Culinary culture

If you follow me on twitter, you may know that I am fighting a very-familiar battle for cheesers out there. The battle is against big dairy corporations, their lobbyists and elected officials with no backbone. The fight is over pasteurization and this time the battleground is Mexico. However, the fight does not look much different in the rest of North America, Australia or New Zealand for that matter.

My battle is against a law proposed in the Federal Congress by the Ministry of Health that would outlaw cheesemaking using raw milk. The passage of the law would not only criminalize small artisanal producers, it will also constitute an assault to our culinary culture.

Yes, I know that both charges are really strong, but that is exactly what this proposed law (we'll call it NOM 243 by it's filling number) would do. Let me explain why and present the case for raw milk cheeses in an entirely Mexican context. If this sounds familiar to you, but you are not from Mexico or live there, it may be because a very similar situation exists in your country.

Let's start with a basic facts, Mexico did not have cheesemaking or any dairy industry before the colony. It was with the arrival of the Spanish and Italian monks that cheese made it's way to Mexico. This, however, does not mean that cheese is still foreign to Mexican cuisine. What it means is that cheese, like many other food ingredients in Mexican cooking, is a clear representation of a complex, varied, and vibrant culinary culture.

This culture inherits a strong indigenous sense with ingredients like corn, chilies, chocolate, cactuses, tomatoes, and vanilla. It borrows techniques from Spain like salting fish and meat and integrates milk (and it's by-products), bread and most meat into the cuisine. But the story does not end there. Mexican cuisines also learnt and incorporated French sauces, Italian meat curing, Chinese soups and broths, and we also use tahini and pickles from Mexicans whose backgrounds are Lebanese and Jewish. Increasingly our food is also influenced by new immigrants from Haiti, Argentina, Central America, Brazil, Korea and also from the US.

It is exactly within this diversity that Mexican cheese finds its place in our cuisines. Cheese in Mexico is not only a food product, for many is a way of life. Here I am talking of the small artisan producers who produce unique cheeses in all regions of the country. Think for a second of the Menonites of Chihuahua, the small communities (some indigenous peoples included) of Oaxaca and Chiapas who make Quesillo or Queso de Bola or Queso de Cuadro and of small ranchers in Michoacan who turn amazing raw milk into Cotija cheese. Those artisan cheesemakers learnt their craft from their grandparents who in turn learnt from their grandparents. Most of them use raw milk to make their cheeses. They have small herds that are taken care by the immediate family and worry a lot about the well-being of their cattle, their cheese and their customers.

If the proposed law passes, it would criminalize their way of living. Most of them would have to leave cheesemaking as they won't be able to afford pasteurizing machines and will rather sell milk for liquid consumption. Others would defy the law and continue making cheese with raw milk, but their productions will be pushed to the illegal market raising the real risk of having an outbreak of food-related illnesses from dairies that are not carefully inspected and regulated.

That situation already exist in Mexico, as there are laws in place for limiting the use of raw milk, but this law will completely outlaw this practice. Just to be sure, I am not advocating for no regulation. I am arguing that we don't need laws that prohibit completely traditional ways of cheesemaking and that instead we need strong mechanism for monitoring that the raw milk that is used for human consumption is clear and free of pathogens that can affect human health.

In a sense this proposed law is the option to solve a problem on the cheap. By outlawing all production of cheese with raw milk, the government only needs to enforce the law by sanctioning producers who go against the law. While establishing a monitoring system, guidelines, and trainings for dairy producers and cheesemakers, is expensive, labor intense and requires long term planning. Outlawing something from a comfy office in Mexico City is the easy way out.

The project that I am involved with in Chiapas to create a collective trademark for the Queso de Cuadro is the right solution. This project involves producers, farmers, government and academia in finding a way to maintain traditions while ensuring that cheesemaking is safe and clean. It is an initiative that has the backing of many stakeholders, making it a slow process, but at the same time it ensures that the ultimate decision would have the backing of all involved.

So what is it about raw milk? Why are so many of us fanatics of it and what does it have to do with Mexican culinary culture? Before I answer to these questions, let me tell you a short story about one of the cheese judging competitions that I hosted in Chiapas.

In my first trip to Chiapas, I tasted 45 samples of Queso de Cuadro. There were producers from the many regions of the state, and while most cheeses tasted similarly I was able to taste the terroir of the farms where these cheeses were produced. Those from the mountain region were dryer and fattier. The ones from the plains were more lactic (milky) with fresh smell of grass and those from the coast were sweet and aromatic (like tasting flowers). One cheese from the coastal region stood up in smell and flavor. It was sweeter than the others and the smell reminded of ripe fruit instead of flowers. After the competition, I asked the producer of this unique cheese about his herd, the location of his farm, the weather in the region and finally about the feed the cows eat. I was surprise to find out that while his dairy is similar to all other in the region the feed that he gave the cows included a stick of sugar cane in the middle of the day. He said that the cows loved the sugar and produced better milk. He said that he was worried that I was gonna ask him to stop feeding sugar canes to the cows. Instead I was for the first time realizing how much impact feed has on the final flavor of the cheese.

Pasteurization kills harmful bacteria and pathogens in milk, but it also destroys all the complexities in the milk from the various aspects present in the terroir. This means that flavors are more generic and it really doesn’t matter where cheese is made, as no trace of the location where is made is maintained. However, taste alone is not enough to argue that milk should not be pasteurized, especially if there are concerns about the quality of the milk.

Here is exactly, where the minutia of the argument becomes relevant. The solution is to ensure better milk, cleaner and safer techniques, and also to care and be responsible for milk producers’ livelihoods. This is impossible to achieve when the only reasoning behind producing milk is to turn a profit. Milk, while treated as a commodity in economic markets, it is also a food for human consumption. However a lot of people, companies and farmers forget this. They only see dollar/peso sings in the liters/gallons of milk produced and not a food with nutritional value, a story and benefit for our population. Food companies are not in the business of feeding people, they are in the business of making profits with products that we all need daily.

We need to move away form this economic model, which is ending traditional ways of production and hurting our environment. The solution is smaller farms, local consumption and care for the trade of farming. This is why I advocate for raw milk, to support our dairy farmers who are willing to produce good milk for us because they love what they do, not because they want to turn a profit at expense of the animals and the consumers.

If you are interested in learning more about the campaign in Mexico against NOM 243 follow me on twitter (@carlosyescas) and make sure to be ready to talk about raw milk to everyone that needs help understanding why this matters.

For resources in English visit the Alliance for Raw Milk Internationale, they have info about similar movements all around the world.

Barack on Food Politics

Originally posted on November 6th, 2008 on Facebook

As you know food politics are one of my biggest interests. After all, food-production intersects every issue of our lives.

This is why, I think Barack's presidency is truly a change in the view we are going to deal with the most important issues in a modern world - which to my opinion are: environmental change, food security, and energy use.

Here is a the Man on his own words.

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President Elect B. Obama's interview with Joe Klein:

The biggest problem with our energy policy has been to lurch from crisis to trance. And what we need is a sustained, serious effort. Now, I actually think the biggest opportunity right now is not just gas prices at the pump but the fact that the engine for economic growth for the last 20 years is not going to be there for the next 20, and that was consumer spending. I mean, basically, we turbo-charged this economy based on cheap credit. Whatever else we think is going to happen over the next certainly 5 years, one thing we know, the days of easy credit are going to be over because there is just too much de-leveraging taking place, too much debt both at the government level, corporate level and consumer level. And what that means is that just from a purely economic perspective, finding the new driver of our economy is going to be critical. There is no better potential driver that pervades all aspects of our economy than a new energy economy.

I was just reading an article in the New York Times by Michael Pollen about food and the fact that our entire agricultural system is built on cheap oil. As a consequence, our agriculture sector actually is contributing more greenhouse gases than our transportation sector. And in the mean time, it’s creating monocultures that are vulnerable to national security threats, are now vulnerable to sky-high food prices or crashes in food prices, huge swings in commodity prices, and are partly responsible for the explosion in our healthcare costs because they’re contributing to type 2 diabetes, stroke and heart disease, obesity, all the things that are driving our huge explosion in healthcare costs. That’s just one sector of the economy. You think about the same thing is true on transportation. The same thing is true on how we construct our buildings. The same is true across the board.

For us to say we are just going to completely revamp how we use energy in a way that deals with climate change, deals with national security and drives our economy, that’s going to be my number one priority when I get into office.

For Earth Day, Lets Go Back to the Caves.

Originally posted on April 22nd, 2007 in Cooking Fire

During the last three months, I have spent a lot of time underground, washing, patting, brushing, and doing a lot of heavy lifting. I spent two days out of every week damp and cold, breathing spores, with no natural light. My job was to clean, but not disinfect. I “grew” mold, swept away mites, and farmed yeast. I was training to be a cheese-affineur.

My days were divided between tending over forty cheeses in the four caves that Murray’s keeps under the streets of Greenwich Village, and unloading, unpacking and arranging about a thousand pounds of cheeses that pass monthly through these caves.

Murray’s Cheese in New York City has an incredible (and highly competitive) training program to learn the art of cheese affinage. I was lucky enough to be allowed into the caves and learn about new American treasures, as well as good old French, Spanish and Swiss staples.

I learned the optimal temperatures, humidity levels necessary to prevent cheeses from breaking; I grew to sense the moment for turning cheeses and the smell of a well-ventilated cave. This all helps me now to better choose from the counters and appreciate the hard work behind a $16/lbs Appenzeller. It also helps me to appreciate the flavor developed through meticulous care from the cheesemaker and affineur, as opposed to the chemical punch of plasticky orange cheddar. Without sounding like a snob–and to encourage people to try more cheeses, different pairings, and consume it all the time–I’ll tell you something about my interest in cheese.

My interest in cheese started back in Boston. Since then, this passion has taken me to a rural goat farm off the interstate in Queretaro, Mexico — and to the once dangerous border of counties Cavan and Fermanagh in Ireland.

Cheese making, affinage, and mongering were once as important trades, as were curing meats, oyster pickling, or making marmalade. All now seem like elite food fabrication methods, in an era of Kraft singles, Smuckers and Oscar Meyer baloney. Cheese at its most basic principle started as a way to save excess milk from the spring and summer months, for consumption during the fall and winter. As conservation of food products, it helped ensure survival of families during the cold months, and could even be used as a kind of currency to trade for other services and products.

The increasing demand for food products in the industrialized world has lead into the commoditization of production methods to yield the greatest amount of product in the smallest amount of time, all in factories with high-energy usage. All this sacrifices flavor and obscures the hardships of those involved in the production process. Further distancing urbanites from rural places, the process is now starting to seem unsustainable.

It is now believed that due to climate change the Swiss Alpine glaciers will disappear in the next 20 to 30 years. This in turn affects the lush pastures of the Schachen region, threatening the future production of Emmentaler. So, eat cheese, make bread, and at the same time, you’ll care more for our shared environment.