One of my favourite blogs is Slate and today I just saw this post by Fuchsia Dunlop entitled Kicking up a Stink – On eating Cheese in China. It first appeared in the Financial Times. The interesting thing is that the Chinese don’t eat cheese – but in a tasting that fuchsia Dunlop held there recently with some Chinese chefs – the Irish cheese Milleens came out tops. Apparently chinese people don’t like the smell of ‘dairy’ and they get this milky/cheesey smell off all Westerners. You can read the whole article Here.
“Over several visits to Shaoxing, I wondered what the locals, such ardent lovers of rotted soymilk and vegetable stalks, would make of rotted cow’s milk, otherwise known as cheese. Finally, I returned to Shaoxing with a boxful of artisanal cheeses from Neal’s Yard Dairy in London, including the smelliest I could find in the shop. I had selected one mild hard cheese, Isle of Mull, to serve as a kind of toe-in-the-water; Stichelton, which is an unpasteurised version of Stilton; pale, veined Harbourne Blue; Ardrahan, a fairly whiffy washed-rind cheese that I adore; Milleens, another washed-rind variety with a punchy, farmyardy aroma that acquires a hint of ammonia as it ripens; and a wildly smelly Brie de Meaux. By the time I reached Shaoxing after a week on the road, the cheeses had all ripened nicely, and some were beginning to ooze.
At the Xianheng, a waitress cut the cheeses into pieces, and the assembled tasters began to pick them up with their chopsticks, sniffing and tasting. And where I had been impressed by what cheese and stinky soya products had in common, these culinary professionals were immediately struck by their differences. “Although in some ways you could say the flavours of cheese and fermented beancurd are similar,” said
Mao, “vegetable stinky foods are very clean and clear in the mouth (qing kou), and they disperse quickly, while milky foods are greasy in the mouth (ni kou), they coat your tongue and palate, and they have a long, lingering aftertaste.”
Two other chefs said the cheeses had a heavy shan wei (muttony odour), an ancient term used by southern Chinese to describe the slightly unsavoury tastes associated with the northern nomads. Another said that the selection “smells like Russians”. “The difference,” he added, “is that the stinky things Chinese people eat give them smelly breath, while stinky dairy things affect the sweat that comes out of your skin.”
Chinese fermented beancurd, an intense-tasting relish, had always reminded me of a ripe blue cheese, but the Shaoxing tasters, faced with a Stichelton, disagreed. “It does have a rich umami taste,” said chef Chen Judi, “but there’s also a bitter aftertaste that people in this region wouldn’t like at all.” Several of the tasters were repelled by the sourness and astringent aftertaste of the Isle of Mull, which I’d thought was the most innocuous. “Our rotted thousand layers just doesn’t have that sour taste,” said Mao.
The cheeses they found most palatable were the Harbourne Blue (“this is quite close to Shaoxing tastes,” said Mao, “neither bitter nor sour, and quite clean in the mouth”) and, surprisingly, the very strong Milleens, with its ammoniac whiff. “I think people here would be able to tolerate this,” he added. The only cheese that provoked real consternation was the Brie. “It has this animal stench that assaults your nose,” said Dai Jianjun. “Definitely the stinkiest,” said Mao, “I really can’t bear it.” Most of the others agreed. Only one chef, Sun Guoliang, actually liked it. “It has such a complex flavour, like stinking beancurd, rotted thousand sheets and fermented beancurd, all mixed together.”
Fuchsia Dunlop is a cook and food-writer specialising in Chinese cuisine. She is the author of Shark’s Fin and Sichuan Pepper: A Sweet-Sour Memoir of Eating in China, an account of her adventures in exploring Chinese food culture, and two critically-acclaimed Chinese cookery books, Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook, and Sichuan Cookery. She has a great food blog Here
Photo: Fuchsia Dunlop