What makes artisan cheese different from the mass-produced product? Hand-made and created in smaller batches, sometimes made with raw milk, it demands a great deal of care to bring out the complex flavours you’d be hard-pressed to find in store-bought cheese.
“It requires a lot of patience. You need to give it time, to see the end result,” says Aditya Raghavan, chef and owner of Fleur Jaune Cheese. “And cherishing that complex process in that manner has really opened my eyes… the science behind it is what drew me to cheesemaking.”
The physicist-turned-cheesemaker had a passion for food and cooking for as long as he can remember, and even dabbled in cheese- making on the side while working at the University of Alberta. But he never imagined he’d become an expert in Alberta’s dairy industry, much less outside of it.
For Raghavan, a turning point came in 2013, while he was working as a visiting fellow at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Mumbai. He was so inspired by the deep history of dairy and the potential for artisan cheesemaking in India, he decided to commit to the craft full time. While leaving more than a decade-long career in theoretical physics and mathematics, and his position at the U of A, may have been the scariest decision he’s ever made, Raghavan hasn’t regretted it.
“Being a postdoctoral fellow… I didn’t really enjoy it, it wasn’t a right fit for me,” he says. “I was always interested in food. So, I decided to have fun with it. I’m very happy about the decisions I made.”
Eight years later, his fascination with cheesemaking and passion for food has taken him on a journey around the world. Over the years, he has discovered and made cheeses in the Himalayas and the Savoie region of France, foraged wild fruits in the Indian state Nagaland and co-hosted a food trail in Sikkim, India.
And now, he’s hoping to bring his favourite cheese recipes to Edmonton — that is, once he gets past the strict provincial regulations on raw milk. Inspired by the time he spent in France and northern Italy, where fresh cheeses taste like fresh milk and have very little fermentation, Raghavan hopes to popularize unpasteurized cheese production and consumption in Alberta.