Chapter 280 - 279: The Taste of Fermented Cheese
The early winter climate was clear and mild this year, nothing like the icy chill Ye Xinyan felt when she escaped from the Duke’s Mansion at the end of last year.
Because the fermentation workshop of the Dairy Products Store was built with a semi-underground structure, it still had a few strands of warmth even in this season. However, when the severe winter set in, the workshop probably wouldn’t be able to retain its warmth anymore. Fortunately, the workshop was equipped with a stove wall, so they could light a fire to keep warm during the cold winter season.
Ye Xinyan thought that they would have to go through a winter and a summer, combining the cheese fermented in the family cellar, before they could decide whether the fermentation workshop was more suitable for a cellar or a conventional workshop. If the cellar proved to be more appropriate for fermentation, they would build a larger one next year, specifically for fermenting cheese.
Ye Xinyan and Zhang Baokui chose three small pieces of test cheese, each marked with different dates. When Zhang Baokui picked up these pieces of cheese, his eyes were full of eagerness and reluctance, as if he was parting with a piece of his heart.
Two days earlier, they had selected two pieces of test cheese from both the family cellar and the fermentation workshop and tried their taste and quality.
For Ye Xinyan, whether it was fresh cheese or purely fermented cheese, it wasn’t something new. Even though fermented cheese was expensive, she had indeed tasted it many times. Aside from a few peculiarly pricey cheeses with odd flavors, she liked the rest.
But for the people of this era, consuming purely fermented cheese was quite a challenging endeavor. Ye Xinyan felt it could compete with eating durians or deep-fried stinky tofu. Of course, within such a short period, Ye Xinyan couldn’t produce cheese with an exceptionally unique taste, so the difficulty of this challenge was much reduced.
Cheese, to those who were just starting to eat it, was a rich and strong-flavored food, even if they liked it. Therefore, for the first time they tried it, Ye Xinyan introduced the cheese as part of a Chinese-style burger, one for each person, all in small portions, each burger less than three inches in diameter. The burger, with a patty, cheese, and thin roasted potato shreds sandwiched between two slices of bread, was served as part of the main meal on the dining table.