One museum we spent a lot of time visiting was the Ballenberg Swiss Open-Air Museum. This was an assortment of buildings assembled here from their original locations throughout Switzerland and representing different regions and periods of time.
The cheese making house was a going concern that day and we stayed and spoke to the cheese maker.
I took videos and tried to keep them short to load here. I went too long on one so it's not included. You should be able to get a sense of what's happening. Above he's sitting stirring the large pot of milk and curds are forming. He gave us tastes of the curds and granddaughter #1 drank some of the whey.
Notice the stick he is stirring with. He called it a Christmas tree.
He gathers the curds and lets them drain then takes large fistfuls and fills molds to make the cheese.
Matt, my son in law, bought some cheese too. Not sure if they ate it before we left Switzerland or if this was the cheese forgotten in the freezer. It was remembered as we stood waiting for the train to arrive to take us back to Zurich on our last day in Meiringen. Not enough time to run back to apartment to get it.
...they are known for their cheese!
ReplyDeleteSwiss chocolate and cheese, and what happened to fondus?
ReplyDeleteFascinating!
ReplyDeleteFreshly made chese musy be very different in taste than the over processed ones we are familiar with from grocery stores.
ReplyDeleteBack when we kept a milk cow, I attempted cheese making. It's an interesting process and I loved the fresh curds. But our attempts at storing and aging the cheese were doomed to failure due to the lack of climate-controlled storage.
ReplyDelete