There are many perceptions of the rustic, bucolic lifestyle of the artisan cheesemaker. But the reality is very different to how the mass dairy marketers would have us see it in their advertising and promotions. Even the most boutique of cheesemakers in Australia has more in common with the hygiene of an operating theatre than a rustic shed in France. The reality is shiny, spotless stainless steel surfaces, an environment that can be hosed down, white rubber boots, white coats […]
Recent posts
How Cheese Got Its Stink
Cheese has been around a long time. Nobody is quite sure how long but perhaps 5000 to 12,000 years, probably originating from the Middle East where milk products were curdled and drained of whey and preserved with salt making something a bit like the fetta we know today. In Australia, cheese has been around since the first fleet. It is a mere 160 years since the first cheesemaking equipment arrived from England and the first dairy co-operatives formed in the […]
The Raw Milk Debate
Raw milk dairy is one of those touchy subjects that decays into political debate. It is difficult to get to the bottom of whether or not raw milk products are a danger to anybody. Many artisan cheesemakers, such as Nick Haddow at the Bruny Island Cheese Company [pictured], say not; the Australian Specialist Cheesemakers’ Association says raw milk is irrelevant; and Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FANZ) says it is downright dangerous. The truth is that in Europe raw milk […]
Boss has his head in the cloud: data back-up
CUSTOMER databases, accounts and records are critical to business and if this information is lost a company will grind to a halt. The problem for many companies is that backing up information is often too complicated and expensive to do properly. But Ruslan Kogan, founder of the online stores Kogan and Milan Direct has made it easy by storing everything the company does on servers on the internet, the so-called cloud. He says while many IT managers see the cloud […]
First In, Fresh Dressed
The most copied chef in the world isn’t necessarily one you’ve heard of. But when a chef talks about using fresh, locally foraged ingredients you can be pretty sure the influence is Michel Bras of the eponymous restaurant now run by his son Sebastien. Based in Laguiole, the restaurant is a three-hour journey from the nearest city and relies on seasonal produce from the Bras garden and ingredients indigenous to the mountains and plateau of the Massif Central in the […]
The humble olive: how to cure your own
Three years ago I went on a boozy winery tour with a busload of artist mates. Somehow along the way I managed not only to buy two small olive trees, but also two magnificent French oak wine barrels to plant them in. Once I had persuaded the bus driver to let me manoeuvre the barrels onboard, I also had to convince the other passengers to help me load them off and back on at every winery so we could exit […]
First truffle of the season
It was an urgent call to action the other Friday from Prahran Market’s Twitter stream: “Stop press! Black WA truffles in an hour ago! These were in the ground this time yesterday! Damian puke (sic) mushrooms” Pretty soon I was on the tram from South Melbourne to pick up the car in St Kilda. The tram terminating at Mart 130, I marched across the Albert Park and was drenched for the first time that day to pay $60 for 15 […]
This is why I blog with knobs off
This is why I blog. To tell people stuff that they won’t find in the newspapers or glossy magazines, like the time I told you that expensive Miele cooktops are crap simply because they are badly designed. Now thanks to a house sitting stint, I can reveal that Smeg cooktops are just as bad. The problem is that the knobs sit higher than the trivets. And that means in the panic of pans rattling across the cooktop, the knobs snap. […]
The food and wine conversation on the web
The food and drink conversation on the web View more presentations from Edward Charles.