CurdNerds

Cheese is a gastronomic incarnation of human resourcefulness, an example of our unique abilities to plan, to perfect and to persevere. It not only stimulates our senses, it also connects us to one another in the finely woven web of history. It connects us to that first person who was brave enough to eat the milk that curdled in his satchel made of goat-stomach. It connects us to the monks in Europe who channeled their devotion to God into the process of distilling and preserving the elemental mammalian nourishment: milk. It also connects us, in ways we can't begin to imagine, to those who are at the fringes of our society.

In the latest newsletter published by the New England Cheesemaking Supply Company, there is a link to a letter they received from a man who has managed to make cheese in his jail cell, even without the use of rennet or starter bacteria. The milk he uses is limited to the pasteurized, homogenized cartons he can obtain from the cafeteria; his "cheesecloth" is a styrofoam cereal bowl with holes punctured by pencils, which are doubly useful as a drying rack for the finished cheese.

To read this man's letter is to understand, in some small part, the insight, the ingenuity, and, frankly, the bravery it took to "invent" cheese in the first place. Would you leave a store-bought carton of milk out in room temperature for 48-50 hours, and eat the resulting concoction as long as it doesn't smell bad or taste bitter? Would you risk "causing trouble" to enrich your life with cheese? You probably would, if you knew it might lead to unbelievably amazing things like this.