236 Liquid Cheese

Episode Transcript
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(00:02):
Just Cheesy the podcast,presented by Just Cheesy Productions.
Hi there. I'm your host, Fondue.
I'm Cheesy.
In this week's episode, we'regoing to talk all about me,Raclette,
and Vacherin
whoa
We're going to discussunderwater cheese
and a submarine.
Cheese rescue.

(00:23):
Submarine.
That's right. Submarine.
Whoa.
And of course, no episodewould be complete without our very
cheesy joke.
We love jokes.
Stay tuned for episode LickLiquid Cheese on Just Cheesy the
podcast.
I can't actually tell you why,but there's a fact that actually
surprises me every time I hearit. Every piece of cheese you have

(00:43):
ever eaten is mostly water.According to Dairy Craft Pro, Fresh
ricotta is about 70% water.Fresh mozzarella is about 60%. Cream
cheese, 55 to 65 cheddar comesin at about 36 to 39%. And Parmesan,
one of the hardest everydaycheeses, is still around 30% water,

(01:04):
even after years of aging.
Wow.
And in the life of a cheese,you're really talking about the story
of water leaving.
Oh, yeah.
According to cheesescientists, when the milk curds are
formed, they're cut intopieces. The smaller the cut, the
more surface area, the morewhey escapes. A cheese like feta
is cut when it's almost rockhard, specifically to trap the moisture
inside. Parmesan curd is cutwhen it's barely set, specifically

(01:27):
to let moisture escape.
Oh, wow.
In a cave, a little more waterevaporates, and the longer the cheese
ages, the denser and moreconcentrated the flavor becomes.
And water in the form ofhumidity is also super important.
According to Wikipedia,Roquefort needs specific limestone
caves in southern Francebecause the humidity there is exactly
right for the blue mold togrow. Gruyere needs Alpine humidity.

(01:50):
According to Dairycraft Pro, a1 to 2% difference in moisture content
during aging can completelychange the texture and flavor of
the final cheese.
No way.
Now, let's talk about cheesesthat are meant to stay liquid or
become liquid.
Okay.
There is a French cheesecalled Vacheron Mont d'or, and according
to Cheese professor, it'scalled the Holy grail of French raw

(02:13):
milk cheeses. It's onlyproduced between August and March
in the Jura Mountains ofFrance and Switzerland. It uses milk
from cows that spend thewinter eating straw and fodder rather
than grazing on pasture.
Wow.
It's the winter diet thatmakes the milk richer and fattier.
And according to Wikipedia,when fully ripe, this cheese does
not get sliced. It doesn't. Itgets scooped with a spoon.

(02:37):
With a Spoon.
The interior at roomtemperature is described as just
liquid enough to require aspoon, but not so liquid it won't
hold some shape on a plate.I've not had the opportunity to try
it, but this thing sounds fancy.
ooh la la
It's wrapped in a strip ofspruce wood harvested from the inside
layer of a Norway spruce tree.Not the bark, the actual in between

(02:57):
layer. Really this wood holds the cheese together as it ripens
to near liquid softness, andit gives the flavor of pine. When
it's served the traditionalway, the top rind is removed and
and you spoon the interiordirectly onto crusty bread.
Yum.
Or you can take this thing,you can bake it for about 15 to 20
minutes until it becomescompletely liquid and serve it as

(03:18):
fondue.
Yum.
And speaking of me, fondue,the word that literally comes from
the French verb to melt.Fondue is so smooth and you can put
it on virtually anything.
Yeah, you can.
According to Wikipedia, thefirst known recipe for modern cheese
fondue, which was cheese andwine with no eggs, was published
in English 1875. And it wasalready being described as the Swiss

(03:41):
national dish. And accordingto Food Republic, the Swiss Cheese
Union promoted fondueaggressively in the 1930s as a way
to increase cheese consumption.
Aggressive.

(04:42):
And this continued after WorldWar II, sending fondue sets to military
regimens and even organizersacross Switzerland. And as we all
know, it was introduced toAmerican audiences in the 1964 New
York World's Fair at the SwissPavilion's Alpine restaurant. And
if you look at any foodmagazines from 1970s, you can tell

(05:02):
it was a cultural phenomenon.The Swiss Cheese Union is not a sponsor,
but if it was, the ad would goright here. There's another melty
cheese that I love calledraclette. And according to Food Republic,
references to melting raclettestyle cheese in front of a fire go
back all the way to 1574 inthe Swiss canton of Valais.

(05:24):
Holy cow.
The word raclette comes from aFrench word. Raclair Rackler. I'm
not sure, meaning to scrape.And according to Wikipedia, traditionally,
cow herders carried the wheelsof cheese with them while moving
cattle up and down a mountain.In the evening, they would hold the
cheese near a campfire tosoften and then scrape the melted
part directly onto bread. Theelectric raclette machine was invented

(05:47):
in the 1950s and this is howit became a tabletop dinner party
staple. There is anothercategory of semi liquid cheese that
I think is amazing. It'scalled fromage fort and the name
literally translates as strongcheese. According to farmstead cheeses.
It originated in Lyon, France,where home cooks would collect all

(06:08):
the scraps and leftover bitsof cheese in the house, blend them
together with white wine andgarlic, then they would press the
mixture into a jar to fermentfor a week or more in a cold cellar.
Nothing got wasted. Every endof brie, every heel of gruyere, every
crumble of blue cheese becamesomething completely new and yummy.

(06:29):
W a modern approach to makingcheese with water called sous vide.
This is a cooking method thatuses a precisely temperature controlled
water bath to cook or preparefood in a sealed bag. According to
Lifehacker, it turns out youcan make fresh cheese this way, heating
milk to the exactly righttemperature in a water bath to curdle

(06:51):
it into a soft fresh cheesewithout the risk of scorching it
or overheating. This nextstory of underwater cheese makes
me think we need a new segmentcalled chaotic cheesers, something
like that.
Yes, please.
According to the CBC and theGlobe and Mail, in 2004, Luc Boivin,
a fourth generationcheesemaker in Quebec heard a story.

(07:12):
A fisherman apparentlyreported he reeled in a piece of
Boivin cheese from a lakebottom and then he tried it.
Grody, right?
I'm not thinking, huh? Let'sdrop that into a lake and then scoop
it back out and try to eat it.
Ew, no.
So as the story goes, thefisherman reeled in a piece of cheese
from the lake bottom. He triedit. He pronounced it the best cheese

(07:32):
he'd ever tasted.
Uh Ok.
Luc of course, believed thatthe pressure and cold temperature
of deep water could enhancethe aging of cheddar in ways that
nothing on land couldreplicate. This guy Luc, he apparently
goes all in. According to CBC,he dropped 10 barrels of cheddar,
each one valued at $5,000.

(07:52):
Holy cow.
He drops it into a cove calledoh boy. Babe des Ha!Ha!. And yes,
it has exclamation marks atthe the officialname.Thebayis namedafter
theHahariverand Ha!ha! rivernamefromtheFrenchworHaha,a the French
word Ha-ha, a Anyway,heleavesthecheese at50meters depthfornearlyayear.

(08:14):
A year.
Then he sends down some diversto retrieve it and guess what? The
cheese is just gone. Accordingto Globe and Mail, the barrels had
disappeared completely.
Oh boy.
They got the commander of aCanadian forces submarine to help
submarine. The submarinedeployed state of the art sonar equipment
and divers returned to the Bayof Haha 8 times.

(08:36):
8 times.
The search didn't stop there.A million dollar multi-beam sonar
device was brought in from thedevelopment center in ocean mapping.
But the cheese, it was never found.
Where'd it go?
Well, the most popular theoryis that the anchoring cables got
caught in the winter ice andthe barrels were carried downriver
into open ocean. $50,000 werespent searching.

(08:58):
Holy cow.
According to UPI, the CanadianFood Inspection Agency had already
declared the cheeseunsellable, even if it had been found
because it had not beeninspected. Required stages during
aging. But Luc, of course, wasundeterred. According to the cbc,
he immediately announced plansto try again. And he wanted to do

(09:19):
it again in a stainless steelsubmarine type vessel with GPS tracking,
of course, attached. Ofcourse, I didn't find any information
about that second attempt byLuc. And if anybody knows, if there
was one, please let us know.
I'm ready for a joke fondue.
Okay. Why did cheese sit bythe lake?
I don't know why.
Because it wanted to Brie-lax.

(09:41):
That was silly.
Yep, another silly one. And ofcourse, it was a little bit cheesy.
Thanks for listening to JustCheesy, the podcast episode Liquid
Cheese.
Thank you.
Make sure to help us out,subscribe, leave us a review and
make sure to come back nextnext week.

(10:02):
And stay cheesy, everybody.

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