Cheese It, Boys!

Cheese I ate today. I'm a fanatic of that one in the lower left,
a specialty of local cheese making expert, Barbara Jenness.

I ate some cheese today. Actually, it was quite a bit of cheese as far as variety goes. Have you noticed a trend when I discuss foods and beverages? They have all been practiced since ancient days and there are different varieties of them from all over the world. Bread, cheese, beer, chocolate, tea... Wine would fit nicely in this list.

And today the focus was on cheese. Fortunately we had a cheese whiz (thank you, thank you) come in and talk all about making cheese and different varieties. I payed special attention to this lady because one day I hope to make cheese myself and impress all my guests at a dinner. Yes, it is more of a hassle and more expensive to do this, but it's something I think we should all try at one point. Right? So let me go though the process of making cheese.

The Process of Making Cheese


Cheese, like all of the foods and drinks I've discussed (except for maybe tea), has its own special and intricate process of production. There are four main elements for making cheese:

1. Milk - Well, that one was kind of obvious. It needs to be acidified and curdled, which involves the next two.
2. Culture - Yes, you need some sort of rich heritage made up of peoples, arts, ideas, language. Psych! Not that kind of culture. I'm talking about the bacterium kind. Replacements include buttermilk, vinegar, and lemon juice.
3. Rennet - I'm sorry, could you rennet by my again? I said, "Rennet." This is the agent which actually curdles the milk. I'll discuss these elements more in depth later.
4. Salt - That's right. You need to add a small amount of salt to your concoction, and now you're ready to cheesemake!

Let's discuss each element further though, shall we?

Milk

They sure can drink though!

Or melk, as some say it (incorrectly, even though  it's one of the few words in the English language that's pronounced exactly like it's spelled). This is the most important ingredient to producing cheese by far. The others can be replaced, but once you take the milk away it is no longer possibly cheese. You can get milk from all sorts of different mammals, but the main ones are goats, cows, sheep, and bats. Oh, did I say bats? Heck not! Don't use that nasty bat milk. You sicko! Other milks not to use: Kangaroo, mouse, moose, lion, rabbit, pig, skunk,  whale, rhinoceros, porcupine, baboon, prairie dog, dugong, or wolverine. Yeah. I bet you never thought of some of those animals as milk makers. They all are, and for some reason, the US chooses to use cow milk a whole lot, even though it's less efficient than goat milk. Real mozzarella is actually made from water buffalo milk (I thought they only produced water). I've heard tell that goat milk is a great choice for cheese making. And the way the milk will taste is strongly based on the animal's diet. A goat consuming more grains will produce a milk that tastes different from the same goat feeding on mostly grass. Who knows what sort of wacky milk creations you can make? And we haven't even gotten to the cheese yet? Some pointers I got from Barbara Jenness (which is actually where I got most of this information) is that the milk should not be pumped, which I agree with for the sake of the poor lactating animal, and that it should be handled gently to preserve the delicate chemical make up of milk. And lastly, make sure you begin with fresh milk. The curdling and stuff will come later.

Culture

There are hundreds of species of bacteria you could use to acidify milk. The Average Cheese Making Joe (ACMJ) will probably not use culture, but people who make cheese for money or even a living will use bacteria. This is not to say that big cheese companies (pun originally unintended) use culture. But you know big companies. Now, for someone like me, an ACMJ, procuring a special strain of bacterium might not be worth the trouble. Not to fear. As I mentioned before, lemon juice, buttermilk, and vinegar can all acidify your milk. Try different things for different cheeses!

Rennet

Adding rennet to the mix.

By far the most obscure element to creating cheese, it can curdle the milk, and you're going to eat the curds. Oh yes you are. Now, where does rennet come from? You have to extract it from the fourth stomach chamber of a calf that hasn't been weaned from its mothers milk yet. Or pay someone to do that for you. You can probably buy it at your local grocery store, but the people that work there might not even know what it is. Did you? So I don't know. Look around. What I'm wondering is how we got this stuff in the first place. I mean, we've been making cheese for a while now. Have we always been extracting this rennet from calves? How would we have known? I'm thinking milk just curdled over time. The rennet makes it go faster then. Ok, settled.

Salt

Add a pinch of salt or two. There's not a whole lot to comment about. There's definitely a reason besides flavor to add salt, but I can't quite remember. Something about chemicals...?

Process of Cheese Making

Alright you ACMJs, get ready for some impressive cheese that will awe your friends at your next social occasion when you tell them, "Oh that? I made that. Yeah, no bigs. I make cheese. What of it?"

Step 1: Watch this video and do everything it says.
Step 2: Serve to your friends.
Step 3: Recite that quote from above.

And a last note about cheese: There are three important factors when dealing with cheese: Time, Temperature, and pH. When the milk's in the pot, the temperature should be anywhere from 70 - 90 degrees. It depends on which cheese you're going for. Look up each cheese's specific temperatures. The same goes for pH, but you're aiming for about 6.6, give or take 0.4 or so. The time refers to aging the cheese. You'll find that the more you eat cheese, the more you'll know about when you like eating it. Some cheese eaters like to eat bleu cheese when it's aged to the maximum. You may find you like eating a certain type of cheese very young. As you become a more experience cheese eater (or cheater, for short) you'll discover more about the way you prefer when and how your cheese is served. Enjoy.

Chili Children

Making Chili

Today I made some chili using nothing more than a couple slices of diced onions, some green peppers, most of a can of black beans, diced tomatoes from a can, some olive oil, a pan, two hot plates, two outlets (complete with endless electricity), a stirring spoon, salt, and various other ingredients. That's seriously all you need. Oh, and a pot. That's it. So I made some delicious chili and ate it with some chips. How splendid. I tried other creations, such as my neighbor's salsa, and it was very nice. They added some spicy peppers to the mix, and that was very nice. It was on its way to being a truly excellent salsa. Well done, chaps. Very nice!

Secret Agent Spice

A dictionary definition of pungent

Spicy food can be miserable.

Capsaicin belongs to the vanilloid family. It has a special binding property that makes it burn you. Burn you hard. It also has a heavy molecular weight compared to other molecules in the vanilloid fam. Drinking water to cool yourself down won't do much for you because of capsaicin's lipid properties. It is hydrophobic and will not dissolve in water. Using something high in lipids, like milk, would do the trick. Or ice cream! I've made the mistake of eating one of those peppers before, but I did come out of it with a cool shirt. A Scoville Unit indicates the amount of capsaicin present. You'd find anywhere from 2,500 to 8,000 units in a Jalapeño pepper. In the habañero pepper that I ate (picture above) there were about 100,000 to 350,000 Scoville heat units present. Here are photos of the three hottest peppers out there:

Bhut Jolokia 855,000–1,359,000 SHU

Naga Viper Pepper - 855,000–1,359,000 SHU

Red Savina Habañero - 580,000 SHU

So I read an article about spiciness and all that, and I really don't think the creams it mentioned would work all that well for getting rid of the pain caused by spicy foods. But when you are really in pain from something spicy, I think getting any help at all is more than welcome. I think it's interesting that humans are drawn at all to spicy things. I mean, I am too, but naturally the effect of capsaicin is the equivalent to a thorn. It's an irritant. Animals don't even like this sort of thing. But then, humans are pretty strange.

There was a table in that article where the difference between capsaicin and dihydrocapsaicin was just one double bond between the carbons in capsaicin. The difference between capsaicin and homocapsaicin (which means "same as capsaicin") is the direction of the carbon after the double bonds. Capsaicin is thought to be a double-edged sword because it has both chemotherapeutic properties, but also cancer-causing properties. This chemical is thought to make you use burn more calories and thus not acquire fat.

Aroma Therapist

Sales and Smells

Smells are everywhere. Now, I found out about aroma marketing, and it's this crazy concept that companies and stores are buying into. You release scents at a store and try to draw in customers. It lures you in and you may already be emotionally swayed to buy something. Personally, I think it's a sweet strategy to get people to buy stuff. That idea of getting into people's emotions to get them to buy stuff is ingenious. Beautiful. Now, does it work? Well, I wouldn't say that it works on me, but then again, who would admit that? I don't think anybody knows if it works on them. As to why most people don't know about its effects on them, I'd say it comes from the very nature of the marketing and how it targets the subconscious. But apparently it works pretty well because there are more than one of these companies that specializes in aroma manipulation. It certainly is a very creative approach on marketing. It's about time we had this. I'm just waiting for smellovision and smellophones to come on to the market. That will be difficult to adjust to at first, but eventually people will love it. I'm totally serious. Listen, if we make it past December 21, 2012, then we will be seeing all sorts of smellectronic devices. It will be rad.

How Exactly Does Smelling Function?

So here's the skinny on how we smell (though I've explained this before in my blog): It starts with an odor molecule. Humans are able to detect over 10,000 different odor molecules. If one of these odors manages to fly up into your nose it may just contact an olfactory receptor neuron. You have millions of these, and each one has cilia jutting out of them. The celia contain receptors, which are the proteins that change when odor molecules bind to them. See? You're getting it. So neurons have receptors. Ok, when the molecules bind to the receptors, the receptors change shape, which causes an electrical signal to be sent to the brain. Your brain gets a message saying "fish alert, fish alert!" and you interpret it. Now, just because there are a bunch of different smell molecules doesn't mean that each smell has its own molecule. The smell of certain shampoos are actually combinations of these molecule odors. So with over 10,000 thousand the amount of possible smells are nearly endless. I mean, really. One day we should be able to experiment with creating different smells with a program. I can imagine it: Molecule #2968-2988 + molecule #24 + molecule #8838-8842. Now compute and give me a scent as to what that smells like.

Loss of Smell


Anosmia, the medical term for the loss of smell, is kind of a rare condition. Old people lose their smell from age because they are more susceptible to nasal infections which destroy their senses. Once it's gone it's gone. It is strongly tied to tasting, and eating food would be a much less rich experience. On top of that, odors like smoke and gas would go undetected, and those can be red flags to humans with any common sense (pun intended). You also don't know when you smell bad, so you'll just have to shower daily and use lots of deodorant, or ask someone close if you smell to know when to correct that.

Odor Preferences


Why do we like certain smells and dislike others? Why does that change for different people? These are probing proboscis questions, and here's what I understand: People aren't born with certain preferences. There is not sufficient data to back up the claims that we are. It's pretty much a preference based on association. You learn if you like a smell from a very young age. Some cultures have a general smell for home, and that might be the smell of the mother making a certain cultural dish. Then you're always going to like that smell of Caldo de Pollo boiling in the pot. I know I do, Mom. But some Indian food smells pungent and pretty gross to me. I remember when I was in 6th grade and I walked into my Indian friend's house. I really just didn't like that smell at all, and I wondered how the ones living there could tolerate it. Now I realize how. Your perception of the smell is really a big factor of what determines the like or dislike of a certain odor. That may sound redundant, but what I mean is that if you think something smells "artificial" or "natural," that may have a big effect on your overall judgment of the smell.

Breadwinner

Ah, the age-old food. The food that's has a band named after it; it's a slang term for money; The whimsical Patti Smith wrote a poem about it; it had a British sitcom from the 80's named after it; it's a proofreading acronym (Browse Read Edit Add Delete); it's a world renowned staple food, and it just might be a solution to world hunger. Ladies and gentlemen please welcome our guest, bread.
Let's begin our discussion with yeast. After all, without yeast bread would not be possible. Yeast are single-celled fungi that ferment and cause bread to rise. There are several types of yeast available and widely used for various preparations, including Baker's Yeast, Nutritional Yeast, Brewer's Yeast, Distiller's Yeast and Wine Yeast. Each has its specific function to the different users. You give the yeast a little sugar and it will immediately capitalize on the opportunity, consuming sucrose, fructose, glucose, and maltose. This is necessary for the fermentation of the yeast. Fermentation produces CO2 gas, and this gas causes the bread to rise. The fermentation also makes ethyl alcohol, which adds its own unique flavor to the creation. It's like the old proverb, "yeast said, soonest mended."
On to kneady greetty. As you know, kneading is important when dealing with dough. You must knead the dough so that gluten forms, and that gluten adds a cohesive property to the dough, thus making it doughy. And tyrosine, and important chemical in bread making, reacts with more tyrosine to become the scaffolding of dough through interlinkage.
On the gluten. For those of you who speak German, allow me to greet you: "Gluten Tag." Here's a definition of gluten from my dictionary: A substance present in cereal grains, like wheat. It is what causes the elastic texture of dough. For those with celiac disease, do not consume gluten. It's a mixture of two proteins, prolamin and glutamin. If you can't digest gluten but decide to eat it anyway then get ready for a wild ride. Your large and lower intestine's villi will be destroyed, and you will miss out on lots of nutrients when you digest stuff. Who knows? Your gums might even start bleeding. You do not want to mess around with gluten if you are gluten intolerant.

We meet again, Lactobacillus.

On to sourdough. One of my favorite types of bread, it starts with, strangely enough, starter. Starter? Yeah, it's that medium that keeps cultured yeast alive. And that specific culture of fungus, lactobacillus, is what is used and found in sourdough. Yummy fungi!
There are a few differences in making Pita, Injera, Naan, and those other wacky breads out there. For St. Pita, that distinct pocket is created with steam. Injera uses Teff, a special grain, filled with iron. Teff flour is mixed is with water and set to ferment for several days. The dough is actually liquid enough to be poured out on to the cooking surface, so the bottom is smooth and the top surface is porous. What a neat texture. Naan needs yeast water, yogurt and ghee (or vegetable shortening). Yeah, it looks like a bubbly pizza thing, and it's pretty good. Give that one a try sometime.

Coming to your Senses: Old Fashioned Olfaction

There's nothing like a good ol' whiff. Am I right? And that's why we talked about smelling in class. We studied the different effects of not being able to smell on taste. We also took a whiff down memory lane with some smell samples. You may wonder why we would be so thorough with a topic like smell, but it just makes scents.
For one experiment, we plugged our noses and tried different jams and jellies and such. There was grape and strawberry and mango and there was also applesauce, which was not a jam/jelly. I was blindfolded and noseblinded. I ate a spoonful of each and after I had guessed I had misplaced all of them (except for the applesauce, but I could feel the different consistency of the food.) The same happened with both of my partners, including the applesauce phenomenon (a great name for a band).
We also tried to confuse our senses by blindly eating one flavor of chip while vigorously smelling another chip of a different flavor. I had no problem telling apart which chip I was eating and which I was smelling. Granted, there was not much variety, but I still think anybody could have gotten this right. My partners weren't fooled either.

Stereotypical Vamp-bag

But what of the effects of garlic and desensitization? I loves me some garlic, but does it lose its kick after eating it enough. I seemed to think so, but very mildly. I ate garlic chips with garlic hummus, and later when I came back to it the garlic seemed less present in both. I was a little disappointed in that, but I still enjoyed it very much. Garlic used to be a panacea back in the day, and it's still known to be quite healthy for you. Plus it keeps vamps away. We don't want those spooking us, now do we?
Lastly, we sampled lots of different aromas from a jar. I was struck when I smelled certain flowers like rose. It brought me back to a simpler time. It reminded me of my mom cooking stuff and living in a different house. Or others would remind me of playing with rubber dinosaur toys from when I was little. They say scent is the strongest sense tied to memory. I believe it. I was tripping. One smelled like the tires from a mechanic garage. Another smelled like maraschino cherries. The smells were very distinkty. The whole experience was simply amazing. Try smelling a whole bunch of unique smells some day. You'll know what I mean.

Beer Me

Beer: How Make?

Yes, this time we learned all about every man's stereotypically favorite beverage, beer. Beer has been around for quite some time now (4000 B.C.), but the ingredients needed are basic, so that makes sense. Although the process is not too simple. The key ingredients are barley and hops. And don't forget the water. So you take your barley, steep it so that it starts germinating. Ok, now stop that germination by putting the seeds of the barley in a kiln. Now it's time to grind that germinated seed in the mill. It will be bashed and mashed from her. There's even a lauter tun used. Who knows what that thing does. Now you throw in your hops. Hops are plants that add flavor to a beer. There are even hops that smell like citrus. You brew it from here in a kettle. Your whirlpool separator should do the trick for the next step, and then a cooling device cools down the beer-in-progress. Here's the part where you let it ferment. Yeast comes in to your fermentation vessel, and any excess yeast is removed. Hmm, it smells like alcohol now. At this point, your beer is green. Eww! You let this green goblin mature in a tank and then filter it all out. From here you basically have your beer. Of course, you can always pasteurize it, but who wants beer past your eyes? You would drown in beer if it were past your eyes! Now put it in the right container and ship it out for everyone to buy and get drunk off of.

Beer: Why Drink?


Now, as we all know, nobody actually likes the taste of beer, or any obviously alcoholic beverage for that matter. They all pretend to like it to seem cool for drinking beer. The same goes for coffee and tea. I'm waiting for that day when humanity will finally say, "Ok, fine. Of course beer tastes gross. But it makes me feel good." Well, I'm glad you finally admitted that. It's true, even old people drink for fashion and that sort of thing. Now, another reason people drink is to get drunk, or the technical term, "Shwasty Krunkity Koo". We all know the effects alcohol has on someone:

1. Improved dance skills: Perhaps your rhythm is a little off, but you're no longer afraid to bust some sick moves on the dance floor, including the robot, the sock puppet, and the ironic twist.
2. Slurred speeeerrrcch: You might combine words you never thought were possible, like dinosaur and laser. Lasosaur! Which turns into Lasosaurus Rex, which is turned into Lazorsaurus Rex, so people don't mispronounce (aloud or in their head) it when the read it.
3. Super great time: When did you become so funny and honest and spontaneous? Oh, just a few drinks ago? That's funny. I have a feeling we're going to have a good night tonight. Now let's boogie, buddy!

Which is why one should always drink responsibly and never drink in excess. So, any questions so far besides this very one I'm asking? Let's continue on our magical mystery tour then.

Beer: Who Knows?

Beer culture is about as well defined as surf culture, and that's well defined. It's there, communities form around a single concept. People that are into beers tend to really delve into the whole subject because once you go in that rabbit whole a little you just keep on finding more questions. There is a lot to know about beer, and I will summarize all of it briefly in this paragraph. Microbreweries are considered "cool" because it's not made by The Man who doesn't care about the quality of the beer he produces. Commercial beers like Bud Light and Coors are bad beers with carelessness in the craft. It's more about marketing than it is about creating a work of art, which is the beer. So do everyone a favor and stop buying those cheap, nasty beers and buy local or make your own. Beer ranges from a faded gold color to black (see above, which I'm sure you already did). Fosters is NOT Australian for beer. Most Australians have never even heard of that brand. The United States produces the most beer annually. American beer is basically a laughingstock in the world community. England is said to have the best beer in the world. That may be a pretty serious statement to anyone who cares, but I'll believe it. The rest is pretty much self-explanatory. Enjoy your beer, or finally confess that you can't, nor could anyone possibly enjoy the foul taste of beer, or any alcoholic beverage.