” image on the bottom.
The only remaining ‘missing piece’ of my first cheesemaking experiment is appropriate milk. The stuff in the store is all pasteurized and homogenized. Now, you may ask yourself, “Why aren’t those good qualities?” Well, they are if you’re drinking it — pasteurization kills any nasty bacteria in the milk, and homogenization assures that the milkfat is suspended evenly throughout the liquid.
Those processes also diminish the qualities inherent in milk that are beneficial to cheesemaking. The pasteurization isn’t such a big deal — though gurus say that the best cheese is made from unpasteurized, raw milk. Homogenization, on the other hand, is detrimental, according to this article by Robert Carroll:
If you must purchase your milk from the store, attempt to find an unhomogenized brand. The process of homogenization breaks down milk’s butterfat, which prevents the cream from rising to the top, thereby rendering it useless for making hard cheeses (the homogenized fat globules are too small to produce a proper curd). Homogenized milk can be used, however, for making soft cheeses.
So, even though I’ll be making soft cheeses at first, I’m still after a supply of unhomogenized milk.
My first useful discovery was a group called Just Dairy. They’re a big bunch of Boston-area raw milk enthusiasts who take turns driving each week to buy pasture-fed raw milk from licensed dairies in rural Massachusetts. Before committing to the group, you can try out the raw milk; then you pay in advance for a month’s-worth of milk, which is purchased on your behalf each week by the assigned driver. Small weekly dues are also levied, for group improvement.
Cyndy Gray, who coordinates Just Dairy, tells me that there’s interest in starting a new Metro-West drive-sharing group, which I’ll likely join sooner or later.
In the mean time, I’d like to find pasteurized, unhomogenized milk. Wilson Farms of Lexington says their dairy suppliers don’t offer any, and Crescent Ridge Farm of Sharon also doesn’t sell it. I’ve been pointed toward Peaceful Meadows Farm of Whitman, MA. No word yet on their milk. Will update soon.
UPDATE 5/2/04: Called Peaceful Meadows this morning; they no longer sell unhomogenized milk. I guess I’ll follow up with Just Dairy folks.
Cathy Potter at the Dairy Connection says their EZAL cultures (freeze-dried, direct-set by Rhodia) [photo] all have OU hekshers.
Unfortunately, their vegetarian rennet (Marzyme Supreme) is only certified in the 5-gallon container (they repackage into smaller vessels). At $63.00/gallon, I won’t be pursuing that quantity.
Just spotted a Kosher cheese section at iGourmet.com — currently includes brie, boursin, swiss, and blue cheese. I’ve asked for more information about who certifies each product.
Perishable shipping costs (FedEx overnight) are consistent with other sites, starting at around $16 first pound.
[Using the link above to make an order helps support KosherBlog.]
UPDATE: Received details from iGourmet on hashgacha. Danablu certified by Bet Din of London, Frantal Swiss certified by Rabbi Schlessinger of Geneva, French Brie has been discontinued, and Barkanit (out of stock at the moment, should be back next week) is certified by the Israeli Rabbinate and the Rabbi of Gilboa Valley.
We left off, before Pesach, with a laundry-list of cheesemaking ingredients which would require attention in regard to Kashrut. Since then, I’ve discovered that a large segment of the cheese additives available are manufactured under kosher supervision. Manufacturers include:
* Danisco (cultures)
* Rhodia (cultures, microbial rennet)
* Chr. Hansen (cultures, microbial rennet)
* DSM (microbial rennet)
* Imac (cultures)
What has been challenging is finding a retailer that sells these products in consumer-appropriate quantities, and does not repackage them into smaller containers without supervision.
Fortunately, I have found one online retailer based in Canada that sells Dansico products in their original manufacturer’s packaging: danlac.com. The website is rather confusing, but with some help from the fellow who runs it, I was able to identify the products I need for my first cheesemaking attempt: mesophilic starter culture and microbial rennet. He also provided me with the requisite kashrut documentation, just to be certain.
The special equipment I’ll need at first (dairy thermometer and butter muslin) I can get from New England Cheesemaking Supply.
So far, so good.
Thanks to Amazon, I grabbed copies of Home Cheese Making (Carroll/Werlin) and Making Great Cheese At Home (Ciletti) in no time (their 3-7 day USPS shipping got them to me in much less time than 3 days). Both were easy and enjoyable reads. Carroll seems to be the classic cheesemaking primer (now in its third edition), and the author’s expertise is apparent — Ricki Carroll has run the New England Cheesemaking Supply Company in Ashfield, MA for 25 years. Ciletti is also a top-notch book, the strengths of which are its full-color photographs of cheeses and the cheesemaking process, plus its entertaining first chapter on the history of cheese. Ciletti, however, is lighter on the “scientific” details — only 17 pages of background before getting into cheesemaking recipes. Carroll weighs in at around 60 pages of background, detailing every aspect of the craft — milk selection, rennets, bacterial starters, flavoring additives, equipment, and technique — with tasteful line drawings to illustrate key topics. Together, it seems the two books offer a solid foundation for the newbie cheese maker.
Probably after Pesach, I’ll do as both cheese guides instruct and start with simple, soft cheeses (tday and dlevy recommended paneer and ricotta).
Keeping an eye out for the more-involved varieties down the line, I’ll assemble here a list of ingredients that may require some fancy Kosher footwork to acquire.
Milk
Some say the best cheeses are from fresh, raw milk — that’s un-pasteurized and un-homogenized. If I can find minimally pasteurized, un-homogenized, it’ll be a coup. Time to scour the local farmstands for something closer to nature than Hood and Garelick Farms.
Starters
There are two predominant types of “starters” which convert the lactose in milk into lactic acid, starting the cheese development process: mesophilic and thermophilic. I currently have no idea what the kashrut status is of these bacterial additives.
Rennet
Rennet coagulates the milk and initiates the separation of curds from whey (the curds eventually become cheese). Traditionally, rennet comes from a calf’s stomach lining, but “vegetable” and “microbial” alternatives exist. I’ve already found websites of microbial rennet producers (DSM, for example, produces Kosher Maxiren, a genetically-modified yeast). Now to find people who sell it retail.
Lipase
It’s added to many Italian cheeses to develop a stronger flavor. Again, no idea about kashrut status.
Molds
Once I’m a seasoned cheese artisan, I’d love to try a homemade camembert (the commercial alternatives stink). Mold-ripened cheeses of this nature require special bacteria like Penicillium camemberti or Penicillium roqueforti. Not sure why a simple bacterium might not be Kosher, we’ll see.
Any leads? Post a comment!
