Galicia is a land of good quality dairy products. Today we dedicate this publication to cheeses with Protected Designation of Origin ( PDO ) and to the Galician companies that are dedicated to their production and processing. We all know the excellence of these cheeses, but do we know something about their history? We will also talk briefly about it.
As the Gadis supermarket says: “ Let’s value it or not show it off, tie de can “.
QUEIXO TETILLA
SAN SIMÓN DA COSTA
ARZÚA-ULLOA CHEESE
So let’s start with a tasting of these delicacies.
SAN SIMÓN DA COSTA
The cheeses San Simón da Costa Protected Designation of Origin can be made with milk from cattle of the Galician blonde, brown-alpine, Friesian and their crosses.
The location of the production is constituted by the A Terra Chá region (Abadín, A Pastoriza, Begonte, Castro de Rei, Cospeito, Guitiriz, Muras, Vilalba and Xermade). Both milk and cheese must come from that area.
Features
The aesthetic and qualitative characteristics that the D.O.P. San Simón da Costa are diverse. Regarding its shape, it looks like something between a top and a bullet. The characteristic smoky smell is essential in its distinction. Regarding the color, it must be yellow-ocher. The texture is somewhat greasy, inelastic and hard, 1 to 3 mm thick.
The inner paste has a fine, fatty, semi-hard, semi-elastic and contracted texture, white to yellow in color, smooth to the cut, with a characteristic aroma and flavor, and a not very high number of eyes. Its fat content on a dry layer will be greater than 45% and less than 60%.
San Simón da Costa cheese is marketed with a minimum maturity of 45 days, in the case of the 0.8 to 1.5 kg format, and 30 days for the small format or “jester” (0.4 to 0.8 kg). At the end of maturation, it is smoked with birch wood.
History
The origins of this cheese are also mysterious, perhaps even more so than the other varieties, but we will see that later. During the cultural obscurantism of the Middle Ages there is no reference to the production of this cheese.
There are many and very diverse references in the documentation of the 19th century. An interesting review is the one collected in La Aurora del Miño, from September 1857, echoes this representation:
“tremesino wheat, turnips, green peas, green chestnuts that are one of the main foods of the farmer of this province, brandy and sulfuric ether extracted from the strawberry tree, butter perfectly imitated to that of Flanders, San Simón cheeses, flax, medicinal plants… ”
The writer Doña Emilia Pardo Bazán deserves special mention of the reference documentation. In her books she names the San Simón da Costa cheeses on several occasions.
During the twentieth century there are numerous appointments to this excellent product. Currently the San Simón da Costa cheese gives is going through a stage of consolidation in new markets both in Europe and on other continents.
Legend
Legend has it that the true origins of the “San Simón da Costa” cheese go back to the Celtic peoples of the castros that settled in the areas near the mountains of the Sierras de A Carba and O Xistral.
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