A new Latin American-style goat’s milk cheese created by the C’est Bon on-farm processing facility southwest of St. Marys is this year’s winner of the Artisan award from the Ontario Cheese Society’s annual British Empire Show. Cheesemaker George Taylor of C’est Bon, located on Blanshard Line 3, received the award at the 84th annual Show earlier this month in Belleville.
“It’s quite a feather in your cap,” explained Taylor, who noted the company placed third in a different category a few years ago after the launch of its flagship “Chevre” product, although the Society’s award categories have been altered somewhat since then.
Taylor compared the British Empire Show win to the cheesemaking competition at Toronto’s annual Royal Agricultural Winter Fair. He noted C’est Bon hadn’t quite perfected the Latin American-style cheese — which he’s calling “Caprea” (Latin for “goat”) — for the 2011 Royal in November, but added that competition is partly based on judging from culinary experts. The Belleville awards, meanwhile, are based on judging from his cheesemaking peers.
“They put this program together back in the 1920s to give the opportunity for fledgling cheesemakers to strut their stuff around the (British) Empire,” the C’est Bon artisan explained. “It’s your peers recognizing your work, which makes it more meaningful.”
As a category winner, the Caprea could move on to the American Cheese Society awards — something Taylor is still contemplating. The cheese is so new — with two restaurants now committed to it, and C’est Bon working on how to promote it further — that he doesn’t yet know how to proceed.
“If this product takes off, I think it’s great. It’ll be good to get in on the ground floor,” he commented. “But I don’t have any illusions that (Caprea) will be anything more than another complementary product to the Chevre.”
That doesn’t stop Taylor, however, from enthusiastically describing the qualities and possible uses of the Latin American cheese. Indeed, he hired a cheesemaker from Venezuela for a six-month contract to help develop the recipe, and test-marketed prototypes in Latin American communities in Toronto and Ottawa before deciding on the final product.
“I wanted to develop a Latin American style cheese, mainly, because the European ones have pretty much all been done in Canada already,” he explained. A regular traveller — for both work and pleasure — to Cuba and other Latin American destinations, he had grown fond of the unripened, firm cheeses often served at breakfast in Central and South America.
From a cheesemaking perspective, “what makes it unique is the way in which it is aged, the way it is cut, the timing of the cut, as well as the amount of time it is pressed,” Taylor explained. There’s also no culture other than the rennet.
“It gives a very fresh, clean taste,” he said.
And, while the taste of the cheese might represent something new to many Canadians, the way it’s often used might also surprise: in Latin America, such cheeses are often sliced and then fried. Taylor explains the product’s make-up allows it to caramelize rather than melt at high heat.
He adds, however, that cheeses from the Indian subcontinent and the Middle East have similar qualities.