Pecora Dairy Fresh Curd

Fresh
Ewe's milk (East Friesian)
Southern Highlands
www.pecoradairy.com.au

At about this time every year, I get very excited about fresh goat's curd signalling the arrival of Spring. This year there's a new reason to get excited: the Fresh Curd from Pecora Dairy, made from ewe's milk.

Pecora Dairy Fresh Curd

As cheese-maker Michael McNamara explained, the curd is rich and earthy in Autumn, when the ewes are reaching the end of their lactation cycle, then re-emerges in Spring with fresh, spritely flavours, capturing the essence of the new season.

The pretty pat of curd has a dense texture, almost like cream cheese, and the sweetness of the ewe's milk shines through. At such a chaotic time of year, with torrential rain, lambing and the flush of new milk to deal with, it's wonderful to know that Michael and Cressy can find enough calm moments to create such simple, beautiful cheese.

The curd is equally good with sweet and savoury foods. I crumbled half of it on top of vege nachos - like an authentic queso fresco - and gobbled up the rest for breakfast on pancakes drizzled with honey.

Pecora Dairy 'Mezza'

Semi-hard
Ewe's milk (East Friesian)
Southern Highlands
random weight wedges
8 weeks-8 months maturation
www.pecoradairy.com.au

Most wine-lovers are prepared to pay more for an aged bottle of wine, but would the average cheese-lover fork out a few extra dollars for a matured cheese?

It's a dilemma many small cheesemakers face - how to balance cash-flow with a desire to produce cheeses that require maturation of more than a few weeks. Think of it this way - every 1kg of cheese sitting quietly in a cheese maturation cellar represents around 10 litres of milk that the cheesemaker has not yet made any return on.

Pecora Dairy 'Mezza'

At peak maturity of 8 or 9 months, Pecora Dairy's "Mezza" has all the richness, complexity and elegance of the best Basque-style cheeses, the best-known of which is Ossau-Iraty.

It's a shame, then, that most of the "Mezza" sold is barely a few months old. The younger version is a very pleasant cheese with clean, fresh flavours, but the aged version fills the mouth with toasted nuts and caramel and lingers with a hint of lanolin on the finish. And there's something magical about the very fine-grained texture, which is smooth and dense and utterly scoffable.

(Scoffable, by the way, is not a technical term, and unlikely to have been used by any of the judges who recently awarded Mezza a gold medal at the Sydney Royal Cheese Show.)

So my plea is two-fold: please, wonderful cheesemakers, have the confidence and patience to give your beautiful cheeses the time they deserve to fully develop their potential. And please, dear consumers, reward their efforts by paying a little bit more for these cheeses that are aged to perfection.

Pecora Dairy 'Jamberoo Mountain' Blue

Blue mould
Ewe's milk (East Friesian)
Southern Highlands
~700g barrels
10-12 weeks maturation
www.pecoradairy.com.au

At exactly this time last year, Michael & Cressida McNamara did a really brave thing. They entered their 'Jamberoo Mountain' Blue into the Sydney Royal Cheese Show. With just under 1000 products entered into the competition that year, it might not seem like such a bold move, but here's the thing: the McNamara's had not yet sold a piece of their precious blue cheese.

Pecora Dairy
'Jamberoo Mountain' Blue

They had, however, been making cheese for over 6 years, with around 150 experimental batches, before building the confidence to launch their creation. Their hard work and determination to make an excellent product paid off, when they won the only Gold Medal in the entire class of Sheep's Milk Cheese in the show.

As a judge at that show, I recall being excited and intrigued at this exquisite blue cheese that I'd never come across before - and even more excited when I learned that it was made by a new producer from NSW.

'Jamberoo Mountain' Blue's character is still evolving, but the most recent batch I tried had delicate flavours of white flowers and apricots, with that tell-tale sheep's milk sweetness. The texture was moderately firm, with a very creamy mouthfeel. It really is ewe-nique!

Pecora Dairy 'Bloomy White'

White mould
Ewe's milk (East Friesian)
Southern Highlands
100g discs
3 weeks maturation
www.pecoradairy.com.au

Isn't this the most stunningly beautiful cheese ever? 'Bloomy White' is the first of Pecora Dairy's cheeses available commercially in Sydney, the culmination of a six year labour of love by Michael and Cressida McNamara. 'Pecora' is the Italian word for sheep, and all of their cheeses are inspired by the ewe's milk cheeses of the French Pyrenees.

Pecora Dairy 'Bloomy White'

Under its delightful, ivory skin - with those tell-tale Geotrichum wrinkles - is a molten layer resembling condensed milk, followed by a very dense, rich and smooth white centre. As with all ewe's milk cheeses, 'Bloomy White' has a very rich mouth-feel and distinctive background sweetness.

Says Michael: "More than anything we wanted a cheeese that showcases the milk. The grassy, citrussy and cream fraiche characteristics of the milk really shine through.

"We spent a great deal of time making sure it looks beautiful and also offers complexity and uniqueness.  We like thinking that the multiple textures and flavours in this delicate cheese create a unique and beautiful cheese." I've no doubt there are exciting times ahead for Pecora Dairy. Watch out, Holy Goat - you now have some serious competition!