As a cheese lover, I want to share with you how much we have grown and been able to develop our own. One particular farm I had the pleasure visiting offered such diverse flavors and a concept that is world class.
I went to Davao some weeks ago and made sure to stop by this farm everyone has been talking about. What started out humbly is now a big operation exporting and supplying the best groceries and specialty stores in the country.
Meet Olive Puentespina, Founder and Owner of Malagos Farms. Olive learned the art of cheese making from a teacher based in Switzerland. Because she was passionate about it, she learned fast. Her teacher was a bit wary and felt cheese could not be made here, but when they saw her pepato, they were very impressed. Her Swiss teacher, she says, couldn’t be prouder.
What started as a small cheese making farm in 2005/2006 has now grown by leaps and bounds. She makes white cheese (kesong puti) using unskimmed carabao’s milk. This is a fresh cheese not meant to age. She has two variants of goat’s cheese, plain and mango which is served in Philippine Airline’s Business Class. Aged feta, ricotta (made of curd and whey so it’s a slim cheese), cow’s milk blue cheese and camembert are just a few of what she has in her farm. And lucky were we who got to sample her cheeses for a really special afternoon snack. Olive does a lot of cheese events aside from giving talks around the world as the first Filipina cheese maker.
More of Malagos Farmhouse
Olive Puentespina
here is our salad with feta, some ricotta, kesong puti and goat’s cheeses (plain and mango)
creamy camembert and some malagos bignay syrup (bignay is a fruit tree native to southeast asia and northern australia) perfect combination!
some blue
fresh kesong put (white cheese) with her home made pesto and carrot jam. we cooked this in a raclette maker to release the fat—and it was sooo good
and that’s not all! here are some cowhide rugs from male goats that are fattened and slaughtered for meat, the skins are tanned and are a very chic home accent. sorry peta, peace…
A must when in Davao.
For a tour, contact Malagos at www.malagosfarmhouse.com