World Cheese Tour

Cheese is one of the oldest food products known to man. Ancient Mesopotamian legend suggests that cheese was one of the Seven Foods of the Gods: a gift bestowed upon mankind, along with fire, the wheel, and cellular phone technology. I personally don’t buy into such silly superstitions. It’s very clear that early man gained his original cheese-making knowledge directly from dinosaurs.

In all reality, no one can actually pinpoint the origin of cheese. According to Wikipedia, “it is probable that the process of cheese making was discovered accidentally by storing milk in a container made from the stomach of an animal, resulting in the milk being turned to curd and whey by the rennet from the stomach.” Mmmm! Hand me another slice of pizza!

From its misty origins, cheese spread like a … like a … like some kind of cheesy plague. It passed from empire to empire, kingdom to kingdom, realm to realm until the entire civilized world was now finally able to smile correctly for photographs.

Me? I love cheese. Not all kinds, mind you, but enough to make a worthwhile discussion. So fasten your seat belts and don your cheddarhead hats. We’re taking a World Cheese Tour.

We begin with cheddar. Wonderful, wonderful cheddar. Here are three facts about cheddar most people (er, okay, most Americans) don’t know. First, it’s named after a town in England. Second, it’s not naturally orange in color. And third, you’re not supposed to eat the wax casing.

While cheddar is easily the most widely known variety of cheese, we all know the most important cheese is Mozzarella. Why? I can sum it up in five words: pizza, lasagna, pizza, pizza, and lasagna. And if that isn’t enough, I’ll give you two more: Mozzarella sticks. I don’t want to think of life on earth without it.

And as long as I’m on the topic of Italian cheeses, I must talk about Parmesan cheese. See the cheese pictured here? Not Parmesan cheese. You may have grown up thinking this was Parmesan cheese. (After all, they print it in big letters right on the Comet-green can.) But this is a can of sawdust. Avoid.

Swiss cheese was made for turkey sandwiches. If you find yourself in some other Swiss cheese usage, you’re doing it wrong. I mean You can’t really make pizza out of it. No one deep fat fries it. You won’t find it at Taco Bell. And I don’t think anyone’s ever made Mac-n-Cheese out of it. Just turkey sandwiches, folks.

American cheese is better than Swiss because it has two applications. American cheese is for grilled cheese sandwiches. American cheese is for cheeseburgers. Under no circumstances should you attempt to use American cheese for anything else. I’ve heard tell its made from milk but have not been able to confirm this.

The last cheese on our stop is Venezuelan Beaver Cheese. This delicacy from from the East Shores of the Western edge of Northern South America has a long and wonderful history. It is also quite expensive! Gathering beaver milk, as one might guess, is a very dangerous business. It is readily available in most (but not all) London cheese shops.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this brief tour of world cheeses. If so, I can assure you there will be more. If not, well, next week I’ll just have to talk about some other craft we learned from dinosaurs.

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