You haven’t tried a cheese like casin, and if you have, you haven’t forgotten it. It’s like one of those love affairs that, although brief, leave memorized smells by the chamfers of the body. the casin It occupies your mouth and your entire head with an unusual flavor power. It is one of the oldest cheeses in the world, one of the most intense, with a protected designation of origin since 2011 and unique in its preparation. It is only produced by three cheese factories in Asturias, three small artisan businesses located around the Redes Natural Park, which continue a tradition maintained for decades only in private homes. And usually, by women. It has everything, in short, to succeed. However, he remains unknown beyond the Principality.
The casin takes its name from the place: the Caso council, which also lends its name to the Asturiana de la Montaña breed, or casina cow, with little milk but very tasty thanks to the formidable pastures where it feeds. There are documentary references to the casin since the 14th century, then called asadero cheese, and the legend maintains that “in the year 713, the casinos gave King Don Pelayo, after the battle of Covadonga, a cheese so large that it had to be transported in a car from the country”. Pelayo accumulates as many folkloric anecdotes as quotes are attributed to Winston Churchill, but behind the legend, there is history. Enric Canutone of the great Spanish experts in this matter of fermented and matured milks, believes that the casín “is part of that set of cheeses made in the Cantabrian Mountains that is rooted directly with the Neolithic and with the first settlers who arrived at the spine Of the peninsula”.
“This cheese was designed to last all year,” says Fran Cueria, a 44-year-old draftsman who set up the La Corte cheese factory in 2014 to weather the crisis. It is made with raw milk, whose curd is first drained in cloths called “fardelas”. Then -and here is the singularity-, the curd is kneaded several times, successively drying it and breaking the fat, but without pressing it. After the first kneading, the curd is shaped into a truncated pyramid, which is known as “el gorollo”, which in turn is kneaded again.
Formerly, four or five turns were added to this process, using a wooden machine, the “rabilar” machine, which combined two rollers that rotated in opposite directions. Today, each cheese factory has managed a device that fulfills the same function in accordance with health regulations. Fran began by testing with a meat grinder and now uses an adapted mixer, while she continues to think a thousand times about how to improve each phase of preparation.
With the kneading -currently, two-, the cheese loses all the liquid and is compacted with the force of a wall. It does not need a mould, it does not have a rind, it matures for two months and after this time, when cut, it breaks into flakes that crumble, with a strong, astringent and spicy flavor that leaves your eyebrows glued to the root of your hair. It is sold in vacuum-packed 250-gram pieces, although larger ones are also prepared for special customers. “And he is a living being that never stops evolving,” says Fran, while she brings us cheeses of different ripenings that fill her cheese factory with fragrances as powerful as its spectacular views of the Tanes reservoir. The casin, like its landscape, is unforgettable.
Each of the three dairies (networksThe Court and Ca Llechi) uses a stamp to mark the base and differentiate itself, maintaining a tradition similar to that of bread that was taken to communal ovens, and was also aged in granaries shared by families in the past. Today the DOP limits production to Caso, Sobrescobio and Piloña, with milk from native cows and with the particular climate of its valleys, which determines those deep aromas that appear when airing with the humidity of the mountains and forests. All those brought together by the cheese contest that is organized in August, cut short in the last two years by the pandemic, but which this year promises to return.
This promising panorama is also the result of another kind of reconquest, because during the eighties of the last century, the casin had ceased to be marketed: it was only produced for self-consumption. Until Marigel Álvarez insisted on selling it and set up the Redes cheese factory next to her husband’s mechanical workshop. She investigated the recipe, rounded it up and encouraged the regional government to protect it under a designation of origin. Marigel is to the casino what Churchill’s quotes are to politicians’ speeches: an inevitable bible, and for this reason she has received institutional and popular recognition of all kinds. “For us, cheese is something sacred, we take it as a pride,” says her daughter, Natalia Lobeto, who currently runs the business.
However, in Spain we like legends more than reality, and the current casíncas have a hard time making their way even in their land. “My personal challenge is to make it appear on the cheese boards that restaurants offer,” says Alberto Valiente, a veterinarian and cheesemaker since 2012, when he started with Ca Llechi. Like the other two brands, it hardly sells outside Asturias: “There is little production, but promotion is also essential,” he points out. Natalia Lobeto, whose family has been doing this work for decades, is optimistic: “We are going little by little, but it has a great future.” Fran adds restoration as another way to make it known: “It is a cheese that, due to its flavor, gives great performance in the kitchen.” Just as the cachopo would settle many idiosyncratic debates if it were invariably cooked with local cheeses, the Cabrales sauce can be combined with other traditional flavors and Asturias does not end with the fabada, but rather begins with it. Because this beautiful land, full of corners and chamfers, never stops discovering flavors.
In the Product of the Month section, we tell the story of foodstuffs that move us because of their quality, their flavor and the talent of the people who make them. No producer has given us money, jewelery or Mercadona gift vouchers to make these items.
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