Dairy turns isle milk into butter, cheese

When Oahu’s last dairy was closing, Monique van der Stroom decided to continue her career in the dairy business and started Naked Cow Dairy in Waianae. She’d been running dairies for more than two decades, so milking cows and getting fresh milk to the consumer was routine. But Naked Cow Dairy is a boutique dairy, focused on producing butter and cheese from island cream and milk.

Van der Stroom produces cheese (cream cheese and feta) in small batches. Cream from Hawaii island, rich with butterfat, is churned in 12-gallon batches, producing about 50 pounds of butter. The process is repeated several times each week.

Sweet cream butter and butters flavored with Kona sea salt, Big Island macadamia honey, Waianae basil pesto and other spice blends are sold at farmers markets at $7 per half-pound. Yes, it’s double what you’d pay for a pound of butter from the mainland, but it’s fresh and it hasn’t traveled thousands of miles to your table.

Van der Stroom hopes to get much-needed equipment to expand her cheese production (if you’d like to help, visit http://goo.gl/1u5Nx). On Saturday from 2 to 6 p.m., the dairy will open a "Pop-Up Cheese Shop" at 687 Auahi St. The sampling event pairs cheese with bread made by chef Alejandro "Aker" Briceno of Prima.

If you live on Hawaii island, butter is available from Tropical Dreams Ice Cream in Waimea, where John and Nancy Edney produce a cultured butter from fresh island cream. These butters may not be the butter you bake with or cook with, but it should be the butter you spread on your toast or freshly baked loaf of bread to savor its freshness and goodness.

———

Hawaii food writer Joan Namkoong offers a weekly tidbit on fresh seasonal products, many of them locally grown.