226 Luck O' The Cheese

Cheesy and Fondue celebrate St. Patrick's Day with a deep dive into Irish cheese. We meet a one-horned cow, discover knitting needle cheesemaking, and find out how a Dutch couple changed Cork forever. And of course, we tell a very cheesy joke!

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Why is cheddar the most dangerous of all the cheeses? Because it is very sharp!

Show Notes

1. Bord Bia — History of Irish Farmhouse Cheese
2. Sheridan's Cheesemongers — Irish Farmhouse Cheese History
3. History Ireland — Food Exports from Ireland 1846-47
4. Ireland's Great Hunger Museum — Learn
5. Wikipedia — Great Famine Ireland
6. Wikipedia — Economic History of Ireland
7. Irish Central — Facts About the Great Hunger
8. https://letters.cookingisfun.ie/2017/01/14/tribute-to-veronica-steele/
9. TasteAtlas — Best Rated Cheeses in Ireland
10. Cashel Blue — Irish Cheese
11. Bibliocook — Cashel Blue
12. Culture Cheese Mag — Cashel Farmhouse Cheesemakers

Episode Transcript

(00:02):
Just Cheesy the podcastpresented by Just CheesyProductions.
Hi there. I'm your host, Fondue.
I'm Cheesy.
In this week's episode, we'regoing to celebrate St. Patrick's
Day and we're going to do adeep dive into Irish cheese. We're
going to talk about a onehorned cow, a unicorn. We're going

(00:22):
to discover knitting, needleand cheese making. And we're going
to find out how a Dutch couplechanged court forever. And of course,
we're going to tell a verycheesy joke. I love a joke. Stay
tuned for luck with a cheeseon Just Cheesy the podcast. According
to nationaltoday.com March17th is St. Patrick's Day.
Green beer and cheese.
I'd say historically, thisday's changed just a little bit.

(00:44):
I'm wearing green.
Oh, I bet you are. Yeah.Initially, this was a religious feast
day. It commemorated the famedIrish patron saint who brought Christianity
to Ireland. And it ended upbeing celebrated almost globally.
The article says holy cow andit's changed a little bit. It usually
involves copious amounts ofbeer and whiskey shooters and cheese.

(01:05):
They list here. It'scelebrated in more countries around
the world than any othersingle day national festival.
Holy cow.
And of course, the very firstparade held in honor of St. Patrick
took place in America, notIreland. The parade took place in
1601 in what is now St.Augustine, Florida. And today, the
world's biggest St. Patrick'sDay celebration is in New York City,

(01:28):
where more than 2 millionspectators line up on the parade
route. And everyone claims tobe Irish, at least for the day. But
just like everything else onthis podcast, the only thing we celebrate
all the time is cheese. Andapparently Irish cheese goes back
well over a thousand years.According to the Irish Food Board
website, boardbia, ie, Irishmonks were actually exporting cheese

(01:53):
making knowledge to themainland Europe as early as 620 A.D.
they exported their expertiseto places like Switzerland. And then
again in Munster in 668 A.D.whoa. And sheridanscheesemongers.com
talks about a 12th centurydocument. It told the story of how
a poet travels to thesouthwest of Ireland trying to rid

(02:14):
the gluttonous king of ahunger demon. It talks about a sweet,
soft, smooth cheese and afirm, dry cheese.
Yum.
They say when the Irish monkstraveled across Europe, they reintroduced
many lost skills during themedieval period, including cheese
making skills. But thattradition died out over the centuries.
Famine, land displacement,economic hardship. By the mid 20th

(02:37):
century, Ireland was primarilya butter country. What cheese had
almost completely disappearedfrom Irish farmhouse culture. Ireland
didn't simply drift towardbutter. It was a combination of economics,
famine, and export policy.Irish estates had long exported butter
and hard cheese through Corkto supply England and the Royal Navy

(02:57):
and the sugar colonies of theWest Indies. Butter was the more
profitable commodity. It waseasier to transport, higher in value,
and more useful, sold totrade. Butter survived as an export.
Farmhouse cheese making, whichwas labor intensive and local, did
not. By the mid 20th century,it had nearly vanished entirely.
It wasn't until 1976 thatcheese had a revival in Ireland.

(03:21):
Wow.
You see, Veronica Steele andher husband Norman bought a farm,
and then they had a cow. Thatcow's name was Brisket.
Oh, that's a name.
And brisket produced about 3gallons of milk every day. Brisket
had a little bit of anincident. She was bounding down a
hill. Her tail was waving. Shewas full of the joys of spring. And
then her brakes must havefailed. They said, oh, no. Apparently,

(03:43):
Brisket fell the rest of theway down the hill and lost a horn.
They had to put Stockholm taron the hole right through the hot
summer. Brisket basicallyended up a unicorn with only one
horn.
A unicorn.
But Veronica loved that cow.She produced more milk than the family
could use, and Veronicacouldn't bear to waste it. So she
started making cheese. Wow.And that cheese became Melene's,

(04:05):
and it sparked the entiremodern Irish farmhous house cheese
movement.
Go, Brisket.

(05:01):
Brisket. The cow is not asponsor, but if she were, the a would
go right here. Brisket. Theone horn cow may have saved Irish
cheese.
A unicorn.
But at the same time, a Dutchcouple packed up their lives and
moved from the Netherlands tothe mountains of County Cork. They
missed the cheeses of home, sothey started making it themselves.

(05:21):
And the result was coulier. Ido not know if I'm pronouncing that
correctly. Named after thevalley where they settled and it
became one of Ireland's mostcelebrated farmhouse cheeses. Wow.
This is. According totasteatlas.com they showed up and
said, hold my gouda.
That's right, they did. Now,let's talk a little bit about Cashel
Blue. According toCashelBlue.com, this is probably

(05:42):
Ireland's most famous cheeseinternationally. And it's the one
with a direct St. Patrick'sDay connection. It's named after
the rock of Cashel, theancient site where St. Patrick himself
began converting Ireland toChristianity in the 5th century.
Wow.
As legend would have it, inthe early days, Jane Grub made Cashel
blue by hand. In her farmhouse kitchen.
She did.

(06:03):
And she used something alittle bit handy, I guess, to let
air circulate into the wheelsof cheese so the blue mold could
develop. She used knitting needles.
What?
She actually pierced eachwheel by hand with her knitting needles.
It's like she knitted cheese.
The wheels were aged in theearthen cellar beneath the farmhouse,
which worked until, accordingto culturecheesemag.com, they were

(06:27):
advised that the Penicilliumrockaforti mold growing on the cheese
could actually undermine thestructural stability of the house
above it. The cheese wasliterally threatening to eat the
building it was trying toescape. You can say that again.
It was trying to escape.
And if you think that's odd,because proper cheesemaking equipment
was expensive and hard to comeby in rural Ireland in the late 1970s,

(06:50):
early farmhouse cheesemakersused whatever they could as molds.
That's right. They usedwhatever they could. The most common
solution.
What?
Large water pipes.
Really?
Sourced from local co ops.Okay. And According to Bibliograph
Cook.com the result is thattoday, Cashel blue is still only
one and a half kilograms,because the size was determined entirely

(07:13):
by the diameter of theoriginal pipes.
Wow.
Plumbing supplies literallychanged cheese history.
I'm ready for a joke fondue.
Okay. Why did cheese weargreen on St Patrick's Day?
I don't know.
Because it didn't want to lookblue. Get it? Didn't want to look
blue. Like blue cheese.
Yeah. They're getting bad.
Oh, I know. They're. They'reall bad now.

(07:34):
Yeah.
But they're always a littlebit cheesy. Thanks for listening
to Just Cheesy, the podcastepisode. Let's owe the cheese. Please
do us a favor. If you haven'tin a while, please make sure to go
to your podcast player and hitdownload. Also, if you have the opportunity,
depending on the player, makesure to like or subscribe. It really,

(07:56):
really helps our show.
And stay cheesy, everybody.