Rachel Laudan

And addendum to my post on cheese in Mexican history. A classic way of preserving milk in Mexico (as in India) was to boil it down until the milk sugars became so concentrated and the water content so low that it did not spoil. We don’t have any figures. But given the [...]

A quick calculation with very round numbers. Maximum of 400 liters in the truckdelivering milk to the artisanal cheese maker. That’s about 100 gallons.
Assume the cows on these farms give 750 gallons a year which was normal in Britain in the 50s (though I suspect they give less). That’s 2 gallons a day so that [...]

Alex just posted this link to a terrific video of Oaxaca cheese being made in (I assume) the food science lab at Chapingo.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQo-gyzRNo0
Even if you don’t understand Spanish you can see the essential step: hot water being poured over the curd so as to produce the long strings.  And you’ll links to lots of [...]