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Why Tap a Wheel of Cheese?

cheeseprofessor.com

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Re: Why Tap a Wheel of Cheese?

#71

Post by sfilmeyer »

mauvehaus wrote: post #55
ziofill wrote: post #38

Probably I'm biased because I'm Italian and I grew up eating them, but Parmigiano Reggiano and Grana Padano are hands down the best cheeses there can be. Many people know and consume them only grated on pasta dishes, but they are especially delicious on their own with some good bread or grilled polenta. Also, the crust can be chopped up and added to risotto (as you're cooking it) and they turn into wonderful little c…

For those who didn't know, the rind can also be dropped into an otherwise ordinary pot of soup and add a lot of flavor. Thanks for the risotto tip; gonna have to try that. I've never tasted the rind after cooking it in soup: it's not an appealing look to my eye. What size should the rind be chopped up for risotto?

For those who don't know, the rind can also be just plain eaten. Maybe I'm just a heathen, but I find it far too delicious to ever waste on a pot of soup.

Re: Why Tap a Wheel of Cheese?

#72

Post by wrboyce »

ziofill wrote: post #38

Probably I'm biased because I'm Italian and I grew up eating them, but Parmigiano Reggiano and Grana Padano are hands down the best cheeses there can be. Many people know and consume them only grated on pasta dishes, but they are especially delicious on their own with some good bread or grilled polenta. Also, the crust can be chopped up and added to risotto (as you're cooking it) and they turn into wonderful little c…

I got home today from my first trip to Italy (we went to Verona for Vin Italy) and cheese was at the top of my shopping list of things to bring back. As it happens, I’m right now eating some 36 month aged Parmigiano Reggiano; absolutely beautiful. The food and wine I enjoyed in your country were on another level! On the subject of risotto, I had my first ever(!) risotto last night: a risotto amarone, and wow! Absolutely incredible, molto interessante!

Re: Why Tap a Wheel of Cheese?

#73

Post by nomel »

SamBam wrote: post #4

I am glad that this continues to be done by hand, and expect, based on Italian attitudes towards food and tradition, that it will continue being done by hand for another hundred years. It is interesting how important it seems to us that jobs like this remain done in the traditional way. For all their expertise, I am sure a technical solution would also easily be able to detect what they are looking for: voids within…

> end up with industrially-produced bad cheese.

It does't have to be, of course, but the people with enough capital to set up automation tend to care more about money than cheese.

Re: Why Tap a Wheel of Cheese?

#74

Post by DiggyJohnson »

reaperducer wrote: post #42
SamBam wrote: post #4

I am glad that this continues to be done by hand, and expect, based on Italian attitudes towards food and tradition, that it will continue being done by hand for another hundred years. It is interesting how important it seems to us that jobs like this remain done in the traditional way. For all their expertise, I am sure a technical solution would also easily be able to detect what they are looking for: voids within…

replacing these humans with machines would be the start of a short process that would end up with indistrially-produced bad cheese. I agree. As soon as you replace humans with machines, the next step is so-called "value engineering," where squeezing pennies out of a process becomes more important than the product. Let the tech people do tech. Let the artists do art. Food is an art.

> Food is an art.

While I respect the point you're making, food is not an art. It is usually a perishable commodity and a requirement for survival.

Re: Why Tap a Wheel of Cheese?

#75

Post by crazygringo »

ziofill wrote: post #38

Probably I'm biased because I'm Italian and I grew up eating them, but Parmigiano Reggiano and Grana Padano are hands down the best cheeses there can be. Many people know and consume them only grated on pasta dishes, but they are especially delicious on their own with some good bread or grilled polenta. Also, the crust can be chopped up and added to risotto (as you're cooking it) and they turn into wonderful little c…

I love them as well, but they seem to be too hard and too strong to pair well with bread. They really do seem to work best grated into things like pasta, risotto, and soup, or as shavings in salad.

I mean, you do you, but you'd find me reaching for a lot of other cheeses first to go with my bread.

Re: Why Tap a Wheel of Cheese?

#76

Post by abirch »

thierrydamiba wrote: post #65
BobaFloutist wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is it's actually a super fun thought experiment/engineering problem to try to figure out how to do this technologically, but any such attempt would (rightly) be taken as an attack on this profession because even if it was a silly blog post about overthinking a silly problem, silly blogposts are potentially upstream of (maybe even someone else) a commercial implementation that eventually destroys a profess…

Do professions really get destroyed? Or does the world just change? I used to get paid to do OCR on tax forms. I used n gram models, BERT,etc and it took weeks to get the forms right. Now you can do it in seconds with an api. I wouldn’t say the profession got destroyed. I just work with different tools now. Instead of running ngrams, I’m testing different apis or embedding models. The old job doesn’t exist anymore, i…

The world is constantly changing, some professions are destroyed as the result. This is a tale as old as time. Mark Twain wrote about this on Life on the Mississippi when he was a river boat pilot before trains became common and destroyed the trade.

some professions spawn from viable hobbies and some hobbies spawn from unviable professions.

Re: Why Tap a Wheel of Cheese?

#77

Post by jacobgkau »

It's interesting to me that, from what they describe, they still sell the cheese regardless of the outcome of this tapping test. It's just that they sell it unbranded if it's of the lowest quality, and with a different marking for medium quality than highest-quality.

I suppose wheels of cheese can last a lot longer than normal table cheese, so that's why it makes sense to make this distinction.

Re: Why Tap a Wheel of Cheese?

#78

Post by xandrius »

staplers wrote: post #37
hammock wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I am glad that this continues to be done by hand, and expect, based on Italian attitudes towards food and tradition, that it will continue being done by hand for another hundred years. It has been fun watching Starbucks' various attempts at cracking into the Italian market.

As an American, I was never a coffee snob but going to Italy changed that. My god they have it completely mastered.

Wait until you realise that coffee can also not be toasted dark to death. Then you get to explore the other tastes of coffee too!

Re: Why Tap a Wheel of Cheese?

#79

Post by xandrius »

sfilmeyer wrote: post #71
mauvehaus wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For those who didn't know, the rind can also be dropped into an otherwise ordinary pot of soup and add a lot of flavor. Thanks for the risotto tip; gonna have to try that. I've never tasted the rind after cooking it in soup: it's not an appealing look to my eye. What size should the rind be chopped up for risotto?

For those who don't know, the rind can also be just plain eaten. Maybe I'm just a heathen, but I find it far too delicious to ever waste on a pot of soup.

I used to just microwave it or bake it, wonderful snack.

Re: Why Tap a Wheel of Cheese?

#80

Post by paulorlando »

thierrydamiba wrote: post #65
BobaFloutist wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is it's actually a super fun thought experiment/engineering problem to try to figure out how to do this technologically, but any such attempt would (rightly) be taken as an attack on this profession because even if it was a silly blog post about overthinking a silly problem, silly blogposts are potentially upstream of (maybe even someone else) a commercial implementation that eventually destroys a profess…

Do professions really get destroyed? Or does the world just change? I used to get paid to do OCR on tax forms. I used n gram models, BERT,etc and it took weeks to get the forms right. Now you can do it in seconds with an api. I wouldn’t say the profession got destroyed. I just work with different tools now. Instead of running ngrams, I’m testing different apis or embedding models. The old job doesn’t exist anymore, i…

And even with the existence of those tools, the old professions continue for years, sometimes many years, in niches. For example, even today there are people who are paid to wake up others manually - a job that used to be called "knocker-up."
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