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Durrus is a village at the head of Dunmanus bay, south of the Sheep’s Head peninsula in the southwest of Ireland. Durrus is also the name of an award-winning, semi-soft cheese, while Dunmanus is a harder cheese, aged a lot longer. Both were created by Jeffa Gill and are hand made by Jeffa and her small team up above the village and the bay.
Jeffa is one of the pioneers who turned West Cork into a heaven and a haven for cheese-lovers. One of the special characteristics of Durrus and many West Cork farmhouse cheeses is that they are washed rind cheeses. The young cheese is inoculated with specific bacteria (some cheeses pick their surface moulds up from the atmosphere) and is then frequently washed or moistened with a brine solution, which gives those bacteria a boost and keeps other micro-organisms at bay. The result is what many people call a stinky cheese, although the actual flavour of these cheeses is often mild, sweet and creamy.
The really remarkable thing about West Cork is how an entire food ecosystem has grown up there in the past 50 years or so, each part depending on and encouraging the others. The fact that there are so many outstanding farmhouse cheesemakers is no accident; they all gathered originally and shared their ups and downs, from which each developed their own unique cheeses. They were supported by local shops and restaurants, who created demand not just for fine cheeses but for so many other foods too. Surely someone must have documented it; so where is it?
Notes
- Durrus Cheese has a website.
- There’s some cracking stuff on the early history of West Cork cheese on the Milleen’s site
- And some equally cracking stuff on washed rind cheeses, at microbialfoods and seriouseats.
https://media.blubrry.com/eatthispodcast/p/mange-tout.s3.amazonaws.com/2021/spices.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 25:56 — 24.3MB)Subscribe: Google Podcasts | Android | RSS | More
Midleton, in County Cork in Ireland, is not the kind of place where you would expect to find the headquarters of a growing global spice merchant. The farmers market in nearby Cork is where Arun Kapil and his wife Olive first started selling spices. Since then the company Green Saffron has grown steadily, drawing on Arun’s love of spices and family connections in India. It is still selling at farmers markets. But it is also shipping containers of carefully sourced spices to a European hub in Holland. And Arun told me that he has not compromised on quality along the way.
Notes
As promised, a link to the Green Saffron website.
Here’s the transcript.
Arun referred to “the very unfortunate cumin incident”. I knew nothing about that, and am investigating. Later: see Digging into contaminated cumin
A few other episodes from Ireland:
Eating Alone
A sweet sour story
A cheese place
An experiment in sound and taste
Banner photograph of cumin seeds by Ajay Suresh on flickr. Black cardamom by Kurman Communications on flickr.
Huffduff it
A cheese place: One of the pioneers who made West Cork a centre of fine cheeses by Jeremy Cherfas from Eat This Podcast
I could go on listening to this for ages… though I wish I could have done it with some of the cheeses discussed.
I often wish I could subscribe to this Eat This Podcast along with a delivery service that would include samples of the food items discussed. Hmmm….
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Author: Chris Aldrich
I’m a biomedical and electrical engineer with interests in information theory, complexity, evolution, genetics, signal processing, theoretical mathematics, and big history.
I’m also a talent manager-producer-publisher in the entertainment industry with expertise in representation, distribution, finance, production, content delivery, and new media.
View all posts by Chris Aldrich
Talking to Jeffa Gill of @durruscheese
eatthispodcast.com/a-cheese-place/