Rocamadour cheese making technology. How is it eaten, what are the recipes for using it? Detailed product review: chemical composition, beneficial properties and harm to humans.
Rocamadour is a popular French semi-soft goat cheese with a high fat content and a sour nutty flavor. It is produced in the mountains on private cheese farms, therefore it is often called mountain and artisan. The smell of cheese resembles that of a little sour goat milk. Rocamadour ripens quickly, depending on the ripening period, fresh and semi-matured cheese is distinguished.
Features of the preparation of Rocamadour cheese
Historians find it difficult to describe the circumstances under which the first head of Rocamadour cheese was created. However, experts know an old written source, which says that in the 15th Art. goat's milk product was used as a currency for taxes and food purchases.
Anyone can learn how to make Rocamadour cheese. But not every manufacturer can sell such a product. The French Ministry of Agriculture has endowed Rocamadour cheese with special certificates that determine the permissible geography and technology for its production. This means that an industrial producer cannot produce a cheese called Rocamadour if his enterprise is located in an area not specified in the above certificates.
Rocamadour is made primarily on small cheese farms between March and October. It is at this time of the year that goats graze on green meadows, thanks to which they give the highest quality and healthiest milk, rich in protein and vitamins. Industrial producers produce Rocamadour regardless of the season, because they provide goats with special artificially fortified feed so that the milk always has the same quality.
Features of the preparation of Rocamadour cheese:
- Collecting the required amount of goat milk from several milkings.
- Careful processing of tools and utensils in which the cheese will be cooked. This is necessary to prevent the ingress of harmful mold into future cheese.
- Souring milk during the day.
- Separation of clotted protein from whey.
- Laying out the cheese into special shapes.
- Placement of molds with cheese in basements on shelves made of special types of wood.
- Waiting for the ripening of Rocamadour. This process can take anywhere from 24 hours to 5 days. Most often, the cheese is taken out of the cellar after 7 days of maturation.
As a result, cheesemakers get small heads of Rocamadour, the diameter of which is only 4-5 cm, and the weight is 30-40 g. Each head of cheese has a moldy crust.
Interesting! Gourmets prefer to eat Rocamadour exactly three or four weeks old. During this period of ripening, the product has time to acquire the fullest and most piquant taste. Lovers of cheeses with a pronounced sour flavor choose Rocamadour, aged six days.
