Monforte Dairy Farm
We headed out from Toronto for the cheese farm early the Monday morning. Monforte is located in Stratford which is about a two hour drive. we arrived at the farm around 8:30 and it was not what I expected to see. It was not like the dairy farms I've seen when I was in Italy. At first it looked like a regular house and i thought, are they making it in their basement or something. when we got inside it sorta looks like a home/cafe set up granted i was still half asleep when we arrived. Ruth (the owner) began talking and introducing herself and telling us about her experience in the cooking industry and at this time her son walk in through a door with a plastic apron, a hair net, beard net and shoe nets over his shoes. That's when i figured that they did the cheese making in the back.
Before we were allowed in the back we also had to put on hair nets, beard nets (for those who had beards) shoe nets and a plastic apron, before we could go into the actual room. Once we had all this on we had to wash our hand. we went into the back where they made the cheese and turns out they had more tech and more modern equipment than in Italy. They told us how important it was to keep our hands clean if we touched our phones our hand our hear, put our hands in our pockets we had to wash our hands. We started to make the cheese and they put some binding ingredients in it and we began to mix it in with a wooding paddle. Once we mixed it we let it rest for about 30 min, then we began to cut the cheese with a wire cutter, which looked like a harp. we cut the cheese into cubes. before we could do anything to the cheese we had to wash our hands and then sanitize them.
how the cheese looked. after being cut
we went into there storage room where they kept there cheeses. as you walked in you could smell the mold from the cheese that have began to develop it. Here are some of the cheeses we got to see.She got all of her milk to do her cheese from cattle farmers, sheep farmers or water buffalo farmers, that only grass fed their animals and kept them in a good environment the milk she gets is 100% pure milk that she uses. she makes sure that the gives the farmers that she buys the milk from a fair wadge also. she pays what is worth for the milk and all the hours and hard work that is put into getting the milk. She believes that you should be paid what you work for and not under cut because not only do the people have to raise there animals but they also have to provide for there families.
Brie cheese: is a soft cows milk cheese.
Pepato cheese its a semi-hard sheep milk cheese with peppercorn
water buffalo cheese.
Once the cheese was made and resting we heading to the restaurant Osteria. We prepped and cooked ham, pulled chicken, beet and cheese stuffed raviolis and more. Something stood out to me that i found interesting, they had herbs that were not in season on the window hanging to dry and when we went outside there was little pots that looked like they had herbs growing out of. there was some onions that were starting to sprout. I've only ever heard people talking about doing things like that an never actually seen a kitchen do that before and that's why it was something very interesting for me.
beetroot and cheese stuffed with melted butter.
The kitchen was not very big and it was about 10 of use in there at a time, but we got it done, the food came out great an was able to see and learn something new by going on this trip.
