TNCN with Charlie Turnbull: Charlie talks washed rind cheeses from Ireland. We are looking at Milleens, Durrus and Gubbeen, the powerful front row of Irish washed rind cheese.
BROADCAST ON 9th June 2020 – 8.00PM
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Washed rind cheeses from Ireland Episode Video Transcript
Good evening everybody, it is Tuesday night it’s Cheese night, now I am so excited about tonight for purely personal reasons I’m on a diet and I’m allowed out of my diet to eat cheese and not only do I obviously love cheese in a general and completely awesome way but this is like my only it’s right the cheese no she’s like what’s our subject today our subject today is stinky cheese
Stinky cheese is the washed-rind cheese’s and what better place to go then going to look at the foot of Ireland now Irish cheese making is amazing they have some of the most awesome pastures in the whole of Europe and they have been dairy cattle in for thousands of years but in the foot then if you ever looked at Ireland it looks like a kind of a koala bear and its foot the bottom pour as little place down of all this and peninsulas down there in the county of cork and we’ve chosen thanks to Sheridan’s to have a look at three awesome cheese makers part of the Irish cheese donation Renaissance very pop like our across the channel for his Czech Bristol Channel cheese and a sauce Brittany and she’s making his Moline gubbeen and Duras and we’re gonna look at those where they’re on the map in a second but in the meantime let’s get Tracy she’s gonna pop in do all the admin stuff which I’m very bad at and bring on say hello so hello Tracy are you there he’s night week yeah good week so far it’s only Tuesday so we’re still trucking along we’re very pleased that we’ve launched watch again British cheese weekender so all those awesome videos that went over the three days of the early may bank holiday we’ve managed to rescue how many is it [Applause] five of them twenty-six of them some of the some of the presenters bless them they’re better at she’s making than at Tech and videoing so we’ve lost a few videos yes they they went into the ether there’s another 1950s BBC well I think they were concentrating on their amazing knowledge and showmanship on the night so well we were lovely do we have the moment and some things just have to be consumed and memory molecules only so that’s the latest but you’ve got 26 for a swatch and you’re going to be sharing about them that’s good there was great success that we were very pleased yeah we amazing amount of people got to see it we had a recipe from His Highness the Prince of Wales which carried it on on the Sunday onwards and many of the cheese makers of back up and making so that’s great that’s what we wanted we could use a facet of good news stories Tracey I understand you will be a grandmother shortly is that right yeah my eldest daughter is due in a week tomorrow so maybe leave it sorry your bag packed not yet but I know what I need I don’t think she’s when we start tasting these in a second but let’s talk about a bit of training so that people know where to find the best cheese knowledge in the world we’ve got our e-learning coming up and we’ve got not only am i doing my webinar courses which next one starts on the 1st of July I think but we’ve got Patrick McGregor coming online to do webinars and kanuk oh and she is a chance the good people of Japan so she’s gonna be teaching Japan cheese from London is there yeah sure so she’s gonna be teaching she’s doing some master classes to warm up with the Japanese retailers cheesemonger in Japan but she will be training the level 1 courses in the academy level 1 course virtually like you’re doing as a webinar to people in the UK or in Japan and she’s she’s fairly piling all social teach in Japanese on English so you can learn a little bit more English if you are Japanese so very exciting brilliant because we still haven’t managed to get the classroom courses back obviously yet borås though he let us doing it by the end of the week you know it’s all going to go wild well and Patrick’s gonna do it I don’t know where Patrick is at the moment but I’m very competitive with you panic Patrick my course is about it just saying you know and refute that if you like but I’m better than you are right you let me get on to the to the good people of corks wonderful smelly this is a Roma coming up right now yeah I bet you’ll bet your wife’s really happy and your children your girls with all the smells from that fridge no good like for with some cheese and hear all about these wonderful Irish tunes oh I know what I do need to say is after all Malloy you we’ve got two training partners in Ireland so after all is the Irish school of cheese and she’s telling me about there is a wonderful Irish interactive map of Irish cheese’s let me just give you the website in fact I’ll post it up in the chat it’s Irish cheese dyi and it’s an interactive map of all the Irish cheese’s so that’s fantastic and then our other training partner in Ireland is Sheridan so we’re just waiting on the classroom courses coming back and then those classes will be carrying on in Ireland okay so sure okay I love that book say it’s blood hey pretty good I have been doing my research on it and that kind of thing to make sure that I’m not gonna talk completely linear all the way through this little 30 30 minute session um but so recommended Kevin and Seamus Oh awesome thank you very much Tracy it’s lovely to see you ain’t good luck with your with your with your grandchild grandchild of one okay let’s talk cheese I’ve cause here we’ve got some nice people there hello Claire hello Alice Alice and I got your let’s see if we can do that beautiful cheese board from Neal’s Yard which I’m looking at now I can’t make appear on my screen we’ve got some kaliya awesome cheese we’ve got some casual blue which is one of my awesome favorites of the bruiser soft mr. mrs. grub which we should feature that’s great cheese and you’ve got some of this which is the gubbeen as well there we go can you see that people Wow look at that cheese this is an amazing character come on you can focus there we go we’re seen some folks now now this it’s like it’s like thick hoagies go on there now let’s talk about Ireland but I want to taste first so the Irish have awesome pastures okay that’s really what sets them apart in terms of dairy and they’ve gone they’ve got a fascinating history fascinating we’re touching it a second but it basically goes back Neolithic times now Neolithic is so six and a half thousand years ago maybe a bit more depends it basically is that tipping point by between when we go from Stone Age into metallurgy the Bronze Age and iron age and that happened in different parts year for different times but we were seeing in Ireland dairy farming back then and where there’s dairy there is cheese all you have to do is let pint of milk go off cheese brilliant and that dates back to the time when you were putting curd in strainers little pots with holes in and that kind of thing but they would have been using not just pots that have been using breeds to make the strainers so iron has a very old history of cheese making but as will discover it went a bit sideways okay number one okay we’re gonna do these in no particular order except for we’re going with alphabet if I start with Doris now Doris cheese is there is a all three of our washed-rind now this one is sort of I think this one I’ve got here is closest from a I’d know French perspective I suppose to the Mahal of northern France nord-pas-de-calais alright can you see that what we’ve got here is that kind of orange you see the lattice work there and the lines underneath where it’s sat on it’s on it’s shelves now the making of washed-rind cheese’s is fascinating so you need any any cheese can be washed rind but to get the gooeyness and what you’ve got there that kind of soft open texture you need quite a lot of moisture in there so we’re looking at soft cheeses cheese’s with over 50% well maybe a bit less never over 4600 50% water now in making washed-rind cheese’s you have a problem you need bacteria lots of it famously brevibacterium linens but we’ll come on to that you need bacteria so although we call these cheese’s washed-rind cheese’s in real terms they are bacteria ripened like if mold ripened we’re going like love love our mold ripen maybe in the East ripen to make up camera bears or Celsius shares and all that malarkey but the other option is to get some bacteria into the job bacteria fill up on to the cheese grow lots of funky stuff happening there I feel like that David Bellamy here I’m going to be honest and the cultures release those enzymes into the cheese to start breaking it down and making it this nice and squidgy oh can we see squishiness there oh that’s good a squidgy got now so it’s nice and screen not uniformly squidgy because as you’ll know you famous well-known cheese people this all comes in from the edge so the bacteria on the edge of doing the action which is why we’ve got that kind of extra squidgy top at the top there and the centre is going to be a little firmer because it takes more to get those enzymes into the body of the cheese now you’re also going to get with these washed-rind cheese’s and we can see nice little gaps opening up right the holes now holes come from bacteria or some other things but mostly bacteria kicking off and making making air like bread you know like beer all that stuff and it makes these shores smell is so fantastic and it makes the cheese open up slightly in this way right so Millie now my brie my brief tells me it should have a deep cuts deep pungency with cooked veg and yogurt so let’s go and find out now is anybody else game and got Moline out there Quinlan steel oh hang on a second you you you Queen Anne’s on this gentleman here are you yeah except sure mine so hi Quinlan he this gentleman makes this right okay famously downing I’m gonna mispronounce what’s the place where your where your farm is iris Erie’s iris on the beer Peninsula I think we need a map we’ll have a map in a second but this is fantastic and maligne is thought to be or considered to be the first modern Irish cheese um that was really naughty I’m computing my cheese’s I’m meeting to us Melina’s over here this cheese is telling me that we’ve got earthy sweet milk soil and a you have a sweet milk I love that smell but it’s a fermented sweet milk and there is a fermentation of grass it’s not quite grass and it’s not it’s more the fermentation of the day the dry fermentation mm-hmm but the other thing you get with washed-rind cheese’s and there’s a room about this nothing you get water on cheese is awful and meats sometimes pork and with this particular one I am getting back off on this which is delicious almost like a pate a liver pate that kind of thing there’s a lovely there’s lovely Welsh she’s a sling hmm what you don’t want is it to blow your head off with too much of the must eNOS that kind of aggressive farmyard knows some people really like that and I respect that if you’d like the cheese’s like that that is awesome but I find these I like to be able to taste the butter the cream that the full dairy element of it are not actually consumer mmm that is delicious so what do you know about dirt Jeff a girl started making it in 1979 in Kuhn keen and I think it’s time we started looking at a map so now as I said oh that there’s our cheese book where did that come from marvelous so let’s have a quick look share screen let’s stop that and bring on application chrome tab there we go okay so that is the bear opinion sealer so we’re looking directly west there so we’re looking out over flattish grounds going down into the sea and then the mountains behind now if I can make the magic work we’ll have a look at see if we can get the map up and that will give me the magic of there we go doo-doo-doo-doo right so here’s island down the bottom here in the foot of the koala we have our three cheese makers can we see that most beautiful country my wife has friends in Cork and I can tell you that it’s gorgeous as you look around here so down the bottom we’ve got gubbeen we’ve got Coon keen up here which is the the dursa we’re making this cheese here and over here we have got Ares now these are three peninsulas the sheep’s head Peninsula the the missus and and the beara peninsula these three ladies have all been making cheese since the since the 70s with the with Gianna Ferguson making of a cubby and making it since about nineteen eighties so we’re really talking about the recreation of traditional farmhouse cheese in Ireland at the time let’s go brew that here and go back to me now let’s look back at our s cheese making there is very strong evidence that five to six thousand years ago at the end of the Neolithic beginning of the the metal ages there were enclosed dairy farms now a lot of this because we think of beef as being the sort of premium product was thought to be beef back then but as people are reexamining than the evidence there’s strong evidence the beef was not a very good use of cattle not a very good news Astra and dairying was much more effective and in fact you can see that in in Irish history and the number of names and I tried to write some down here the extraordinary range now it’s likely the Eskimos and their thousand words for snow the matter dairy products the aeration so I’m gonna I’m pologize for abusing the art Langer but we’ve got tremenda we’ve got black we’ve got more makan tali fascia grata grouse thousands of different names for and these are all versions of butter milk and cheese and butter itself there are different names that they still have different names for butter at the lightest altar and a special all the heavy salt or inspection so that it would keep for longer and if you look at the sort of foreigners who came to Ireland to describe it there is so much talk about the gorgeousness of the Irish pastures and one of the things that sir this is I love this one plenty the Pliny the Elder Pliny the Younger said these are the northern tribes and to be fair he was talking about everywhere from Ireland all the way over journey so a lot of the northern tribes he called us nations of Barbary and butter eaters I mean I love that the idea that I’m a barbarian battery to which I am is fantastic and if you look at this emerging then cheese was the heart of it not just butter although by the 1700s going out of cork rubber was so much butter cork was the leading export of butter going out of Ireland and that was going all the way around the world to the sort of 1700s but interestingly it all went a bit sideways from then on and the amount of cheese being produced declined and declined and decayed and what you saw was a kind of growing myth that amongst the sort of the Irish farming folk that you couldn’t make birth you couldn’t make dairy products and you couldn’t do beef on the same pastures which is complete manure but people believe what people believed and it wasn’t until sort of the 1880s 1890s when cheese making began to re-emerge in Ireland as a force and by 1960s the dairying has become one of the major Irish industries industries and it really delivers on the potential of those awesome green pastures those pastures and now are cheddar and all that kind of thing I mean they did suffer in the same way as the rest of the UK suffered amongst our islands in that cheddar began to dominate big-time such an easy recipe to make so a bust last Lots a long time still lots of flavor but it began to push out all the smaller producers and that kind of thing and it wasn’t until people like Veronica steal that Moline people like John folks and have kabane people like Jeff Gillard Duras in the 1970s started rediscovering us and she’s making and made these acts of love that were going on down there so we tried Duras so jetha on it gorgeous I love them oh well I love this this is a fantastic cheese I really like it we’ve some one of the things about cheese Charlie cheese okay optometry we are going to go bean going back to our map this is just north this is down south and which peninsula was that one I’m lost Irish princess I’m sure you could get lost apparently even guess Irish roads the roads down in this area are thin and small and winding so what we’ve got is a very simple washed rind on the doors what you might call an early washed rind is stinky orange very smelly very sort of nasal and now we’ve got at the other end of the washed-rind spectrum now here with agra beam this is an old ago beam we’ve got a really distinct bunch of molds growing up through the wash now because the color this suggests that these molds and and that are local as in this is not a monoculture of pure Penicillium Candida most anything like that but it’s robust I mean it’s strong I might even just cut a bit off there to show you what I’ve got right it’s like a carpet that’s just you can build a house of this stuff but it’s it’s not like this which is very very sticky and fragile so so let’s get into our Gobi I love it and it’s interesting when you pull it apart rather than cut it you begin to see more of the structure of the curd can you see now in some cheese’s bigger cheese’s hard cheeses pressed cheese’s that kind of texture would be seen as a floor but this is not as just as a young Jesus soft cheeses and cheese and lots of water in it that open texture is exactly what we’re looking for again you’ve got that fermented milk you’ve got that rich buttery dairy smell but here we’re getting a little bit more dusty earth Murphy now a question you’re probably asking it hmm I think which is fantastic I’ve accidentally gone from to the opposite end of the spectrum here so I’ve got the youth I don’t mean young and in in in in in like history I mean this is a young wash dried that means talked about so now we’ve got an older wash right and this is just edging up into the moisture levels have gone right down we’re edging up towards almost like a and I want to say like a crumbly cheese because it’s got that dry open buttery texture but then it comes round with a creaminess of the water right now do you eat the right yeah it turns out mmm now worst right quite interesting on the rind because the the calcium migrates from the center of the cheese and forms little crystals in there I not always and not all cheese’s but some cheese’s you’ll get that effect so that when you’re tasting the edge it’s like it’s crunchy yes nothing like the calcium crystals you’re getting in the McHale sium lactate or those kind of things you get in the center of Cheddar’s or or gaudi’s or stuff like that it’s completely different and there was a geologist who came across these little calcium crystals on the right and found that the only other place in the world where these calcium crystals were formed was a deep-sea salad my things that were coming out of sea bottoms fascinate only other place where this thing was being called that and cheese cheese especially those okay so we’ve got this gabbing so here the the debrief that I’ve been given is forest mushroom milky nutty definitely in the forest mushroom hmm milky well there is a degree of milkiness to that but it’s more cheesy it is more cheesy it’s not got that fresh lightness in them nutty oh it’s lightly distressed for the word nutty nut she’s often used in so many cheese’s when actually it sort of reduces his identity it seems to approximate simply to mean it’s a good it’s an approximate maybe I’m just totally buff still think it’s good approximate to mean just a savory sweet combo and when you think of nuttiness and you think this tastes nuts just ask yourself can you name the nut because if you can’t then maybe it’s just sweet and savory which is an awesome combination but if you can’t name the nut then maybe nutty isn’t right word to use when you’re thinking of um and I’m not getting I’m not getting much of a specific note but it’s amazing and that keeps on giving keeps on giving hmm right so we’ve done we’ve done we’ve looked at the Duras we’ve looked at the Gabi nuttin and last on we have so let me just mention this this is a raised with me but this one was thought to be similar the cabina submitted to at Alicia now do you think that that is similar to Italy Jie now to my mind the answer is no now you can see that that rind has hints of Taleggio in fact the Penicillium rock 40 it almost looks like it’s beginning to dust the edge although that could be just delusion but that what way that the Taleggio has that a thick rind as well is interesting and it does happen but they but all these cheese’s have that wonderful meatiness now the last on our list is the Moline which is the Steel’s now they’re on the bear up and then serum now they’re talking like for meditate now that is some people would say that this echoes the oppose now does it doesn’t not well I’m not sure that I’d want to do this to Ana pass it would probably collapse in my fingers so but you’re seeing again that distinctive orange color of the washed-rind a little bit of dusting of mold on the top which may be Penicillium Roquefort in which you which you might well be it’s been that at some time oh look at that beauty isn’t that wonderful oh that’s the picture I want to sleep over cool stuff right trines the tricky you know why they’re tricky because the washing of the rind is an active process can we maybe focus so again we’ve got slight opening up of the holes that’s cool as the bacteria kick out the carbon oxide or whatever it is not so much but this one is gooey Alice if we can get a proper squeeze on can you see that so it’s gotten we are less disa TT all of that right okay need a bit of tissue no swinging hmm this has got the nose here we are that’s really now I love this back that’s all my favourite facts today quite a lot of favorite facts today like did you know my own favorite fact over here that where’s it gone a lady called meadow mid mid a bit but she was Queen of Oh Queen of Connor Todd you’re gonna someone’s gonna correct me this but she was killed by her nephew who threw a cheese at her right put it in a sling you know when those chaps like Dave and gosh boink killed by a flying cheese not this cheese I’d like stress probably need quite a lot harder cheese but that cheese goes right through Irish folklore like you wouldn’t believe anyway so effectively hmm bark is worse than his bite bite is buttercream that says exactly what it is a buttercream mm-hmm we’re beginning to get the grittiness in the rind I talked about weather migrating calcium mm-hmm and there’s no there’s no fear in the right varieties delicious mmm I’m getting flowers it’s got hints of almost a cheddar II note in that very very small note so that butter cream cheddar flowers earth meatiness what’s the meat it’s almost like a stock it’s like a it’s like a pork stock kind of flavor so not the awful notes it’s all the UM that’s really good oh right right so we have three Fanta these these ladies are mates right they know each other they’ve been doing it for nearly what 40-something years they properly creating something special down there in Cork and there’s lots of other things if you don’t know cork you should go that’s awesome cider down there for instance which goes very well with these cheese’s um and there’s absolute beauty in the simple direct from the soil own hurdle or neighbors herd into a cheese making production that is as far away from industrialization as you can imagine it’s all love it’s all heart it’s all people doing it I don’t want to say without ambition but that’s satisfaction of making a good thing well over your lifetime and these cheeses really reflect that I wanted to talk briefly about things like what’s the word bacteria where do they come from what they do I mean one of the things I really love about this for instance there’s a lady whose name I’ve temporarily forgotten but did an analysis of these cheese’s and the bacteria that grows on the top of them and they found a type of bacteria on this cheese the gubbeen that was found nowhere else they had to give it a name the Gabonese bacteria cool is that so there’s a lot of chat in cheese making circles that this is all about brevibacterium linens which I’m no doubt those people are in the know about but these things are cities with people with bacteria coming from all sorts of different places and the research done suggests that around 60% of the bacteria on the surface of these cheeses they don’t know where it comes from and it’s not because they’re all milk they’re coming from the surfaces of the cheese of the people of the animals the teats that you and actually that’d be this lovely phrase I came across it um this cheese’s these cheese’s are often said to smell a voice feet nice but the French ever is no dude the PA de dear the smell of the feet of gods now how cool is that you know these smell of the feet of God and it’s just I I I just love – my favorite favorite awesome moment so I would like to say that if you don’t know washed-rind cheese’s find out experiment they’re great there’s a huge family of awesome cheese’s and if you don’t know Irish water cheese I think you need to get on a plane as soon as your country lets you go to cook because it’s happening down there and they’ve been doing it so long it’s part of this part of their DNA so I’m gonna begin to run out there and I hope that you’ve enjoyed this day of Irish washed rind cheese they are things of beauty and I’m gonna eat as much as I like and I hope that you two have enjoyed them now I’m just going to check there are no questions from Tracy that you’d like me to to let me go who doesn’t love a good squeeze chiffon so right from Averill thank you very much Avril for arranging this you got these through said to me and bored beer which is like the Irish food board has sponsored the cheese thank you very much for Sheridan’s for supply if you don’t know the Sheridan’s Kevin and Sheamus they’re sort of big beasts is that fair word of the Irish cheese scene and they really know their onions and they you know written their book and what else we got um bum bum bum a beyond trace is there anything else you’d like me to to add before we wrap up [Music] No fantastic really amazing that I I hope you will need to wash your hands okay licking I’m allowed lick and washing hands but yes thank you very much to the cheese people of Ireland for supporting this tonight and and bringing a little bit of those views of the coast just look amazing we just all want to go on holiday please know we probably can I mean they’re gonna let us go to Ireland almost before anywhere else so why don’t we have a cheese Academy road trip that’s a little bit me yes please I’m up for that buddy for joining yeah pleasure lovely to see you all tonight and we’ll be back next week we’ll put what we’re doing up on the board somewhere come and keep stay in touch and wet stalk cheese next Tuesday
