Camel cheese is both food and a meme, concept and reality, challenge and reward.

Camel cheese, camel cheese, camel cheese. Camel cheese, camel cheese, camel cheese. Camel cheese, camel cheese, camel cheese. Camel cheese, camel cheese, camel cheese. Camel cheese, camel cheese, camel cheese.

Camel cheese is rumoured to be nonallergenic, and the production of camel cheese forms a surprisingly high-profile part of the GDP of Mauritania, thanks to the intervention of the former Essex Girl Nancy Jones and her 153Club.

Nancy Abeiderrahmane, born Nancy Jones of Essex, won the 1993 Rolex Award (£20,000) for her project to produce and export the cheese from her dairy in Nouakchott, Mauritania. However this is no ordinary dairy, since it specialises in pasteurising camel’s milk supplied by semi-nomadic herders.

I’m wondering how she gets the herders to stand still while they’re being milked. Surely there’s a YouTube vid?

At least we can rest easy knowing that the UN is on the case, enabling camel cheese making around the globe through their handy leaflet on the topic. Surely given the population of surplus camels and the inherent entrepreneurialism of its people, it cannot be long before Australia overtakes early leader Mauritania in the Camel Cheese Making Stakes. Truly, camel cheese production is a breakthrough that could not have happened in the dark ages of the Mid-Twentieth Century.

“Making cheese from the milk of a cow or a goat or even a yak is easy,” says Jean-Claude Lambert, an FAO dairy specialist. “Everything is known in terms of technology.” But camel milk was a different story because traditional rennet does not coagulate it. “Six years ago no one believed camel milk could be made into cheese,” says Mr Lambert.

In an attempt to solve the coagulation problems presented by the particular characteristics of camel milk, FAO commissioned Professor J.P. Ramet of the French Ecole nationale supérieure d’agronomie et des industries alimentaires to study how it could be done. After research and experimentation in Saudi Arabia and Tunisia, he found a way to curdle the milk by adding calcium phosphate and vegetable rennet.

Thus, camel cheese is the only variety of actual cheese (as opposed to vegan cheese, about which we will not speak) which is not made from the components of dead animals.

All of which is fascinating, but is not the reason I am making this blog post. After all, I do not, in fact, give a rat’s ass about camel cheese, as it is not actually available in Vancouver’s Chinatown and Vancouver’s Ethiopiatown is as yet too small to sustain a camel cheese shop.

I am, in fact and in actuality, making this blog post because Boris Mann (honestly, how many Borises do I know? You can’t swing a cat in here without hitting a Boris of one variety or the other) who is well aware of my beaver shots fame, dared me to hit the front page of Google with a blog post on Camel Cheese.

Camel cheese, camel cheese, camel cheese. Camel cheese, camel cheese, camel cheese. Camel cheese, camel cheese, camel cheese. Camel cheese, camel cheese, camel cheese. Camel cheese, camel cheese, camel cheese.

I said I’d make the #1 hit within 48 hours, which could have been the third beer talking, or maybe it was the Fruity Sailor; yes, let us blame it not on the wholesome Raven Cream Ale, but rather on the mysterious blend of chemicals which is the Alibi Room‘s Fruity Sailor. No matter what bad thing happens, if you blame it on the fruity sailor you encountered at ten o’clock on a full moon night on the Downtown Eastside, people are likely to believe you.

You can Google it.

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