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.

Country Valley Washed Rind

Washed Rind
Cow's milk
Southern Highlands
Random weight wedges
6 weeks maturation
www.countryvalley.com.au

Country Valley has been supplying milk to local cheesemakers for many years, so it makes sense that they recently developed their own cheese range.

Country Valley Washed Rind

The cheeses aren't made at the farm near Picton - John Fairley and the team are too busy producing their delicious milk and sensational yoghurt - but made under licence by High Valley Wine & Cheese Co in Mudgee. If you turn over the Washed Rind cheese, you'll notice it actually has "Mudgee Rouge" printed on the back of the label.

The faint orange hue, and faintly pungent aroma, hint at the cheese's character. It's relatively mild as far as washed rinds go, but delivers a step up in flavour from their Brie. The flavour is very clean, without the unpleasant animal notes that can develop in some washed rind cheeses - testament to Country Valley's high quality milk.

Like their yoghurt, the cheese has a glossy, voluptuous texture, and is delicious dolloped on fresh, crusty bread, with a glass of something bubbly.

AusBuff Stuff Buffalo Mozzarella

Stretched Curd
Buffalo milk (with 20% cow's milk)
Mid-North Coast
110g tubs

Like many cheese-lovers who travel to Italy, Ian and Kim Massingham fell in love with fresh buffalo mozzarella. They were so inspired by the cheese that they purchased a herd of buffalo and the necessary equipment to make cheese, travelled to Italy again to learn from the experts, and haven't looked back.

They're currently making fresh mozzarella - and other fresh cheeses and gelato - using frozen buffalo milk transported from Cairns, blended with a little cow's milk sourced locally.

Lucky for them, buffalo milk can be frozen and transported very successfully, and the results are promising, with clean flavours and good textures in the cheese so far. They hope to make the switch to milk from their own herd "any day now"; when that happens, they'll be the only farmhouse buffalo milk cheesemakers in NSW.

You'll find son Nathan at several farmers' markets between Sydney and the QLD boarder, peddling their fresh cheeses, gelato and buffalo meat products - just look for the buffalo-esque moustache.


AusBuff Stuff
Buffalo Mozzarella

While we tend to think of fresh mozzarella as a summer cheese, the Massingham's herd produces milk all year round, and the cheese is available year-round too

So grab some late season figs, toss them in a bowl with freshly picked rocket, and tear the mozzarella into chunks. Dress with olive oil, balsamic vinegar and salt & pepper, and you have the perfect autumn lunch.

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.

Small Cow Farm 'Redella'

Washed Rind
Cow's milk
Southern Highlands
180g round
4-6 weeks maturation
www.smallcowfarm.com

Your idea of a luscious red might be a fruity red wine, or a bunch of ripe cherries, but mine is a gooey washed rind cheese. Like human red-heads, these sticky, stinky cheeses are actually orange, and are renowned for their bold personalities.


Small Cow Farm
'Redella'

For a mild introduction to the world of smelly cheese, try the latest addition to the Small Cow Farm range. Named 'Redella', it has the same smooth texture as their 'PetitVache' range, and the faint pungent aroma you would expect of a washed rind cheese.

'Redella' is intentionally mild, as it's based on a French cheese called 'Langres'. The French original is often served with Champagne poured over the top, which adds a little boost of flavour, but for my money, 'Redella' wins in the flavour stakes.

I'm also a fan of the packaging, a very French-style miniature wooden box, which prevents the soft, gooey cheese from spilling lava-like from the wrapper. It's unique in the Australia cheese-scape, and perfectly fits in with cheese-maker Mark Williams' aim to produce cheeses that are "special and different".

Highland Organics 'Fresco Pecorino' & 'Grana Pecorino'

Semi-hard / Hard
Cow's milk
Southern Highlands
random weight portions (approx 150g)
3 weeks / 3 months maturation
www.highlandorganics.com.au

If you haven't tried Highland Organics cheeses for a while, they're worth another look. Cheesemaker David Snibson took over as production manager in January 2012, and the range has expanded to include new cheese styles as well as unhomogenised milk and yoghurt.

David has changed more than just the packaging, and the cheeses are now of a higher and more consistent quality.

Highland Organics 'Fresco Pecorino'
(old packaging)

The 'Fresco Pecorino' is part of the original range, and is exactly as described on the package: a soft cooking cheese. So it's perfect for things like eggplant parmigiana, toasted panini and good old mac 'n' cheese.

Matured for just a few weeks ("fresco" is the Italian word for "fresh"), it has a supple, meltable texture and mild cheesey flavour, making it a great kitchen staple.

The 'Grana Pecorino' is one of David's new additions. It's essentially a matured version of the 'Fresco', with the recipe tweeked slightly to produce a drier cheese more suited to longer maturation.


Highland Organics 'Grana Pecorino'
(new packaging)

'Grana' is a hard grating cheese, in the style of Italian Parmesan, making it another great everyday cheese to have in your fridge. While David would like to be able to mature it for up to nine months, most of it is packaged for sale at three months maturation, to meet customer demand.

At three months, it has a wonderfully flakey texture and rich, savoury flavour, which makes my cheesey heart sing, as there are so few decent hard cheeses being made in NSW.

I just have one small gripe: if your cheese isn't made from sheep's milk, please don't call it 'Pecorino'. The names 'Fresco' and 'Grana' accurately describe these cheeses - and they emulate those Italian originals very well - so perhaps the 'Pecorino' part could simply be dropped.


Little Creek Cheese 'BBQ Cheese'

Haloumi-style
Cow's milk
Central Coast
Approx. 200g random weight packs
www.littlecreekcheese.com.au

Summer may have ended, but it's never too late to throw another piece of cheese on the barbie.

I discovered this appropriately-named "BBQ cheese" (aka haloumi) while judging at this year's Sydney Royal Cheese Show. It was the only gold-medal cheese in the Haloumi class, and I was delighted when I found out it came from this small producer on the Central Coast.

Little Creek 'BBQ Cheese'

The Little Creek Cheese team consists of Russell & Sue Parsons, and Sue's son Alex Nelson, and they've been making cheese in the old Wyong milk factory for almost two years. Milk comes from the Riverina co-op and the cheeses are sold at the factory and various farmers' markets on the Central Coast.

So what makes a gold-medal-winning haloumi? When seared in a hot pan (we don't use oil when judging), the surface should caramelise evenly, and the inside should soften without running too much. The texture shouldn't be tough or chewy, and the salt shouldn't overpower the fresh, milky flavours.

Little Creek's excellent example ticks all of those boxes, and comes with a catchy name too. After all, isn't it what most of us do with haloumi?