Difference between revisions of "The cheese ripening initiative"

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(Notes)
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==Notes==
 
==Notes==
One of the cheeses was also brought to the Maas’ shore (Natural Reserve Eijsden, Oost Maarland) to be given as an offering during the <i>Ritual for the New Moon</i> organised by curator [https://evaporable.org/About-Eva-Posas Eva Posas] with Aldo, Savas and Aliki.
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*One of the cheeses was also brought to the Maas’ shore (Natural Reserve Eijsden, Oost Maarland) to be given as an offering during the <i>Ritual for the New Moon</i> organised by curator [https://evaporable.org/About-Eva-Posas Eva Posas] with Aldo, Savas and Aliki.

Revision as of 11:31, 3 December 2021

Page in progress.
[[File:|thumb|]] At the beginning of September 2021, The Soft Protest Digest was invited to the Food Art Film Festival 2021, run by the Food Lab of the Jan van Eyck Academie. This year, the festival embraced locality. After more than a year of restrictions and keeping our distance, it was time to strengthen the ties with the city, the region, local chefs, beekeepers, and farmers.
Thus, at the beginning of August, Robin invited 10 people related to the Academie to keep samples of fresh cheese made from the same milk with same processing. With no information about the known ways to ripen cheese, they card for it for 1 month, using only their own judgment and fantasy. Starting from a local ingredient, this simple performance aims to envision how the slightest empowerment on food processing eventually increases food diversity and decentralisation.

  • The participation to the festival was constituted by:
  1. 🎞🎥The screening of the short film Landscape, soil, cheese and me (~10min), a one month cheese-making routine.
  2. 🎞🧀A tasting of the participants’ cheeses and the screening of a short video (~6min) where the cheese-keepers tell visitors about the cheese they cared about.

Production of the cheeses

The keepers and their cheeses

Results of the cheese ripening initiative
Cheese keeper Cheese keeping process  Pictures Taste and aspect
Aliki Cheese kept in its box with lavender strands around it. Dried regularly by opening the box with the net. Aliki-cheese-1.jpg Aliki-cheese-4.jpg Aliki’s care gave us a soft and creamy paste, with a beautiful bloomy rind. Its taste was delicate with a discreet lavender perfume.
Arvid Cheese wrapped in fennel leaves from an organic community garden. Kept in paper in box with leaking whey. Arvid-cheese-1.jpg Arvid-cheese-2.jpg Under a smelly and humid skin of paper, rind and fennel, we found a very soft and runny paste with strong pikant character to eat on bread with jam.
Asli After a bit of ageing in box, the cheese was sprinkled with kōji[1]. It was then kept in a plastic sleeve. Asli-cheese-1.jpg Asli-cheese-2.jpg Unfortunately we did not taste it.
“Ah no it was not so special ahaha! But what we could try perhaps is that the box I use to make kōji and incubate a cheese and see what happens.”
Ben Cheese kept in open box with net. Brought by the windows’ light when sunny. Ben-cheese-1.jpg Ben-cheese-2.jpg Among all the cheeses ripened, this one spent more time in the Sun, resulting on a dry and granular paste. It tasted quite like old hard cheeses (Parmigiano), thanks to the salts concentration.
Elisa Kept wrapped in its paper in the box. Stored in Gamal’s wood hut in the Jan van Eyck’s garden. Elisa-cheese-1.jpg Elisa-cheese-2.jpg After removing the sticky paper, we found a moist and runny cheese that Elisa was afraid to eat, but it turned out that its taste was soft and creamy, and she liked it!
Fazal Cheese was covered with coriander/carom seeds and curry leaves. Kept in open box with net. Fazal-cheese-1.jpg Fazal-cheese-2.jpg The strong perfume of curry leaves balanced well the salty taste of the crumbly paste, punctuated with crispy seeds.
Ignace Cheese was washed every week with Belgian sour beer. Flipped every 2 days and kept in moist basement. Ignace-cheese-1.jpg Ignace-cheese-3.jpg “It tastes like a combination of cheese and my basement!”
From the first look, its rind and paste looked gorgeous: not runny nor too firm, with a nice orange colour that happen to taste slightly sour and tannic.
Morgane Cheese was covered with clay and sage (one side). It was kept on a clay plate in the box, mainly in the fridge. Morgane-cheese-1.jpg Morgane-cheese-3.jpg Under the bloomy rind grown on top of the clay layer, we found a firm yet tender paste. After getting ride of the clay, we tasted its mild fruity taste.
Robin Kept in paper in box in fridge for 2 weeks, and in the Mush-room[2]. Robin-cheese-1.jpg Robin-cheese-2.jpg Unfortunately we did not taste it.
Wim Wim took care of 2 cheeses: #1 was wrapped in a fig leaf, #2 was covered with oregano. Both kept in an aerated box in the basement (to age meat). Wim-cheese-2.jpg Wim-cheese-3.jpg We found two very different cheeses: #1 fig leaf kept it moist, resulting on a creamy paste. #2 dried, grown a bloomy rind and tasted “goaty”, pairing well with the oregano.

Gallery

Notes

  • One of the cheeses was also brought to the Maas’ shore (Natural Reserve Eijsden, Oost Maarland) to be given as an offering during the Ritual for the New Moon organised by curator Eva Posas with Aldo, Savas and Aliki.
  • Aspergillus oryzae, also known as kōji mold, is a filamentous fungus used in East Asia to saccharify rice, sweet potato, and barley in the making of alcoholic beverages such as sake and shōchū, and also to ferment soybeans for making soy sauce and miso.
  • Jop Mens built the Mush-room in the Jan van Eyck Academie, in perspective of growing mushrooms in it. Unfortunately, the Covid19 related lockdown made it impossible for him to farm mushrooms. The cool atmosphere and the sealed plastic room constituted the ideal conditions for Robin to ripen cheese on site.