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Mozzarella Milestone (13/03/08 THE PRESS)
Thursday, 13 March 2008
ImageBy Kirsten MacFarlane

`There's nothing like eating it fresh," says Helen Dorresteyn, dipping her hand into a tub of brine and pulling out a fist-sized ball of porcelain-white mozzarella.

"Keen to try it with some fresh tomato and basil?"

A simple dining pleasure enjoyed by the Italians for centuries, in New Zealand, this platter of freshly sliced mozzarella represents a milestone for the cheese industry.

Never mind Fonterra's record payouts, it's the first time that mozzarella cheese has been produced with milk from a herd of locally reared water buffalo.

"The Italians say it must be eaten within days of being made," says Dorresteyn.

Dorresteyn, husband Richard and four partners are the cheese pioneers behind Clevedon Valley Buffalo Company.

"After you've tasted this, let's move on to the buffalo ricotta."

Although newcomers to the specialist cheese industry, this South Auckland-based company upstaged veteran cheesemakers by winning two golds and two silvers at the Cuisine New Zealand Champions of Cheese Awards last week.

The buffalo ricotta won the Champion Fresh Unripened Cheese Award and the Champion New Cheese Award.

The mozzarella won silver in the European Style Cheese and the New Cheese categories.

To ensure the judges sampled the buffalo cheese at its best, Richard toiled through the night at the company's Papakura cheese factory.

"There was pressure to perform, but we managed to pull it off on the day," he says.

As cheese connoisseurs say, once experienced, the texture and fragrance of fresh buffalo mozzarella can never be forgotten.

It was love at first bite for the Dorresteyns, when they first sampled the delicacy in Italy.

It became an obsession when they had the idea of importing water buffalo so they could make their own fresh mozzarella.

"Sheer frustration drove us to produce the cheese ourselves," says Helen, a former art teacher who founded the Clevedon Village Farmers' Market in 2005.

"We couldn't find a local cheesemaker to take a stall at the market, so we thought we'd make it ourselves, we can do it."

Although a few swamp buffalo were imported about 15 years ago as meat-producing animals, no-one had attempted to bring in milking buffalo.

Convincing an Australian breeder to part with 65 head of cattle was easy. Negotiating New Zealand's strict biosecurity formalities was anything but.

"We had a lot of stressful red tape to overcome and quarantine delays," says Helen.

The first shipment of 18 riverine milking buffalo and one bull went without a hitch early last year, but the second and third shipments were held up in quarantine for five months.

At their new home in Clevedon, these lumbering, highly intelligent beasts look contented enough wallowing in mud in a river by the paddock.

"We have limited supplies of milk to make the cheese, but that will all change as the herd expands," says Richard.

Despite learning cheesemaking secrets from consultant Peter Byrant, the former industrial electrician admits he still has plenty to learn about traditional mozzarella di bufala.

The couple recently returned from three weeks in Italy's premier mozzarella-making region, Campania, where they attended the World Buffalo Congress and visited farms and cheesemakers.

"The Italians are very generous with their knowledge. I've learnt so much from them," says Richard.

"And they never stopped feeding us," laughs Helen.

Making mozzarella is a mix of art and science. Buffalo milk has twice as much fat as cows' milk and one-third more protein. This fat-protein ratio gives the cheese extraordinary elastic stretch, and the cheesemaker has to accurately predict when to begin stretching and pulling.

"We've experimented a lot," says Helen, "but the feedback has been really good."

Cheese lovers will be able to sample the first batch at the Clevedon Village Farmers' Market next month. Buffalo-milk cheese will appear in restaurants and speciality stores soon.
 
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