2023-07-06 06:26:29
“Tamghout”… Swiss-style Algerian cheese from the pastures of the Kabylie region
Dressed in a white apron and hat on his head, Rachid Ebersin is busy working among the pasteurizing vats. The engineer, who used to work in Switzerland, has returned home to Algeria with a new and unusual job: a cheese producer.
“With a butane gas bottle and a stove,” he says proudly, Ibersen began working in his traditional workshop ten years ago, amid an orchard of fruit trees and a green field, near the village of Tamasit in Kabylie, 160 kilometers east of Algiers.
Rashid Ebersen takes a picture with two wheels of “Tamghout” cheese (AFP)
Rachid Ebersin (57 years old) was born in El Harrach, a popular neighborhood in the southern suburbs of the capital, and studied first at the Institute of Hydrocarbons in Boumerdes, 50 kilometers to the east of Algeria.
After obtaining the certificate, he struggled to find a job compatible with his qualifications, but to no avail, so he sought work in Italy in the field of cinema, which is completely different from his major in industrial engineering.
“I tried the profession of a film director in Rome in the early 1990s, but I gave up quickly,” Ebersen told AFP. “Italian cinema at that time was in decline.”
Then he moved to Switzerland, where he stayed for 16 years. After training in media and multimedia, he got a job as an IT consultant, specializing in digital video, with a comfortable salary.
Engineer Rashid Ebersen recalled the place: “This is where the cheese-making project was born. To escape from the pressure of work, I moved during the weekends to chalets in the mountains, where the grazing areas are in the Gruyère region (near Fribourg), where there are many cheese factories.
He added, “Algerian milk is more diversified and organic because the farms are smaller. In Switzerland, we do not find breeders who have two or three cows, so our cheese has a special taste.”
Algerian Rachid Ebersen making “Tamghout” cheese (AFP)
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“Since then, the profits have been systematically reinvested in the development of the cheese factory,” asserts Ebersen, who spends his days with five workers, inspecting the cellars where the cheese is stored in the form of wheels, which must be rubbed, turned and turned regularly.
He explained that “the ripening period of Tamghout cheese (which it produces) ranges from one month to two years, according to the taste of customers.” Therefore, in his view, it is a “pure Algerian” cheese with a mixture of Swiss Gruyère and Dutch Gouda cheese.
Within a few years, Rachid Ebersin and his cheese «Tamghout» (the name is named following a mountain peak in Tizi Ouzou), became the darling of Western embassies in Algeria, so that no less than eleven diplomatic delegations visited him since 2012 to taste his product.
He said proud of his product: «Our cheese is made from raw cow’s milk, without any food additives and is not processed. And we use yeast for a natural structure.
The factory delivers between 700 and 1,000 liters of cow’s milk per day, which allows it to produce approximately 50 kilograms of cheese per day.
Rashid Ebersen supervises the process of making “Tamghout” cheese himself (AFP)
At first, Tamghut – which was labeled “Swiss idea, Algerian cheese” – was sold in supermarkets, but payment problems forced Rachid Ebersin to halt distribution.
From now on, it’s only available at local produce stores or superfood groceries.
Rashid Ebersen, who is proud of making “100 percent natural” cheese, is considering producing other cheeses with healing properties. The idea is to “develop high-quality cheeses that can treat specific diseases such as inflammatory bowel disease.”
Starting in 2018, the project started to make profits because the local product benefited from the decline in imports, which allowed it to find a place for itself in the Algerian market.
However, the motive is not money and profits, as he said: “Because I lived a better life in Switzerland as an IT consultant, with an average monthly salary of 7,000 euros.”
After the success in Algeria, Ebersen received invitations from other countries in the region, explaining that he is working on “two consulting projects in Libya and Qatar to establish cheese factories according to the same standards.”
He does not currently plan to export his cheese abroad, given that, in fact, he has “so far reached 22 countries.” Customers who visit the region “buy directly from here.”
Still, his cheese is out there thanks to some customers, like this one who flew to New York in mid-June with a whole wheel of cheese. He said: «I asked the customer to send me a picture from there. It is a source of pride because we started from nothing.”
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