Hi Sasa

I am sorry, I wasn't very clear with regard to the eggs! I have just re-read my post! lol Eggs that you buy in their carton in a shell aren't pasturised, but whole egg products are. So, any combination of yolk/white dried, or whole is pasturised. I am sorry, when I wrote whole eggs I should ahve written whole egg products - I was not very clear...maybe shouldnt have replied at 3am! lol


Yes it is possible to obtain untreated cheeses, now in Australia - for about the last 5 years or so. You cannot to my knowledge obtain a raw milk product that isnt not pasturised etc, but you can certainly obtain cheeses that are. This comes form the demand in the food industry to be able to use European products in particular. The product from untreated milk (cow, sheep goat, camel, reindeer) is so far a superior product, and the risk is in fact so minimal, that it is a great disappointment to most of us in the industry that we cannot use a particular goats cheese because it is untreated.
Also there was an interest from many Australian boutique producers that wanted to be able to compete on the international stage with such cheese-producing icons as France, and they can't do that until they were allowed to start from an untreated raw product. This is not the case as yet.
Parmesan, Gruyere and Emmenthal cheese are all raw milk cheeses, although they undergo a temperature treatment during the aging process. Roquefort cheeses however have been allowed. They are a blue cheese that has been excepted from the ban. If a raw milk cheese is determined to be just as safe as the treated product, then it is possible for them to obtain permission to sell it here. So yes, the untreated products are available, albeit on a very limited basis.


Stefano de Pieri did a fantastic segment on making homemade salalmi on his show a few years ago now, on ABC - I will see if I can find the clip somewhere.
Salami's are traditionally made with entrails/offal/off cuts from the slaughtered animal. They are not refridgerated and the process by which they are mixed and moulded is not pretty. They do not make salamis in the traditional fashion here as it is considered 'unsafe'. This is the reference I made to light of stomach! I did make the assumption that many people would find this process difficult to see, if you didn't, then great, but many people still like to believe that their meat grows in plastic trays at the supermarket.

Yes, curing does what normal cooking methods do not, because curing is not a method of cooking but rather a method of preservation. Like salting, drying and smoking. All of which are completely different to each other and any other cooking method. It is considered practically however, if it has been cured, to be cooked (Although not by law). IE not 'raw meat' like you just killed, bled and hung the pig and now you are going to take a bite off its leg, but rather the meat has undergone a process that enables it to be fit for human consumption without the necessity of conventional cooking. I was simply trying to dispell the myth that you need to cook bacon.