The sordid world of Honduran cheese
marrder.com
By MELANIE WETZEL
I warn you right now, this piece is written with a strong slant against Honduran cheese. If you are a lover of Honduran cheese, or have a weak stomach, it might be best to turn back now. Don't think that I am trying to damage the Honduran cheese industry or that I am slandering Honduran cheese in particular; I hate all Central American cheese equally.
I haven't studied the actual process that goes into creating Honduran cheese, but my best guess would be that it starts with milk, handled roughly and never refrigerated, that is left to sit in a dark smelly place and then put out in the sun to dry. I repeat, I haven't actually seen this happen, but that would seem to me the most logical way to turn cow's milk into the dry, pungent, crumbly stuff that they ironically call queso.
It doesn't end there. There are actually grades and varieties of cheese ranging from offensive (quesillo) to gross (queso) to completely and totally disgusting (requeson). If you go to a cheese store -- and I'm not telling you to go to a cheese store, as a matter of fact, by all means don't -- but if you do, you can find dozens of varieties of cheese. "Soft," "hard," "crumbly," "dry," "wet" and "jalepeno" are just some of the defining characteristics. They all have one common denominator, though, which is "stinky."
Honduran cheese has none of the physical characteristics that I identify with the term "cheese." When I think of cheese, I think of a nice firm swiss, a supple cheddar, or a melty mozzarella. Honduran cheese is never melty. As a rule it comes in two textures: queso, which is hard, and quesillo, which is bouncy. If you apply enough heat to quesillo, it will melt somewhat, but by the time it is cool enough that it won't scald your lips, it has gone back to its original bouncy texture.
As if it weren't bad enough that the cheese is poorly constructed on a molecular level, it is also given the typical rough handling that most Honduran food suffers. Just as raw meat hangs in open air butcher shops, cheese peddlers park their pickup trucks full of dairy products alongside any road, so that passers-by can stop and buy a hunk of cheese that the seller cuts off with a knife he wipes on his jeans.
Some folks like it, though. Well, not the dirty knife, no one likes that, but some folks like the cheese. My mom, for one, can barely get off the plane from Missouri and the first thing she wants is a big slab of dry white cheese. My husband actually purchases a brick of cheese that will sit in the fridge, gradually growing smaller as he whittles away crumbly chunks for an afternoon snack. The cat and I refuse to have anything to do with this twisted diversion.
I've always loved cheese, and would have thought that it would be one of the things that I couldn't live without. I have to learned to live without it in Honduras. This has been made easier due to the existence of another dairy product that makes up for all the sins of cheese: mantequilla. I hope no one asks me to justify liking Honduran butter cream and not liking Honduran cheese. Somehow the smell just goes better with the cream. |
