Montafon sour cheese
The Montafoner sour cheese or Montafoner Sura Kees (dialect: Sura Kees or in the Walgau and Rheintal Sura Käs stands for sour cheese ) is a sour milk cheese from the Vorarlberg Montafon . It has been known there since the 12th century and is similar to Tyrolean gray cheese .
history
The Celts , who also settled in Vorarlberg at the time, were already making cheese before the birth of Christ . This is evidenced by the finds of utensils for cheese production there. It was also the Celts who brought the cheese maker to Vorarlberg. Käsker is a Rhaeto-Romanic expression of Celtic origin and describes the form in which the cheese mass is still pressed in the alpine farm today.
The first documented mention of cheese production in the Montafon dates back to 1240, when ten cheeses were to be delivered to the cathedral chapter in Chur every year. After the Montafon fell to the Habsburgs in 1394 , the farmers were required to deliver clarified butter and butter to the administration of the Habsburg Empire and the nobility. Both of these were used in larger quantities during the production of Sura Kees (its fat content is between 1 and 10%).
After the much more sophisticated technology of hard cheese production using rennet also began to establish itself in Vorarlberg, coming from Switzerland towards the end of the 17th century, it gradually supplanted sour cheese production and thus the Sura Kees from Vorarlberg. A travel report from 1781 describes the sour milk cheese dairy in the Montafon:
“Their whole procedure consists in this: they let the milk-filled dishes (...) stand unmoved for 6 to 8 days; then they take the cream (...) to make butter (...). The skimmed milk, which is generally already thick, is poured into the kettle placed over the fire, gently fired underneath until the kettle is completely separated from the bulkhead (...). "
The farmers were only able to deliver small amounts of butter to the Habsburgs because the fat remained in the cheese, hence the name "fat cheese" for mountain cheese or Emmentaler . However, the Habsburgs insisted on their butter deliveries and the responsible administration in Innsbruck issued a ban on hard cheese production and the obligation to produce sour cheese several times in the 19th century. This was intended to counteract the falling butter and clarified butter deliveries. Nevertheless, the quantities of Sura Kees in Vorarlberg continued to decline and hard cheese production prevailed. Sura Kees has only survived to this day in the Montafon .
When the dairies began to die in the Montafon in the 1960s , cheese production was concentrated on a few, mostly in the valley, dairies. A lack of awareness of tradition and less vigorous, mainly regional marketing led to a steady decline in local cheese specialties, including Sura Kees . It was not until the early 1990s that historical values were reconsidered and revived. The regional specialty Sura Kees was increasingly popular with younger generations, farm shops emerged and the tourism industry and gastronomy discovered the Sura Kees as an advertising medium. A separate sour cheese award was launched in 2001 and this incentive resulted in considerable increases in quality. The inclusion in the catalog “Genuss Region Österreich” followed on September 15, 2005, which involved a supraregional presentation of the Sura Kees . After decades of decline, these measures resulted in an increase in Sura Kees production for the first time in 2006. In 2016 there were 13 Sennalpen in Montafon, on which around 800 cows grazed. These produced around 2.5 million kg of milk, from which around 248,000 kg of Sura Kees were made.
Manufacturing
A distinction is made here between two types of production: Sura Kees produced according to the traditional method (“Alm” sour cheese) and Sura Kees using the new method (“Tal” sour cheese).
When using the new method, the dairyman does without the wooden tub and the spontaneous ripening in favor of purchased cultures. At the moment six Sennalpen are still working in the traditional way in the Montafon.
“Alm” sour cheese
A small part of the Sura Kees production, around 10,000 kilos, is made on the alpine pasture itself, the much larger part in dairies in the valley. The output of alpine production can hardly be found in the trade, rather it is sold from the farm or delivered to selected restaurants. The production is traditionally done by hand, the raw milk stands in wooden vessels for one or two days to let it become slightly acidic. The herdsman then skims the cream floating on top with his hand and puts the milk in a wooden tub, in which it ferments again for one or two days. Then the milk comes into a copper kettle and is warmed to lukewarm so that the curd can rise to the top. This curd is skimmed off and stuffed into a cylindrical wooden tub. One day later the ball of curd cheese, which weighs around five to six kg, is taken out of the vat, carefully rubbed with salt and stored. Now the ball of curd begins to mold on the outside , this mold is washed off regularly about two to three times a week with pure or lightly salted water. During this period of maturation, which lasts around two to six months, in exceptional cases up to twelve months, a greasy, sultry layer forms from the outside in, and the cheese also loses its weight during this time. After the maturation is complete, the Sura Kees is packaged.
The alpine production of the Sura Kees requires a high level of skill, experience and sensitivity from the dairyman , which can only be acquired through years of practical activity. The “right point in time”, when maturation or fermentation is complete and the cheese has reached the “ideal” point for further processing, depends and can depend on the quality of the milk, the season, the weather, the temperature and a number of other factors not be schematized. Each Alm sour cheese has its own, unmistakable character. The Alm-Sauerkäse is included in the “Ark of Taste” at Slow Food .
"Valley" sour cheese
The majority of Sura Kees production is made by several dairies in the state of Vorarlberg. The raw milk from the cows grazing on the Montafon alpine pastures is delivered to these dairies “in the valley”. In order to better comply with the hygiene standards, the milk is pasteurized and then defatted to one percent fat content.
The skimmed milk is heated to 25 ° C, whereupon globulin and albumin precipitate. Then the whey separates from the curd, the latter is skimmed off and, in contrast to alpine production, is not filled, but shaped into loaves or sticks. The curd loaves or sticks are now placed in a salt bath and are then stored. The product is washed off with pure water three times a week. It takes about two to six months to mature. The majority of the production process is done mechanically, storage takes place in air-conditioned cold rooms. In addition to loaves weighing around five to eight kg, there are blocks and sticks of 100 or 250 grams.
properties
The Montafon Sura Kees is a sour milk cheese with 1% (valley sour cheese ) to 10% (alpine sour cheese ) fat content ( F. i.T. ) and a low cholesterol content.
The appearance is milky white to slightly yellowish, on the outside sultry to greasy, sometimes with a white, pot-like core on the inside, the cheese has no rind. Depending on the stage of ripeness, the Montafon Sura Kees tastes fresh and spicy to strong, with a slightly sour taste with a salty undertone. Another peculiarity is a slight to stronger sour smell, depending on the storage period.
The Sura Kees is usually served with vinegar, oil and onions, consumed pure on black bread or with potatoes. It is also used for cheese spaetzle . In the Montafon it is considered to be a miracle cure for hangovers .
See also
- Sour cheese (from the Montafon, the Principality of Liechtenstein, the St. Gallen region Werdenberg and the Obertoggenburg)
literature
- Vene Maier: cheese in Austria. Falter Verlag, Vienna 1993, ISBN 3-85439-110-2 , pages 43, 51, 84ff., 303.
- Bernhard Tschofen: "Sura Kees". Culinary heritage as a driving force of the regional. In: Journal Culinaire, No. 20 / May 2015, pp. 60–68.
- Bernhard Tschofen: Sura Kees. An Alpine Nutritional Relic as a Ferment of Regionality. In: S. May, K. Sidali, A. Spiller, B. Tschofen (eds.): Geographical Indications as Cultural Property (= Göttinger Studies on Cultural Property, 10). Göttingen 2017, pp. 119–128.
Web links
- Information from the Genuss Region Österreich
- Website of the Swiss counterpart
- History of Sura Kees (PDF, 93 kB)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Catani: Comments on a trip through the Montafunerberge to the Vermunt mountains in the company of Pastor Pols, in Julius 1780. 1781. In: The collector - a non-profit weekly publication for Bündten, 3rd year, pp. 33–40.
- ↑ Vorarlberg Alpine Statistics - Alpine Summer 2016 (PDF)
- ↑ Entry of the Sura Kees in the traditional way at Slow Food ( Memento of the original from December 4, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
