Alternative Valentine's Day Cheese - go stinky!

Ah yes, Valentine's Day.  A day of panic for men everywhere.  A day of hopeless expectations for everyone, in a relationship or not!  Might I recommend cheese as an alternative to chocolates (or perhaps as a first course to chocolates)?

I was going to introduce you to an herb crusted Corsican cheese called Brin d'Amour.  I mean - it's the obvious choice, right?  French love cheese.  But really, isn't that a bit tooo obvious?  Maybe I'll save that one for a time of year that needs a little extra love.  Instead, I'd like to suggest that in the same way that two lovers can share a plate of garlic pasta and share the bad breath, they can share some incredibly rich and pungent blue cheese with the appropriate accessories for an alternative, and creative cheese course.  Darling Husband and I tested this out tonight with a powerful Spanish Cabrales.

Look at the incredible blue marbling!  The amount of penicillium mold in this paste makes it very tangy and sharp, but with a dark sweetness hiding underneath.  This is a very rich cheese, and a bit challenging on its own.  When I did the initial nibble, I was almost overpowered, as was DH.  The goal for tonight was to remember to do pairings and not just gobble the cheese off the board, and so when a bit of honey was drizzled on the cheese which was softly spread on the bread everything just popped!  The underlying sweetness of the cheese came back to the surface, and was so much more accessible to the palate.  Dried apricots and a little port rounded out this perfect little dessert.

Enjoy your weekend with those you love.  Share a laugh, create a memory, and if you do it with cheese, all's the better!

Pt. Reyes Farmstead Cheese Company - The Blues are going Green!

I picked up some Pt. Reyes blue at the grocery store last summer, and it created a creamy, salty, pungent base for a delicious steak salad.  It was one of the first blues I sampled as an official cheese head, and it definitely created the impetus for me to go out and boldly try all kinds of blue cheese.  Since then, I've introduced y'all to many of the stars in a world where the moon is, in fact made of blue cheese.

With my new Friday series highlighting some of my favorite cheesemakers (and my incredibly dull Wednesday night class allowing me time to do the internet research that I need...), I've started cruising the state cheesemaker organization websites.  Since I'm a Cali girl (omigod!  fer sher!), I've started at the California Artisan Cheese Guild.  They have a great list of California dairies, and a map of where all of these good people live, work, and care for the beasties that provide the raw materials for our favorite food.  Sadly for me, almost all of these guys live in Northern California, while I alternately bake and drown in Los Angeles.

So anyway - Pt. Reyes Farmstead Cheese Company.  The Giacomini family has owned and operated this dairy, milking cows since 1959 and started making cheese in 2000.  The ranch is located on the hills overlooking Tomales Bay in Marin County.  These are the epitome of happy California cows!  They've got a beautiful view.  It never gets too hot.  Their tasty grass is nicely salted by the morning dew coming off the bay.  You can taste all this joy in every crumble.

The Giacomini's have always been focused on their all natural production, but according to the "fun facts" section of the Artisan Cheese Guild, they have taken it to a whole new level.  And I quote, "Original Blue Cheese is now Green!  (Oh no, I thought for a split second!)  The production facility is fuled entirely by the methane gas that rises from the farm's collected cow's manure - delivering on the Giacomini's commitment to sustainability."   I'm not sure if they are totally off the grid yet like the Lazy Lady, but what a great start.  

I'd love to see that facility!  I'm imagining a giant pile of poo in a storage room with some pipes in the ceiling and a bunch of fans directing the stinky air into a processing room where the lights shine bright, and the workers are always smiling (because of their awesome personal ventilators!).  Must do more research.  Especially with the concerns about greenhouse gasses and global warming, the fact that these guys are helping protect their little corner of paradise.

Here's to the happy cows at Pt. Reyes Farmstead Cheese Company and their very clever keepers!  Way to go Bessie!  Keep it up!

Beautiful Berkshire Blue

As part of my Thanksgiving "Pilgrim's Progress" cheese spread, I needed a cheese from Massachusetts.  Trouble was, Andrew's Cheese Shop only had one cheese from MA in the case on Wednesday when I went in to procure my dairy delights.  It always makes me nervous when I don't have choices, but the one cheese they had sounded kind of interesting.  I took Berkshire Blue home untasted.  What choice did I have?  It was all about location, location, location for this tasting.

I wasn't disappointed!  This blue cheese (on the right - duh) is a great find for anyone who loves blues.  It might not be a great cheese for introducing your blue cheese phobic cheeses to your obsession with blue mold.  It is a bit on the tangy side.  That said, it also has a great earthy sweetness, with a great creamy texture.  It was great on a bit of cracker (I tried to eat it without carbs, but it stuck to my fingers!  Not a terrible problem to have, but it was slowing me down.) with a glass of port.

The website for this great artisinal cheese betrays their love for their Jersey cows.  I can't say I blame them.  Not only are they adorable, with their big brown eyes, but their milk has a higher butterfat content, and they are apparently smarter than your average cow.  Kind of fun.  And really, if you devote your life to turning someone's milk into cheese, wouldn't you prefer if they weren't just a bunch of great udders?  I digress.

If you can find this one, buy it!  You won't be sorry.  It's only available in a few shops around the country, but they'll ship it to you for special occasions if you ask nicely (and give them your credit card number).

Why So Blue?

I've been thinking a lot about blue cheese lately. Lots of things to like about it! Within the category, there are so many different flavors, textures and even colors. According to Steven Jenkins' Cheese Primer, there are two French blue cheeses - Bleu de Gex and Bleu de Septmoncel, used to get their blue from a "fungal bloom" that lives on two kinds of wild Alpine violets. The cows would eat the violets and the fungus would show up in the milk. I just love that story. Happy alpine cows munching on violets up in the mountains...moo.

We tasted two completely different blues from Australia the other night. The Signature Blue from Tasmania was a big favorite at our table. It was incredibly smooth and strong, with lovely dark blue bits in it, that looked almost like peppercorns at first peek. I wasn't such a fan, encountering in it my first taste of "barnyard-y-ness." I had been wondering what that word meant in terms of flavor, and all I can say is that it has a weird earthy-ness that, while tasting like cheese, also was reminiscent of that stuff the gardener puts on the lawn...I was a bigger fan of the other blue cheese, the Roaring 40's from King Island, named for being made on the 40th parallel down under (cute!). It was a waxed rind blue, and a little firmer than the Signature Blue. It was soooo tasty - a little more mild and nutty, and also really pared nicely with the spicy Shiraz from "Hill of Content."

Nothing much more to say on that . Sadly, I didn't get any good photos of these two cheeses, since they were both devoured! Needless to say, I am only blue because I'm all out of blue!

Pick up some penicillium roqueforti tonight, and have sweet cheese dreams all weekend!