Who arrives as jury to the famous, and internationally known, ‘Ordizia Idiazabal Cheese Competition‘, as is my case, it is because of the admiration excessive that is professed to cheese in question. Next Wednesday, September 11, at ten o’clock sharp, I will be one of the thirty technicians, chefs, teachers, experts and curious people who will try it and rate it.
“There are eight sensory guidelines, but considering that fifty will be tasted, they will be summarized in three: physical appearance (shape), olfactory (smell) and gustatory (taste),” says Jesús Mari Ormaetxea, Grand Master of the Brotherhood, in a telephone conversation. Cheese Idiazábal, the organizing entity.
He explains that after the screening, fourteen will be selected, which will be analyzed with all the parameters, which in addition to those mentioned, are rind, color of the paste, eyes, texture and aftertaste. There will be five winners. The first prize It is 20 thousand euros plus a diploma, trophy and 12 thousand cheese stickers with the name of the shepherd and new title: Champion of Ordizia 2024.
On the expectation that the contest generates in the panorama gastronomicreferred to the auction, the cherry on the cake, established in the eighties, whose novelty is that “it will also be online”. Registration is open and it is possible to bid from any corner of the planet. It will start at half past one after the winners are revealed. The proceeds will go to a residence for senior citizens.
Last year, the half-kilo piece fetched 3,550 euros. The buyer was Super Amara, a supermarket chain. The record was 13,500 euros in 2014, bought by a cooperative from Ordizia, as the natives of Ordizia are known, a town founded in the 13th century and just a few kilometres from San Sebastian.
Idiazábal is a pressed cheese, weighing up to three kilos, smoked and unsmoked, with Protected Designation of Origin, produced in one hundred and ten cheese factories in the Basque Country and Navarre. It is artisanal and conceived with aromas of wet earth; the famous petrichor, humidity and evergreen mountains, rain and drizzle, a dew that tastes like the sea. The region is bathed by the Cantabrian Sea.
The old-fashioned recipe is raw sheep’s milk, salt and knowledge to heat the milk, add the rennet, cut, strain and give it a few months, at least two, for the microorganisms to do their work of curing or maturing.
The founding member of the guild, created in 1990, says that the permitted breeds: Latxa and Carranzana, native, produce little milk, “but very rich in fat”. Regarding the enzymatic or animal rennet, he explained that it is made with one of the four stomachs of a suckling lamb.
I remembered a video of a Mexican woman who was soaking the cheese in water and removing the remains of grass and excess fat. She would marinate it for up to two days in brine, some add lemon, and dry it in the sun. She explained that to produce cheese, they cut off pieces of the dried stomach, hydrate it and add it to warm milk. In a few minutes, the miracle of coagulation begins, the dance of enzymes with lactic bacteria. There is also rennet from other animals besides sheep and cattle, such as deer and rabbit.
Ormaetxea explains that in the natural rennet of Ordizia cheese, a star of the famous World Cheese Awards, the shepherds dry the casing for two to three months. “They clean it of dirt, grease, hairs.” They grind it, mix it with salt and water in small proportions and filter it. He adds that chemical rennet is also used.
I ask about the commotion generated by the recent auction of the two and a half kilo Cabrales cheese in Asturias that broke the Guinness record: 36 thousand euros, and Ormaetxea comments that they are different worlds, but what ultimately matters is giving prominence to the shepherd and his ancestral work. I listen, applaud, and look forward excitedly to next Wednesday to go to the Idiazábal championship that is celebrating its 51st anniversary.
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