Exotic European cheeses
stumble upon Thailand
By Jon Fernquest |
Today's Bangkok Post business section has an article on an Italian cheesemaker who has set up shop in Hua Hin.
Each year seems to bring a stream of new food-related businesses to idyllic locales such as Hua Hin or Chiang Rai, Thailand.
Last year tiny Chiang Rai acquired three gourmet Italian restaurants (only one of which is left) as well as a Lebanese restaurant with delicacies such as Tabbouleh, adding to the Swedish bakery, German microbrewery, and traditional Korean restaurant featuring nine side dishes of Kimchi, that have been there for years.
(See photo on right of husband-wife German cheese enthusiasts wheeling their heavy cheese wheels home with them, in Germany, not Thailand, of course)
Only the imagination is the limit to new culinary start ups in Thailand!
Here is the story in full:
Big Cheese
Italian mountaineer brings the art of mozzarella to Hua HinPETER JANSSEN
How does a former ski resort employee from the mountainous region of Trentino in northern Italy end up making mozzarella cheese in a Thai beach resort?
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(See photo on right of mozzarella cheese being made)
"Just fate," says Max Mazzalai, the 42-year-old founder of Del Casaro Thailand Company of Hua Hin, the proud producer of mozzarella, ricotta, Italico, mascarpone and scamorza cheeses.
Eleven years ago, Mr Mazzalai recalls, he visited Koh Samui resort as a tourist. "I came for a holiday but saw there was a lot of potential to make cheese because there were many Italian, French and German restaurants on the island."
In Trentino, he had worked at ski resorts during the winter months and helped raise dairy cows and make cheese in the summer.
At least his cheese-making talents proved exportable to tropical Thailand, where mass tourism and a resulting explosion of Italian restaurants over the past two decades have created a domestic market for mozzarella, the main ingredient for pizza, and other cooking cheeses such as ricotta.
By Dec 1, 1997, after a quick trip home to buy equipment, Mr Mazzalai was the first mozzarella maker on Samui.
In 2000, he shifted his cheese factory to Hua Hin,and brought in Eddy Uber, 37, also from Trentino and Thai national Veda Balabkura as business partners.
Del Casaro is now one of Thailand's leading suppliers of mozzarella cheese to hotels and restaurants in Bangkok, Pattaya, Hua Hin, Samui, Phuket, Phangnga and Koh Tao.
The small cheese factory, on the outskirts of Hua Hin town, will finish its first major expansion within four months, after which it may be able to open a souvenir shop selling cheeses to visiting tourists, said Mr Uber.
Del Casaro takes pride in using traditional Italian cheese-making methods and producing high-quality items that can compete with Italian imports.
"Many chefs like to use our cheese because they say it is good quality and fresh," said Mr Uber.
Del Casaro is not the only mozzarella maker in Thailand.
Minor Group, the owner of The Pizza Company restaurant chain, has been making its own mozzarella for more than a decade, and at least three other companies are in the mozzarella business, including Murrah Dairy Farm which four months ago introduced Thailand's first buffalo mozzarella.
Italy's most famous mozzarella, from the Campania area in the south, is made with water buffalo milk. Legend has it that the water buffaloes were imported from India 500 years ago and cross-bred with African buffaloes to create a creature well-suited to the hot and swampy Campania region.
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(See photo on right of map of Italy with Campania in red)
There is little doubt that buffalo milk makes a better mozzarella. It has twice as much fat as regular cow milk.
Unfortunately, the milk of the average Thai water buffalo, used for field labour rather than milking, is inferior to that of its Campania cousins.
That may change soon, if the Murrah Dairy Farm example takes off.
Murrah Dairy Farm in Chachoengsao province has successfully artificially inseminated Thai water buffaloes with Murrah buffalo sperm from Bulgaria, and now has a buffalo herd producing 150 litres of milk per day.
The buffalo milk, primarily sold to Thai Muslims of Indian origin, is also being used to make mozzarella cheese.
"We just opened a shop in Ramkhamhaeng Soi 112 in Bangkok," said Charinee Chaiyochlarb, the farm's marketing manager, who last year spent two months at a mozzarella factory in Campania to learn how to make the precious cheese.
Del Casaro in Hua Hin was originally interested in using the Murrah Dairy Farm buffalo milk to produce its own mozzarella, but decided against it because the milk would spoil en route to Hua Hin, a five-hour drive.
Of course, Del Casaro could start its own Murrah buffalo farm in Hua Hin, and fulfill Mr Mazzalai's dream of exporting mozzarella back to Italy.
But Mr Mazzalai has reservations.
"No, no," he says to starting a buffalo dairy farm. "When I came to Thailand I came for a better life. So if I have to work 15 hours a day, I'm back to where I came from."
(Source: Bangkok Post, business section, page B5, 10-03-08, Peter Janssen, DPA article)
Vocabulary:
stumble upon - find by accident
set up shop - open a new business
idyllic - very pleasant and peaceful, simple without dangers or difficulties
locales, localities - small local areas, like around a small town or a neighborhood in a big city
gourmet - food that is higher quality and more sophisticated (requiring special knowledge and developing a taste for the food, perhaps)
delicacies - foods that are particularly nice to eat (usually rare or expensive)
Tabbouleh - a salad dish made with bulgur wheat, finely chopped parsley, mint, tomato, scallion (spring onion), and other herbs with lemon juice, olive oil and various seasonings, generally including black pepper and sometimes cinnamon and allspice (See Wikipedia)
a side dish - food served with the main dish (Korean cuisine probably sets a record for most side dishes of any cuisine)
enthusiasts - people who are very interested in a subject and spend a lot of time doing it
culinary - related to cooking
start ups - new companies just started
X end ups doing Y - X was doing something completely unrelated to Y, but is now doing Y (in this case a ski resort employee is now making cheese)
just fate - it was just luck
mozzarella cheese - the cheese commonly found on pizzas (See Wikipedia on mozzarella, Mozzarella di Bufala Campana, Wikipedia's list of Italian cheeses, and Wikipedia's list of Buffalo Milk Cheeses)
ricotta cheese - not technically a cheese, similar to cottage cheese, uncooked and unripened curd drained of its whey, fresh, not ripened or aged, grainy and creamy, white in appearance, slightly sweet in taste, and contains around 5% fat (See Wikipedia)
mascarpone cheese - an easily spread cream cheese (See Wikipedia)
scamorza cheese - an Italian cow's milk cheese and a close relative of mozzarella (See Wikipedia)
has a lot of potential - has a good chance of success
the outskirts - the parts of a town far away from the center
pride - feeling of satisfaction after doing something good
takes pride in Z - feeling good about work (Z) well done
the Campania region (in Italy) - (See Wikipedia)
a water buffalo - the common water buffalo that used to be used to plow fields in Thailand (See Wikipedia)
a legend - an old and well-known story, partly true
legend has it that Y - there is a legend that says that Y happened, may or may not be true
a breed - a variety or type of animal (for example Alsatians are a breed of dog)
X cross-bred with Y - when two different breeds of an animal, X and Y, have a baby (for example, last year a poodle and shihtzu cross-breed with curly hair was popular in Chiang Rai, as a pet)
well-suited to region Y - region Y is a good place for them to live
swampy - very wet land with wild plants growing in it
takes off - turns into successful business
dairy products - foods such as cheese, butter, and cream made from milk
decided against it - decided not to do it
spoil - not fit to eat (because it it too old or has not been refrigerated)
en route to - while traveling to
has reservations about Y - not sure that Y is entirely a good thing
I'm back to where I came from - I [will go] back to where I came from, I will return (spoken language emphasising that he's not here anymore)
