#TNCN Charlie Turnbull meets Julianna Sedli of the Old Cheese room dairy, Nestor Park. From her childhood in Hungary, to making cheese in Indiana and working with Neals Yeard, she started making cheese at Nestor Park in Wiltshire. We are tasting her Baronet, Jersey Curd, Wasabi Pearl and Truffle Pearl.
BROADCAST ON 23rd June 2020 – 8.00PM
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Old Cheese room dairy Episode Video Transcript
It’s Tuesday it’s cheese night. Tonight is a cheese maker special we have Julianna na Sedli or sedley depending on whether you’re hungarian or english um and we need to get some few announcements out there first okay firstly congratulations Tracy you are a grandmother is it abigail matilda or matilda abigail and weighing in at a very small eight pounds we can sort that out we’ll send some cheese over so congratulations Tracy.
So i’m on my own tonight uh except for Julianna na of the Old Cheese room dairy so let’s go find her okay Julianna where are you hello hi everyone nice to meet you Julianna nice to meet you charlie thank you for the opportunity it’s a pleasure it’s a pleasure so i’m looking behind you i’m thinking where are you north somerset i’m at home in wheelchair go on give us 12. show us your house oh well the house okay oh that’s a classic little it’s like everybody wants to live there that’s one of those cottages all those second homeowners secretly want to retire to nice it is nice it’s countryside it’s wonderful it’s proper countryside now i can see cows behind you are those yours the cows are the the farmer uh down the street and he has beef cows so he has angus and um i think it’s here for heffert effort helping out with pronunciation yes yes and these are the mothers with their little curves okay so the youngsters this year’s yes so therefore the pot at some point they’re not cheese loving derrick house no but i’m sure they will have their saying during this little enterprise because i can hear them moving around oh we like a little bit of background agriculturalness yes there it comes so we’ve got lots of people hello jane hello anna hello allison hello jesus uh hello trotsky i thought he was dead there you go um uh and welcome welcome to the uk welcome to talking cheese but giuliani you come from across the english channel where what was yours starting life i was born in budapest hungary and my family has been in farming for generations long long time um air balls and uh chicken for meat and before that horticulture and so on and on so i went to persevere that in university and after my year i saw well i did see um sorry that the screen disappeared i did see an opportunity to apply for um internship program and into the states and it was the agricultural area of states like ohio and indiana or kentucky and various options like greenhouses pig farms arable farms and undergo cheese farms have you had you made cheese for this point no never no i just loved eating it i i had always and hungarian cheese yes at that point were pretty boring because you had tropista or you had the farmhouse cheeses which literally a little old lady at the market selling her own cheese after she milked her cow one cow so it’s a fresh heart cheese and it’s usually flavored with onions or garlic or pepper and that sort of things but i loved it i i was always a big fan big fan of cheese and we have the pariniza the slovakian smoked one that’s really nice sheep milk usually again paranita paranitsa yes it’s like a snail they roll it up and and they smoke it and it’s quite delicious it is they do it commercially now quite a lot and it also made from cow’s milk as well as sheep milk but traditionally it’s cheap is it a soft cheese it is yes yes they do streams i’m not entirely sure how they do it they have strings and then they roll it up into a snail and it’s called paranita so we’ll we’ll have to show some pictures or look it up or uh i’m not very good at that i need to know snail cheese that is a definitely a new one so if anybody out there has come up paranitsa snail trees yes we need pictures that’d be awesome so but i mean i’ve been to sort of not hungry so much but further south to sort of the old yugoslavia serbia that kind of thing and frequently came across sort of old for transit flogging cheese out the back that they’d made themselves made themselves yes it’s very very typical yes now it’s changing we’re growing in selection and in terms of numbers of cheese makers so so it’s all um probably a little bit behind england quite a bit behind like five six years but but we’re going we’re getting there and there’s a lot and a lot um of cheese makers and interest in turning milk into um into cheese and we have lots of support from the government and uh lots of organizations like cheese of academia of cheese um we have the equivalent in hungary and lots of support and technical support available so uh things are growing looking up i briefly worked with francis wood at alan wood farms do you know who that is a bit south of you um but not very far um and she got buffalo from romania not very close to hungary but but they have a big buffalo milk um cheese thing happening in that part of europe is that something that was in hungary as well i’m not aware of buffalo no but mozzarella is very popular well that those buffaloes are very difficult to kill you can eat them they can pull your cart they were sort of the most multi-purpose of all of animals so that’s probably why they’re sort of popular with smallholders all right anyway let’s get on to what you do so you went to the states i’ve got you down here is working for caprio gabriel yes stephanie alliance with the jewish head yes they were making about 20 21 different type of cheeses fresh fresh chef and flavored some and more dry pan cheeses and and chases two different kinds one is the washrines monster francis and the hard um what kentucky tom is a penicillin rind sort of cheese lovely cheeses lovely cheeses that’s where you cut your teeth on cheese making yes yes i just uh eased in and the hard work to start with and that is right you’ve never made cheese before and now you’re making 21 cheeses yes easy i can do that by the end of the weekend sure right and you came back to the uk uh and where have i got you next i’ve got you you went to work for yeah yes that was my first uh thing um in england um i actually flew over for a trial day which was really really fun i flew over i did an hour and a half washing up in covent garden in the sink and then i didn’t did an interview with a friend and um and on my way back to hungary so it was just like pop across for a bit of washing up and off you go but i got the job i got the job uh and uh commitment i’m you know i’m not sure where the green footprint for the washing up thing goes not so good nowadays um but they you got the job yeah yeah i got the job and um i did usually cheese mongering at covent garden and when i was popped down to the cheese shift i met mary holbrook and that’s how i ended up at mary’s farm after probably about half a month i met her and she offered the job and straight away i was ready to go but i had my half a year to spend at neil’s yard and then moved on to mary’s farm well she’s a legend in her own dairy well she is yes yes in a dairy and in person everything yes yeah she’s a great farm which is where you are now probably about 15 miles further west yes slight farm is just under bath all right yes yes you just said go across from where we are straight across and um and there’s mary about 20 minutes from birth yeah i used to live there just after anyway previous wife um so uh when you go then then you went down to roger and pete yes yes white lake cheeses and again they were already making probably 15 different cheeses so there was quite a bit to catch particularly pete can’t help himself he has half a day off and he makes new cheese that’s about sums it up yes yes that was uh um quite hard work and uh again learned a few things and um then i i decided that i would really like to do my own cheese and um i work for pete and roger two days a week and i had a day and a half at the wooden organic dairy with david and james david and james and bartlett that’s it bartlett and they they helped me well still very close to you where you are now best known for their sheep’s milk jesus yes yes but they also had a few jersey cows and that was the interesting bit yes and they let me let me take about 60 liters a week and turn it into cheese and that’s when i started making butternut and they were very very kind super kind they let me take the cheese when it was ready to the farmer’s market and see how how people react and what they think and at that time there were um nilsia dairy as well uh tasting and uh bronwyn and randolph used to come down and and um do a little bit of cheese making uh together and um and then we established that the cheese can sell so i was looking for milk supply and uh when i was doing a farmer’s market for the bartlett brothers in kosher i met nastin park’s um farm manager who actually told me that there is milk quite a lot of milk if i’m interested and it’s an organic farm and it’s right um literally 10 minutes from caution and he put me in touch with james fuller and uh in a year time um they they converted the north carol shed into the to the old cheese room and it’s uh it’s a release and actually i’ve got old pictures from the 18 uh end of 1880s where the cows were collecting on the yard of the cheese room where we are now and they were being milked there and they were a lot darker uh in color jerseys uh compared to the ones best part there’s there’s the main shop but there’s also a like a little cheese shop in bradford about haven or something like that yes there is there’s a lovely cheese shop in bradford and even that’s christoph who actually used to own and run the course from delhi but when he sold it he took in a the cheese shop that’s the name in bradford and even so he’s one of our very local cheese shop and the nesting park is a the farm shop is on hold at the moment we don’t know what’s going to happen um the owner um closed it for the time being and we we haven’t figured we haven’t heard what’s next that’s very sad to hear it is said right i’m going to bring up jane she has told us that it’s perennic is that right yes whoa thank you jane so obviously um this is obviously a well-known thing now i’ve also got a question here from allison what’s that dippy cheese you’re eating so this let’s get the top off this is your simplest cheese isn’t it yes yes it’s it’s technically um milk turned into the simplest cheese ever kyle’s curd jersey cow’s curd but it’s really silky really creamy it’s got a pale yellow color compared to friesland and other cow’s milk and it’s quite versatile in what you use it it’s got a tiny tang of acidity at the end all fresh and ready to ready to as a child um i kind of grown up on this kind of thing not wasn’t jersey milk but we just crack an egg on it and a bit of sugar icing sugar and that was a sweet sweet thing at the end of dinner just crack an egg in it and put some icing sugar so i find this quite interesting cheese because it definitely tastes best when it’s youngest doesn’t it it’s the freshest yes yes however the shelf life is um pretty good if you’re um keeping it in refrigerated and um and in a sealed container we we usually advise the four week four weeks shelf life and so how does it change over those four weeks in flavor terms it starts um toward the end of the four weeks still with the four weeks we experimented it with a long time for many times um there is no mold growing on the cheese so that indicates the freshness but um toward the end of four weeks and onwards it starts um maturing on so you have the white penicillin mold covering start covering the cheese and you get that matte as opposed to shiny yellow uh matte yellow color so that’s indicating the cheese is being um matured so basically keeping it on four degree you you preserve the freshness but to a certain extent so when i know i used to sell a lot of rosary goat’s cheese which i very much rake lovely um and when you first get it into the counter the texture is much much much fluffier open and sort of mousse-like and that kind of thing and after a few days it begins to contract and after about a week it’s got a much denser texture with your with your code it happens but toward the end of the four weeks for some reason we we find it it keeps its freshness pretty well okay well good very good okay the next one you’ve got for us is wasabi pearl yes that’s uh that’s just the fresh cheese um and we we uh flavor it with wasabi wasabi paste is really what we use because we found out we tried the fresh wasabi from the wheelchair wasabi person and unfortunately we find if we grate the fresh wasabi on the top of the jersey curd it’s delicious no doubt but the flavor disappears it reaches a peak and then it goes away so we couldn’t um we couldn’t sell it with the curd for a longer shelf with a longer shelf life so we settled with the face focus can you see that people oh not quite good okay let’s have a look at yours oh much better there we are so there’s no there’s a slight greenness too there’s a slight greenness from the wasabi paste itself and it gives a little heat moderate heat i i like it overly overly overly heated but my husband is always the one who moderate moderate moderate i’ve never been very good at moderate me um but but it’s interesting because the first cheese i’ve had that’s used wasabi um and now i’m wondering why lots of people don’t you you could grade it from just a hint that sort of mustard horseradish moment right up to that wasabi peanut thing where all you’re tasting is is the wasabi i think it’s not you taste the wasabi it grows the wasabi uh strength and then you fall back onto the curd the cow’s curd so it’s quite a nice i think balanced um palette there and uh for that reason you can use it on nice crackers uh a nice toast would be lovely but we love it with bagel yes bagel and smoked salmon scrambled egg is our favorite yes that would definitely be good i don’t know that i agree with you i think i think that i get i get a little bit of wasabi but i think the cream then comes through but i think the finish is very wasabi i’m feeding that in the mouth that whole tongue experience but what do you get the or is it my maybe it’s my just my imagination but i tried it too but do you do you have the wasabi building up then disappears so you get to taste the curd so i’m good um but i’ve been you sent me kindly sent me two pots of this so i’ve been eating it all week and i think it’s delicious haven’t thought of putting it with smoked salmon so that is tomorrow’s job i technically lived off of um wasabi goat’s curd and wasabi in the states next door to the farm there was a guy who did his own crackers in his own kitchen and oven and he used to bring fresh almost every day and we got the fresh crackers and the wasabi squirted out from the tube and and wonderful interrupting your next chief okay right we’ve got one to finish with called the by brook but let’s go to your big number one your best seller the the boron all right go clean up the baronet all right now this is everyone see that and i’ll show the piece i have i have a quarter cut into so this is build i’ve read people like pong talk about this and the the word they use is rebel shot so let’s have a quick reminder what rebel shot is rebel shot comes from the hotel it’s very much the same size of this so 800 to a kilo um it’s washed rind but not heavily so so there’s still a lot of there’s moisture in the cheese but it doesn’t go gooey like in it plus and it’s particularly renowned as a really good cooking cheese you layered over things like um what’s that things like that and actually sits quite nicely on pizza as well um but this one is going to be made with british milk which means we’re expecting more cream more butter coming from the jerseys so this is what i have just not choosing to focus today yeah go with your camera so i think said people we’ve got a firmer center with holes appearing and a creamy just under the skin making that kind of squeegee elastic but even the firmer uh even the firmer bit i always refer to it as a crumbly middle but if you if you actually bite on it the creaminess is there well i find that whenever you take a french recipe and bring it to the uk you always get more butteriness um really we do all the pretty much universally but then again i like to generalize and make controversial statements and the large grasses and and grazing areas in england with all the rain and yeah well the feed is really good which contributes to the creaminess and fatness of the cheese isn’t it i really like this this isn’t revelation is not a good reference point it’s not it’s much more like the northern uh northern french than marijuana maybe or all maybe like a young apost the you don’t with a rubbish on get that difference in breakdown in the same way no it says it’s all the way breakdown and what caught me on robloxian is the the milkiness the creaminess the melting texture in my mouth it was just easy to eat so on the i know it’s got the classic boy’s feet coming with it with a hint of um cellar mustiness um what’s it almost like a bit of pork coming on there a little bit off didn’t hear the last word but inside you’ve got hardly any smell at all it’s it’s the very clean creaminess so do you think there’s any um competition for this in the uk what other cheeses do you think might give be similar to your cheese there are quite a lot on there quite a lot of washer and cheeses when i started nine years ago there weren’t many english was shrine cheeses at all i i always thought it’s millions a little bit of um a little bit of uh good uh durus and gubeen is what i had in front of my mind yes or the irish yes and um when raw rice started i think raw wright looked like a little bit like um like uh baronette there was similarity in color of the rind and texture and of core but i think it’s turning toward more of a washroom door as a as opposed to baronet and um there are there are uh canar canar gorf um i’m not very good at pronouncing i’m sorry that’s uh that’s another one and um there’s one in oxford oxford isis uh by the little cheese yes yes not many i’ve got some questions let’s start with hello why’d you name it baronette well that’s uh it’s it’s my landlord um so james fuller bt and when i signed the contract uh being hungarian i haven’t had a clue about um baronessi in england and i ask him on the spot what is bt stands for and he just made a joke of british telecom and uh kind of he walked away and i knew the time is up let’s go and when i came away i googled it and i found out about the baronessy at nastum park estate and james fuller is the fourth baronet so i thought that’s actually kind of a good uh good name for the cheese good story it’s a lot of better name than british telecom well there you go so i’ve got that you used to call it surreal yes or what that was the color when um when i um when i matured the cheese and i went away for a long weekend and when i came back and james and and david bartlett were looking after the cheeses i came back i went into the room and all of a sudden you see this bright pink uh colored uh cheese and the first thing that came to my mind was this is surreal really serious i mean you never really see a pink uh cheese in the rind like a bride i’m wearing a shirt in your honor it matches matting very good i wrapped my cheese to my shirt yeah that’s very nice i’ve got another question here um what a witch rose Julianna are you pairing with rosie um well i’m drinking uh a rose uh frantic quarter sort of thing um it is it is um i like i like mild matte sort of rosettes um nice color and and um not too strong but um i pair baronet usually with with a sort of oily and i like full-bodied wine um in general so it’s it’s usually um much more towards um i like forming being hungarian is definitely one thing i would go for i really like what is it called the wines the name is gonna add the window uh you have to help me out here is it or something um i’m not a big fan of tokai in hungarian it’s a bit odd i find it very sweet and um and i i’m not taken to sweet wines no no um no and then red wine wise is is usually a pinot noir i like a nice pinot noir or italian wine it’s definitely the the negro nagranero area and the primitive and how when i send it to to parents and family they do ask me about uh why don’t i start selling it in hungary but we didn’t really find a way but not like we were looking for it so if anyone knows anything um let us know be happy to send the cheese magic teleporting moment just makes it appear in hungary right i’ve got one last question here from claire um do you wash it in brine what is your wash it is brine solution salt and water and lukewarm sort of look one more temperature um i never measure the temperature but it’s boiling the kettle and then adjust it to a lukewarm in order so i can put my hand in it’s usually fill and touch i’m afraid yes yes i don’t measure the temperature with the branch solution i have to say neither the sword i measured it once and since i’ve been taking my um [Music] finger to try yes the water how salty it is so you don’t even measure out your brine solution it’s it’s by taste it’s by taste and it’s it’s what i um yes yes it’s by taste and if my husband prepares it he has his whole measurements in order so he’s a lot more accurate than i am but i usually just taste and feel and see the amount of salt goes in how much water i have in the bucket and just give it a give it a taste if it’s too salty i diluted a little bit more water but be aware of the temperature it’s not too cold and it’s not too hot do you ever have you ever considered using like a cider wash or a wine wash or a brandy wash um yes we did a cider wash we we’re not far from iford um iford manor house and they do music events during the summer and they have a lovely garden to visit and they do cider so we we one of the local pub recommended it to us and we wash the cheese in it and it’s really nice but i’m a little bit skeptical about washing uh cheese other than brine because i i really think you need to be rigorous with the amount of alcohol you put in in order to really taste the effect on the cheese because if someone tells me it’s washed in burgundy i i do want to taste the burgundy not just on the rind i i i like to have the whole effect so so i tried um when i started working at um at the ortiz room at nestle park i tried with um london um not london pride the the fuller’s brewery had the porter london porter which is like a guinness type of cheese a beer sorry and um my idea was to actually when i brined the cheese then instead of having it drying i soaked it a little bit longer in a porter but i diluted the porter so it’s actually had to work out how much of alcohol how much soaking how many hours you need so that it’s not overpowering because i went too far as well but at the end i had a really good idea about how much water to use and how long the cheese is being soaked in order that later on three four weeks you really taste both so they’re kind of in in balance but if i just carry on and washing the rind i am i lose interest very quickly because at the end result i don’t really taste what i’m expecting okay so you found what you like and you’re sticking to it that’s probably the best way to put it right you’ve got one last cheese and i can’t find this on your website does that mean that it’s new the buy book it’s on the website it’s on the website we’re selling it it’s it’s uh we sell it by quarters and halves and a whole kilo and it’s called by brook uh because it’s very close that the farm has a little area which runs along the the my books theme which runs around the corner and the corner of the farm and um it’s a kind of a mental style um cheese so you got the sweetness and you got the elemental texture not as big horse as you would imagine in a mental and a little bit of a gruyere finish because we do wash the wash the rind i’m not doing this for stupid reason it’s got the most wonderful smell it reminds me of a sweet dairy smell but also the smell of hay making when you’re picking up the the bales recently recently bail and dump it down and that smell of dry grass that comes off in june or july lovely we do make the cheese when the cows are out on the grass so not when they uh silage food okay so that’s we’re going to be able to take a picture of this because oh there we go that’s better so we’re getting lots of little holes coming up and those are being developed by the bacteria in the cheese yes it’s it’s a it’s a special bacteria for developing the horse but you you can find various uh bacterias regarding how many holes you would like bigger smaller so we were my husband were going on a moderate moderate level of horse it looks really pretty it’s moderate again your husband isn’t i think you know i threatened my mother no because it’s very difficult there aren’t many whole producing cheese in the uk but we’ve got one local to us in sussex which is mayfield you get that one so but i’m guessing this is what four kilo cheese something like that yes three point eight four and we’ve got this there’s a very good-looking rind here yes it’s lovely yeah very nice and you’re not wrapping it into something you must be washing it washing it initially i’m guessing yes we’re watching it early on and uh later on it just gets a little brushing on the surface so this is the uh alpine technique of more moons um where you’re building a rind using washing but then let it firm up and becomes a sort of a carapace or a or what do caterpillars use you know what i’m talking about to to to to trap the cheese trap the the air in the cheese and get the flavors to build up internally like a little cooking oven we we have a obiti wood um where is the cheese is matured on it’s it’s actually coming from somerset dairy uh from 1960s and we had to do a lot of work on it uh to to to save the boards and you can still uh see the the cheddar prince how they were sitting on the boards and matured okay i’ve got kaneko here asking how long has it matured hi hi uh three three three months minimum but we we like to keep it longer so so the one you try doesn’t feel very long yes three months yes so the one you sent me when would this have been made that was made uh wait a minute because it can’t be three months because it was made in in uh 27th 27th of march it’s coming up to three well it’s going months show don’t be asking anything i would have put about six on it that’s how fast it’s really good flavor development for only a three-month cheese you didn’t get much at that time do you get the sweetness on the on the palate yeah so you know i’m still getting some of that um uh some of that hay bits more strawberry now and i think there’s a strong umami element almost like a yeasty or something that sits in there with the with with the sweetness um who can we who can people buy this through do you wholesale this store locally at the moment luckily we have a country cheesesteak taken some in uh devon and uh tavistock topsham and uh and there is the cotswold pudding and pie company um in winchcombe near thirdly castle and yes and now there is there’s a mail order company who is trying to to get hold of and put it in their um mom selection box well these are amazing cheeses giuliano thank you very much for taking the time to tell us about them and asking the very intelligent questions our wonderful audience are pushing forward um they’re all fantastic if i had to choose my favorite i’m going for the buy brick um and the baronet is great well i’m very pleased i have a good one but this is the kind of cheese that i can just finish without actually noticing i’ve finished do you know that kind of one full moment that’s amazing cheese so well done really really good job such diversity as well thank you thank you we found uh during the covey we were kind of forced to get on to the diversity we always had baronette and mini baronet and jersey curd and now that we have the website and supplying local people uh we we managed to offer a little selection of our cheeses and this this i’m assuming if you know if you need to hold stuff back you could hold it back for three four five six maybe even even longer yes how long have you what’s the oldest you kept it for i think the orders we kept uh it was a year and a half ago and i i believe it was about six and a half months and a little bit of dryness appealed but that might be down to how we kept it rather than how the cheese was maturing naturally i think it dried out a little bit on the side so there was a little bit of crackness cracking have you noticed Julianna a that your husband is on the chat oh is he now no i didn’t i i don’t see who’s on that’s great i think the by brook box is i’ll put it on here we go [Music] there you go oh there he is well you see sorry big mistake five months you see i was right all along um and he’s made the point that it’s rubbed with olive oil and it’s rubbed with olive oil yeah and that again is about creating a a firm carapace for it to mature in in the middle loving that thank you kareem for connor thank you darling [Laughter] fantastic husband and wife note um and you have a little child of your own as well you have two children two children yes yes five and uh one is four to be in the beginning i’ve got a five and a three-year-old as well so to bring them out they can learn to make cheese together you know never too young they’re very keen they’re very keen they’re very keen on happy um helping him rapping they love the wrapping and sticking label side it’s basically christmas all right well on that note janelle i’m going to say goodbye thank you very much for coming on thank you for sending your cheeses thank you very much all the best thank you very much charlie and thank you for the academy of cheese as well and all the best to you guys all the best for you bye all right well bye said that too quickly right guys thank you very much for listening in Julianna a obviously a very experienced cheese maker spent a lot of time developing two really interesting in my opinion highly unique cheeses this one sorry this one no president in the uk loving what she’s doing there really interesting cheese and of course the revision style which i think isn’t completely inappropriate it’s nothing like a rebel shot it’s much more gooey and interesting with a really english milk taste using the jersey really a lot going on so great job add that to your repertoire have it next time you’re out for a pint and i’ll just wrap up by saying don’t forget to train with the academy of cheese i’ve got two spaces on my course on the first of july which is very exciting but i know people like patrick mcguigan are now um doing webinar courses as well very talented journalists don’t know why he’s coming over to teaching and of course that um who’s been on tonight she’s doing it as well but if you want to learn by the book there is e-learning as well so come learn about cheese find out about the beauty of the curd and i hope you have a fantastic week oh next week we’ve got rupert linton brendisa spanish cheeses loving that reduces a fantastic importer um rupert monica they bring in some really awesome cheeses we’re talking about central spain raw milk cheeses uh we’re gonna do a manchego we’re gonna do a more lingo more lingua malingo and a toddler looking forward to the tortoise barra particularly i love those tortoise those wash dry um vegetable red that that that that cardoon thistle really interesting cheeses come and learn come and taste get some for next week love you all see you soon cheers tonight is cheese night bye now and broadcast sorry forgot that
