Has anyone else noticed that Haagen Daz ice cream is no longer being sold in pints? Yup, it is now a 14 ounce package, not 16 ounces - the officially approved measurement for a pint of ice cream. I noticed this last night when I was at the store picking up some vanilla to use as a base for some tasty rhubarb/orange/thyme sauce I had whipped up (Check out my other blog for updates on my new preserving fetish, if you haven't already!). I didn't notice until I got home, and boy was I peeved! Everywhere you look these days, people are cutting corners to save a few bucks. I'm usually ok with that except when it comes to my gastronomic addictions.
The good news is that I have a new addiction, and it somehow feels less dirty and corporate than Haagen Daz - though just as creamy and delicious - just think savory, not sweet. Yarra Valley Dairy in Australia produces the most addictive marinated Persian style Feta cheese I have ever tasted. And at just $12 a pound, I can get my cheese on for cheap. A little goes a long way stuffed into baby peppers and spread on morning (and afternoon snack) toast. With a couple of baby tomatoes, it's a perfect fix. I have been pondering blending some of it up with a little more olive oil to make a tasty vinaigrette for an arugula salad, or as a topping for a nice skirt steak. Pasta primavera could be nicely tarted up with the addition of some of this dreamy feta too.
The good farmers at the Yarra Valley Dairy make a delicious, creamy, tangy-sweet cow's milk feta and then they go and gild the lily by marinating it in Extra Virgin Olive oil, garlic and thyme. The feta itself is so much better than anything you can get at your local megamart, and then after steeping in the bath of the gods (Can't you imagine Athena and Zeus getting comfy in a tub of olive oil? Just saying...), it is just to die for.
If you can find this marinated beauty, buy it, take it home and use and abuse it in as many ways as you can think of. After coming back from the cheese shop, I hit the grocery store for a few staples, and found Yarra Valley Feta in the fancy cheese section. Hooray! A little more pricey at $6.99/6 oz, but not bad in a pinch. If you can't find it, you can perk up a little grocery store feta with olive oil, peppercorns, rosemary, thyme, tarragon, or what have you and be almost as happy. David Lebovitz has some helpful instructions here.
So now I have two dairy addictions - Haagen Daz and Yarra Valley Feta. (Well, and basically any cheese you put in front of me) Sweet and savoury. New and exciting cheese dreams, here I come!
The grilled cheese sandwich has been having quite a renaissance lately, hasn't it? I've been quiet on the topic, as I think that it is being quite well covered. There is a grilled cheese truck delivering cheesy goodness to office workers and foodies all over Los Angeles, and the Grilled Cheese Invitational recently brought together over 200 cheese sandwich experts to compete for glory. One of my favorite cheese writers, Laura Werlin, has just put out her second book of grilled cheese goodness! Now, I love a grilled cheese sandwich as much as the next person, but I'm having trouble with all the hype. It's gotten to the point where I ignore any cheese stories about grilled cheese...what can I say, I'm a contrarian!
Recently, I found an amazing little book in my mother-in-law's library: Hints to Young Housekeepers by Mrs. Black. Written in Scotland in the 1880s, some of the recipes are kind of gross, and include boiling cabbage for hours. Others sound very practical and tasty. (I have started a separate blog, if you're interested. Check it out here.) Just this morning, I found the following recipe for cheese sandwiches, and found it a refreshing alternative to grilled cheese. Just in time for summer! I quote her recipe in it's entirety below.
"This is to my mind one of the most delightful things for a sandwich possible, and the season is approaching when sandwiches will be required. Have 1 egg boiled hard, which is for ten minutes, 1/4 lb. common cheese grated, 1/2 teaspoonful of salt, 1/2 teaspoonful of pepper, 1/2 teaspoonful of mustard, 1/2 teaspoonful of sugar, 1 table-spoonful of butter, 1 table-spoonful of vinegar or cold water. Take the yolk of the egg and put it in a small bowl and crumble it down, put among it the butter and mix it smooth with a spoon, then add the salt, pepper, sugar, mustard, and the cheese, mixing each well. Then put in the table-spoonful of vinegar, which will make it the proper thickness. If vinegar is not relished, then put cold water instead - give it a good mixing. Spread this between two biscuits or pieces of oatcake, and you could not desire a better sandwich."
Delightful, no? Mrs. Black was writing her helpful hints in the 1880s, from an office in Glasgow, Scotland. I can only imagine that "common cheese" at that time was incredibly delicious, made from local, organic milk, from cows munching on highland moor grasses. The cheese "mush" created from the blending 1/4 pound of cheese with egg yolk, butter, mustard and vinegar, mellowed with a little sugar sounds pretty tasty to me! You could add a little thyme or tarragon if you were looking to tart it up a little, but otherwise, this cheese spread sounds perfect for a picnic lunch!
Little did I know that last Friday was going to be the last peaceful day that I was to have for a long time (more on that perhaps at a later date). It is something to celebrate, therefore, that it was a fabulous day. I managed a good hair day, just in time for picture day at the DMV, managed to be in and out of that bureaucratic maze in less than half an hour (Helpful hint - always make an appointment. Always.), and had managed to walk away from a specialty cheese counter with many tasty packages for just $22. I was enjoying a moment of bliss in my cheese wedge lunch. It was indeed such a tasty cheese that I was loathe to sully it with crackers, eating it with just a knife and my oh so dainty fingers. Plus, it's totally Atkins approved this way, right?
I was noshing away on Meadow Creek Dairy's Appalachian cheese. It is a semi-hard cow's milk cheese made from milk produced by a heard of delightful Jersey's in the mountains of south west Virginia. It sports a thin and lovely Pennicillum mold coat and melts oh so well on the tongue. Like sweet butter. Only with great undertones of earthiness and just enough funk on a rind that could have doubled for a delicate lichen growing on a stone wall. This cheese is delicious and sweet with a nifty peppery hint at the end, and definite citrus notes. When you eat it with the rind, you get the feeling that you are eating a cheese with an old soul that has seen the pristine forests and mineral rich pastures 2800 feet up in the mountains.
Not only do the folks at Meadow Creek have happy cows making milk so high in beta carotene that the cheese is naturally the color of butter, but they have happy pastures too. They rotate where the cows graze allowing the grass to re-grow before it becomes another tasty luncheon location for their talented herd. Very cool.
This was the first cheese that I had really savored in this way in a very long time, and what a treat it was. In fact, it was so delicious, I forgot to take a picture before it was mostly gobbled up. I hope you'll forgive. While the mountains of Virginia aren't necessarily the first place I would think of when it comes to cheese making, I have definitely been schooled! Check out this amazing cheese if you can find it. According to their website, their cheese is available in 29 states, including plenty of Whole Foods locations.
Arches Natl Park
Not quite desert, but you get the idea!
It’s been a while. I’ve been wandering the desert, in self-imposed cheese exile for months now. It’s a dark, unhappy place, let me tell you. And I’m full of excuses. First, I got a job that put me into rush hour traffic after the cheese shops had closed their doors for the night, and all of a sudden, it had been months since I’d smelled the inside of a cheese shop! And then, I wasn’t working. Finances took top priority and I stayed away, thinking I couldn’t afford the cheese I had grown to love. I convinced myself that I was being frugal, helping the family budget, etc. by eliminating cheesy goodness from our menu. Life was sad and blue – and not Roaring 40s Blue, but just an all around bummer! I tried to convince myself I didn’t miss it, but boy was that hard work!
But then, this morning, I was in town getting my driver’s license renewed and found myself near one of my favorite gourmet food and supply stores. Too tempting to resist, I went in with a budget in mind, and set to exploring the cheese case! The cheese monger was helping a mom and her kids pick out some Cesar’s Oaxaca Style String Cheese (made in Parma, WI) – yummy and very stringy! Watching 4 year olds excited about cheese just made me happier as I spied some old friends in the case and started calculating my budget in preparation for my number to be called. Ugh. Budgets.
But here’s the thing CheeseDreamers, just because an amazing cheese is made by a herd of happy Jersey cows eating spring grass in sunny, mineral rich pastures high in the mountains of SW Virginia (next post, I promise!), and carefully tended by a family that has been making prize winning cheese since the 1980s, it doesn’t mean that you need to blow your budget for your lunch! Yes, it may be $23 per pound, but for $3.50, you can get 2 ½ ounces of cheese – more than enough to satisfy your lunch time cheese cravings. And if the cheese is really good (trust me, this one is!), you don’t even need crackers with it – saving even more money and unnecessary calories! Don’t feel awkward about asking for smaller slices of cheese. Unless you are buying it for macaroni and cheese or for a dinner party, there is no need to get huge amounts of any one cheese.Get a few ounces of 4 or 5 cheeses, and enjoy a new and different tasty lunch or dinner cheese course each night for a week. I walked out with a spring in my step, lots of tasty samples in my tummy, and 4 cheeses (1.3 pounds) for $22! Just slightly over my budget.
And when I sat down at the table, the laundry machine going in the background, coupons waiting to be clipped at my side, and list of potential career goals waiting for updating on my computer desktop, for a moment I was in another world - enjoying the funk and sunshine of a fabulous cheese, and feeling like a million bucks.
The past few days have felt like a week and a half, they have been so full of family events. I met my brother at the Portland, Maine airport in the middle of the night, and we drove up to Belfast to celebrate the life and remember the love my grandmother had for all of us and we for her at a lovely memorial service. It was the first time the whole family has been together in longer than any of us could figure out, so it served as a family reunion as well.
My brother and I rented a cottage at the same complex where we stayed as kids, skipping rocks down by the shore and chasing lightening bugs. A little sentimentality is appropriate at times like this. Unlike when we were kids, however, we were able to stop at the grocery store to pick up a six pack of beer, a bottle of decent Pinot Grigot and, of course, some cheese and crackers! As you know, I'm always a little leery of grocery store cheese, but with a little snooping, I found something fun. Seal Cove Farm herbed chevre from Lamoine, Maine. Local and tasty! Good thing too, because our cottage turned into the afterparty spot after dinner on Thursday night for the cousins and a few aunts and uncles. Serious props to my brother for getting the fire going in the stove. You warded off the chill and made things just a little more cozy.
It was a little tough to open the package with the giant ginsu knife that we found in the drawer at the cabin, but once it was open, almost everyone was nibbling. This cheese, from Seal Cove Farm near Bar Harbor, which comes from the 125 goats that happily grazing on the rocky coast was perfect for the party. It is flavored with herbes de provence, and while it tastes like there is garlic in the mix, there isn't. The little bit of tang from the goat's milk combined with the herbs just bring out this great blend of flavors. It's not a really complicated cheese, but since most of the relatives aren't really aware of my serious obsession with the curd, it's probably better that I didn't have a cheese soapbox to lecture from during the party. What a drag that would have been. Instead, we just had some laughs, and shared some great stories, and got to know each other again with a little cheese and wine to lubricate the love.
By the time everyone left and my brother and I were alone with our jet lag and a serious game of Crazy Eights, almost all the cheese was gone. We took care of that pretty well.
The next day we gathered at the hillside cemetery to say goodbye to Gram, with the sun shining down and the wildflowers blooming across the way. It was a beautiful service, and we all came together with love for her and for each other. I think she would have approved.
As the weather changes and the sun stays out longer, my tastes spin toward Sauvignon Blanc, Stainless Steel Charddonay and goat cheese. It's kind of a cliche, but it's how my palate and brain work. Crisp, clean flavors help keep summer from getting too funky (though some might argue that goat cheese is funky enough...). Another thing I love about summer is the Farmer's Market. Around here, it's open all year round, but there is something much more festive about buying apricots and fava beans than rutabega and turnips.
So, the last time I went to the Farmer's Market with my re-usable bag and steel toed boots to protect myself from the profusion of strollers, I stopped by the Redwood Hill Farm stall and picked up a hockey puck sized Camembert style goat cheese named Camellia. The dairy is up in Sebastopol (far from Los Angeles), but I got a chance to talk with a few people who had just been up at the farm to see the new kids. I really got a sense that they really care for their herd, who all have names.
Camellia is one of their favorite goats, and the cheese certainly looks like a Camembert (other than the goat on the label). The bloomy rind has the appropriate ammonia-lite scent, and there is a milky-ness to the nose of the paste. What's different is the bone white color of the paste - normal for goat cheese but weird if you are expecting the butter yellow paste of a traditional Camembert. The flavor has a wee bit of goat-y funk, but really it just tastes sweet and creamy with just a touch of salty. Pretty fantastic! We tasted ours when the cheese was still young, but it still had a nice richness to it, though it didn't ever get really gooey even when we let it set at room temp for over an hour, but it did get nicely soft. This cheese has won several gold medals at competitions, so other people think it's good too!
I saw this for sale up in Santa Barbara wine country at the local market, and I'll be enjoying it again the next time I head to the Farmer's Market during my continued celebration of longer days and warmer nights!
Science Monday has become Science Tuesday this week due to a last-ish minute trip to the beautiful Santa Barbara wine country. If you'll remember, last Monday, I began a quest to reproduce the bacteria found in the fabulous Vendeen Bichonne. I swiped a precious piece of this cheese across a petri dish and waited. And waited, and waited. And then...attack of the killer mold!!! I must say I was impressed with the miniature world I had created. I had the Professor look at my civilization, and he helped me realize that I've actually created two separate worlds - one of bacteria and one of mold. The big blue-ish and white fuzzy circles are the mold and the smaller dots are bacteria. The Professor recommended that while mold is an important part of the cheesemaking process, it might be a little more volatile than I am scientifically prepared to manage. He did suggest that I try and grow the bacteria a little more, by transferring it to a clean petri dish with a (scrupulously clean - ha!) toothpick and waiting (again!) to get a little more bacterial growth.
Hopefully, in another week, my bacteria universe will be teaming with life!
I love goat cheese. Not only is their cheese delicious, smooth, tangy and complex, goats are just darn cute! And if I can find a goat cheese that also falls into the category of "spreadable" as defined by Darling Husband as something gooey that won't break your cracker when you try to spread it, I buy a lot of it. A few weeks ago, my friend Andrew - cheese monger extraordinare - gave me a taste of Carre de Poitou a soft, spreadable Loire Valley goat cheese that some might consider part of the second coming. I try to have a little restraint when tasting cheeses at Andrew's, but in this case, I found myself licking the paste right off the paper so as to get every last little bit! This rare square (carre is French for square) is the perfect cheese to get any party started. It is both sweet and tangy, and it's bloomy rind makes it a great brie substitute for anyone with cow's milk allergies. But don't tell your guests that it's a brie. This cheese doesn't have the unctuous creaminess of brie nor the ivory paste. This is a bright white goat's milk cheese with a soft, edible rind and an almost milky interior. See how it's starting to run after 10 minutes? Andrew actually sent it home with an ice pack. That's how sensitive this lovely is.
I'd love to have a picture of it at full "run," but DH had gobbled most of it before it was fully ready even though I told him he would be able to taste even more of the fresh grassy flavor if he waited. There were (miraculously) a few leftovers, which he enjoyed as part of a very upscale grilled cheese a few days later. Look how sad the dog is that he won't be getting any of that cheesy goodness literally sliding off the bread in it's melty quest for greatness. I didn't get any of these cheesy canapes either, though DH was kind enough to let me take a photo before he snuck out to the "man cave" to inhale his snack while muttering like Golem about his precious cheese.
If you are lucky enough to find this cheese at your local shop, buy enough to share and enjoy with a nice crisp bottle of Sauvignon Blanc and good friends.
A while ago, the great state of Wisconsin voted to name Lactococcus Lactis that official state microbe in honor of all that it does in the production of cheese (according to the New York Times, Wisconsin leads the nation in cheese production). How great is that? A little weird, but pretty cool.
This got me thinking - there must be microscopic differences in the microbes that help various cheeses around the world make the transition from milk to fromage. Cheeses are all so unique - based on the type of milk used, what the animal was eating before being milked, what processes were used in making the cheese, what molds are introduces, how and where the cheese is aged. What if I could do my own research to discover the molds and microbes in my favorite cheeses? Ultimately, could I re-create famous cheeses in my kitchen? (Well, no, probably not, but still...maybe we could create something new from something old - a hybrid as it were) All I was lacking was a little equipment and know-how.
And then, I started talking with my friend the Professor, who has a PhD in biochemistry and a lab at CalTech. He didn't see how it could be that difficult, and encouraged me to start my little science experiment. So, last Friday, I visited his lab and returned home energized and with a bag full of petri dishes prepared with agar substrate to encourage bacterial growth. All I needed was the right test subject. Mwa ha ha ha!
I found it in an amazing Loire Valley cow's milk cheese - Vendeen Bichonne. This semi-soft cheese ( it will totally gum up your grater - so just eat giant hunks of it) is aged in an abandoned tunnel, which explains the mealy grey rind and industrial basement smell coming off of it. Don't let the outside fool you though. The paste inside is sweet, rich and creamy with just a hint of the green pastures where the cows graze. There is also an earthiness present in the cheese, but it doesn't taste anything like the rind smells. Maybe a little bit of slate - if you were to lick a wet slate paving stone it might taste a little like this, but only if the paving stone was covered in rich, creamy, sweet cheese. I can't say enough about how much I love this cheese. I want to melt it onto a nice piece of home made wheat bread and enjoy it with a glass of a Spanish Tempranillo. Bliss.
Anyway, in my attempt to harness to magic of this cheese, it became the first subject in my science experiment. As you can see, under completely sterile conditions, a small slice of cheese was rubbed onto the plate, which was then labeled and placed in a temperate, dry location in the kitchen (on top of the tortillas and next to the coffee maker). I can't wait to see what grows! Hopefully, there should be some results soon. The Professor has said that he might be able to help me take up close and personal pictures of my biological blooms. Looking forward to having something fun to share with you!
The raw milk controversy has been raging on the internet for a while now and the politicians are involved, so I'm sure there won't be a definitive answer for a while. Each state has its own regulations surrounding raw milk. Massachusetts allows people to buy raw milk only from the diary farm directly. Wisconsin just yesterday vetoed a bill that would permit similar farmer to consumer sales. In California, you can get raw milk in health food stores but it has to have a warning label. Alaska has banned raw milk for human consumption - unless you are getting it from your very own cow. You can see a list of state regulations here.
Why all the controversy? Certainly the locovore movement has had a lot to do with it, along with people wanting fewer preservatives, pesticides, etc. in their food. Small dairies are hoping for more leniency in order to improve their market share and promote their high quality products, while "big dairy" wants to keep the raw milk trend in check for more than medical reasons, and the government wants to keep people alive. Raw milk - milk that hasn't been through the pasturization process - is full of vitamins, minerals, enzymes and pro-biotics that are believed by many to help "cure" people with medical problems from asthma to acne. When milk is pasturized, or heated to 161 degrees F for at least 15 seconds, any bad microorganisims and bacteria present in the milk are killed, along with many of the healthy probiotics and enzymes. In large scale milk production, milk from many farms is dumped together into vats, and it is always possible that nasties like sallmonella or listeria can get into the milk when a worker forgets to wash his hands, or something dirty falls into the vat, and it would be passed along to consumers if it wasn't pasteurized. Salmonella has been in the press a lot lately thanks to spinach, etc., and pregnant women in particular need to be aware of listeria which has been known to cause stillbirth. All of the bacteria affiliated with raw milk cause severe intestinal distress, some can cause paralysis, and they can all be particularly dangerous to kids, the elderly and people with weakened immune systems. It can be really bad. Luckily (and a main part of the raw milk argument), this isn't the case with small dairies where farmers name their cows, let them eat delicious, nutritious grass and flowers and a whole lot of love goes into each milking.
Many of the world's great cheeses are made with raw milk. Some say that cheese made with pasteurized milk lacks essential flavor, or oomph. If you taste a grocery store cheddar and compare it with a Isle of Mull cheddar, for example, you will probably agree. The grocery store stuff starts tasting a little bit like orange rubber. Yum. In fact, if you visit the Isle of Mull Cheese website, you will find the following quote: "We believe pasteurisation to be unnecessarily brutal way of treating milk to be used in making Isle of Mull Cheese. Far too many of those organisms, which have the potential to create individualism and maturity of flavour are indiscriminately sacrificed in the process."
All raw milk cheeses imported to the US are all over 60 days old, which gives the any listeria (not likely) present the opportunity to die. It is an anarobic bacteria, and thus can't survive beyond 45-ish days outside the milk pail. In addition, raw milk cheeses (both in the US and abroad) are almost always made by small producers who name and love their small dairy herds and keep scrupulously clean facilities and detailed records, so chances of bacteria in the milk are limited. Take, for example, the beautiful Avonlea Cheddar below - raw milk, aged and delicious. If you are still worried, cheese makers and dairy farmers have been making great strides in a lower heat, longer cooking time pasteurization technique that retains more flavor in much safer milk.
The argument is that if you want to buy and drink raw milk for its medicinal properties, and are smart enough to buy it from a reputable, clean-as-a-whistle dairy that produces on a small scale, you should be able to do what you want, so long as you don't sue if you knowingly choose raw milk and something bad happens. I'm not sure where I fall in this debate. Kind of like a Oiji board, I don't really believe the drama, but I don't know if I really want to mess with it either. I do know that I am not one to turn down a cheese regardless of it's pasteurized status. At the end, it's all about personal choice (and your state's desire to protect your gullet).
So there's your cheese politics for the day. I'd love to see (polite) thoughts and dialogue to follow!
My birthday was a while back. As crazy as life was that month, I still needed to celebrate, and I wanted cheese! Getting to Andrew's for my weekly fix had been elusive and what better excuse than a birthday! I was going to need to share my cheese "cake" with others that afternoon, so I thought it might be a little dangerous to bring out the stinky blue cheeses or some muenster. One needs to gently help people toward a love of the more "black diamond" cheeses.
I didn't have to think about it very long before realizing that Mt. Townshend Creamery'sSeastack was the perfect cheese "cake" to share. With a circumference a bit bigger than a hockey puck and about twice as thick (if my early memories of what the shape of a hockey puck is are correct), Seastack is the perfect size to share (or horde to yourself...).
Because of it's rind, it looks a lot like brie, which makes it accessible to those without a lot of cheese experience, but the similarity ends with the visual. This edible rind is a result of rolling the cheese in vegetable ash and salt before the aging process as opposed to the bloomy bacterial rind on brie. The folks at Mt. Townshend say the rind bears a "subtle resemblance to the picturesque islands sprinkled along Washington's northwest coast." Reason enough to visit, I say. The paste is rich and creamy, with a hint of sweet pasture and just enough saltiness to encourage you to grab a glass of crisp glass of Pinot Grigio. Just look at the fantastic goo seeping out of the rind! It spreads beautifully on a cracker, and would probably go well with apples or pears if you had them cut in advance. Wait until after people have had a taste, and there won't be any left by the time the wedges are ready!
This is my new go-to cheese. Not only did I have it for my birthday, I've taken it to a baby shower with great success. Ask for it by name.
Last night Darling Husband and I went to our first wine club meeting since December, and as luck would have it, the focus was on Italy. Fantastico! There are probably as many delicious Italian cheeses as there are delicious Italian wines. Since we have both red and white wine drinkers in the club, I wanted to bring a little something for everyone to enjoy that would elevate the wine tasting to another level. Plus, a cheese board isn't really a cheese board with just one cheese, right?
First up (on the right), was a delicious, mild, 4 week old goat cheese from the Piedmont region of Italy called Tumin Rutulin. The edible ash rind is from the juniper plant. The one that makes gin, yes. But it turns out juniper also imparts it's sweet deliciousness to goat cheese. The sweetness from the juniper was immediately obvious to me, but maybe because I knew about the juniper ash in advance, my mind was playing palate tricks on me.It can't hurt that the goats helping to make this cheese probably munch on nothing but sweet mountain grasses and flowers. Perfect on a little slice of bread, and absolutely spread-able while retaining a soft crumble. It would also be amazing in a salad with some spring greens and some blueberries. In fact, I'm eating it right now with my fingers! It also helped mellow out an angry little Pinot Grigio, giving it a nice smoothness. Man Who Sneers at Goats (Cheese) will sadly never give this one a try, but my slightly cheese-phobic friend really liked this one last night (even before a few glasses of vino)!
On the left, cut into cunning little triangles, was the Pecorino Ginepro. Pecorino identifies this as an Italian sheep's milk cheese, while Ginepro lets you know that the rind is washed with balsamic vinegar and juniper berries during the aging process. I wasn't planning on having a juniper theme for the party, but there you go. I must be craving a martini... Anyway, the sheep's milk here is nice and rich, with just a touch of oiliness on the lips after, and the juniper and balsamic lend a woodsy, salty, sweetness to the cheese. Sometimes, I find that rind coatings don't make a huge difference in the flavor of the cheese, but this combination of acid and fruit really come through here. This cheese was perfect with the red wine from Calabria that I brought. The gaglioppo grapes in this wine had just enough tannin without being too overwhelming, and the richness of the cheese gave extra body to an already delicious wine. I'll be snaking on those cheese leftovers after dinner.
I am thrilled to be turning the last few months of Cheese Dreams into cheese realities! What have you been tasting?
And we're back! Classes are done, the vile dental work that prevented me from adequately using my palate has healed and (fingers crossed) won't have to be repeated EVER! I have missed writing about cheese almost as much as I have missed eating it. But I digress. Enough about me. It's all about the cheese here folks.
Now that I'm able to once again focus on my (non-sentient) true love, expect lots of mouth watering cheese reviews, a little political dialog (as pertains to cheese and dairy products), and if all goes well, some really cool in-depth education about how cheese comes into being. Sound good? Good. I'm excited! On with the show.
Dear CheeseDreaming Fans,
I miss you! I miss gorging on cheese and telling you about how fun it was! I miss talking about artisinal cheeses in depth, using poetic turns of phrase to make you hungry even if you've just had a 12 course meal! I miss starting conversations about organic and raw milk and cheese production!
But until April 17, I am just swamped! Swamped I say, with homework, papers, case studies, Excel spread sheets and other things that are sooooo not as much fun as cheese. After that, I'll have a piece of paper that says that I did a lot of work and learned the difference between a Balance Sheet and an Income Statement and how to calculate Net Present Value. That said, whilst attempting to finish all of this, I'm still procrastinating on the World Wide Webs, and have been finding lots of wacky fun facts about cheese that aren't necessarily worthy of a full post, but make for a great Facebook update.
So, please join me on Facebook if you are missing me as much as I'm missing you! Look for me at CheeseDreaming and join the fun! I promise to be back to long form entertainment as soon as possible
Another long week. Lots going on at work and at school. I am in need of a little comfort food! And I need cheese. Like, really NEED cheese. And then I realize that there is a beautiful wedge of Fol Epi in the fridge, waiting patiently for me to make grilled cheese sandwiches! It's been waiting patiently for over two weeks, which I realize is a bit blasphemous, but it was carefully wrapped by the cheesemonger, so I'm not too worried. So I go to the grocery store on my way home and pick up some bread from the deli counter, and select the reddest tomato available in early March at the grocery store, and head home to unwrap my Loire Valley cow's milk "swiss" cheese. Much to my surprise, my wedge of cheese has turned into a, well, a wedge with the end cut off! (Geometry buffs, please help me out here.) The Cheese Ghost is back!
Thankfully, the ghost had the forethought that if he ate all the cheese, he might get a severe lecture around dinnertime! There was plenty of cheese left to grate up to make some pretty yummy grilled cheese. Thick bottomed skillet on medium high heat, plenty of butter on the bread, a good 1/3 cup of shredded cheese, a few thin slices of tomato, and melt. I like to shred my cheese for grilled cheese because I think it melts more evenly. Everyone has their own method. Deelicious any way you melt it, and perfect with tomato soup, but I don't have to tell you that.
And Fol Epi is a great cheese for grilled cheese sandwiches. This is a high protein cow's milk cheese is aged for three months, and has a very creamy, rich, nutty flavor. It tastes a lot like a good Emmenthaler (swiss) cheese, but sweeter and with a little something special that I didn't figure out until I went searching for info on the web. The rind of this cheese is really grainy, which really threw me as I started grating it. It turns out that the rind is dusted with toasted wheat flour, adding "that something special" to the flavor of the cheese, and helps it stand out from the crowd. In fact, "Fol Epi" can be translated in French as "wild wheat stalk." I'm not sure how much extra flavor comes from this coating, but I think it definitely has some effect.
As an aside, I always check out Wikipedia for basic info on all my tasty finds, but I didn't find a single entry for Fol Epi in English, though the Europeans are all over it in French and German! Hmm. Anyone up for the challenge?
I sure hope the Cheese Ghost hasn't eaten up all the leftovers before I get home tonight! Sweet cheese dreams!
Oh my has it been a week. And it won't be getting any better until mid-April. Apologies in advance for the lack of posts, but I'm almost done with my MBA, and after that's done, I'll be extra cheesy!
In the meantime, it is a Wednesday, and so I owe you a new cheese! La Panza Gold is a sheep's milk cheese from Rinconada Dairy north of Los Angeles in San Louis Obispo County. It is one of the few dairies that I've found in Southern California (the SoCal:NorCal ratio is heavily weighted in favor of Northern California). They have 200 sheep and a small herd of goats happily munching away on the grasses of the chaperral overlooking the Pacific. They also have a farm-stay program, where you can go for the weekend, milk goats and work on the farm. It sounds like a lot of fun to me - I just have to convince the DH to come with me!
So - La Panza Gold is a hard sheep's milk cheese, with some crystalization, kind of like pecorino romano. The rind of this cheese is washed with sheep milk whey as it ages, which gives is a really beautiful golden color. The cheese is shaped in a basket mold, which gives it a really cool look.
You could easily serve this nutty, earthy, sweet cheese by just breaking it up into free-form chunks, and serving it on a cheese plate with some grapes to help bring out the sweetness in the cheese. It also lends itself very easily to the same kinds of uses a pecorino romano or pamigiano-reggiano - grating onto pasta or what ever you grate hard salty/sweet cheese on. The other night, I had made some mushroom barley soup that turned into a kind of pilaf when all the moisture was absorbed. It still tasted great, so I steamed up some brussels sprouts (I just love how cute they are!), and used the carrot peeler to shave curls of this beautiful cheese on top, which really added to the dish. See the little holes in the peels?
OK Cheesedreamers, I just got back from Andrew's Cheese Shop (thanks Andrew for appreciating my humor!), and am all set for the Oscars. Pictures to follow, but I wanted to take a moment to inspire you to cook with humor and creativity for the Oscars. If not now, when? Oscars are about creative artists and talented technicians coming together to make something that is so much more than than the sum of its individual parts.
So, in honor of a few of the films up for Best Film, might I suggest the following snacks. I apologize for the fact that I am not yet even remotely versed in real recipe writing, but I'm sure you can muddle through. Just remember to take your French Bread loaf and slice it into 1/2" pieces, drizzle with a little olive oil and toast in the oven on 350 until a toasty, about 5-10 minutes. Then, put enough cheese on each slice, and pop back in the oven to melt.
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Bruschetta with Blue Cheese, caramelized onion and a fringe of scallion. Neyteri and Jake Scully they're not, but they are blue, and they do have funny little fringe to connect with the earth (or your taste buds)
Saute sliced onion in about a tablespoon of olive oil on medium heat and stir until soft, golden brown and translucent. Once the cheese is melted, layer on the caramelized onion and top with a little fringe of green onion.
Inglorious Basterds
Bruschetta with melted muenster (the real stinky stuff!) and garlic with a bit of chopped tomato to represent the aggressive strength of Brad Pitt's team of merry men.
After the bread is toasted the first time, rub each slice with a piece of sliced garlic and then top with the muenster. Once that's all melted, top with a little fresh tomato
Precious
OK, this is a bit of a cheat, but there is a brand of Mozzarella at my grocery store called Precious, so how about a Tomato/Precious Mozzarella/Basil Caprese Salad. Just slice and layer and drizzle with a little olive oil and dust with cracked pepper.
I'm kind of stumped with the others. What cheese represents The Blind Side? District 9? An Education? Up in the Air? Up? A Serious Man? Hurt Locker? I figure 3 out of 10 is pretty good for a small party. Any one else doing something cheesy for their Oscar party? Help me out with some more fun ideas!
There is a ghost in our house. A cheese eating ghost. We're not calling in Ghostbusters (though Fanboy Wife could probably hook us up...). We're just going to have to get a more realistic about portion control. See, Darling Husband fell in love with the La Florette cheese at the tasting we went to a while back, and under the influence of lots of Loire Valley wine we ended up with a quarter pound of this goat's milk "brie style" cheese (Easily identified by the cute goat on the label.)
Now, this tasting was kind of belated birthday present for DH, and as such, he decided that he was going to buy some cheese, and not let me eat any of it. Rude, yes, but you've got to appreciate his passion. I, being a good wife, let him be the boss of this cheese. Plus, I was at the tasting, so I wasn't completely denied. DH is a big fan of sandwiches, and as a High School teacher, he enjoys freaking out his students with exotic cheese sandwiches, some with incredible "nose." I love the fact that he doesn't treat his cheese with kid gloves. It isn't precious to him. It's food. Food that is amazingly tasty, rich, and joy providing, but just food. So, he made himself a LaFlorette cheese sandwich with some sliced ham. I'm assuming that he slathered on the cheese pretty thick. (It has a very soft, spreadable paste.) He said it was an excellent sandwich, and effectively freaked out his students. Mission accomplished.
Unfortunately, two days later, when he went to make another sandwich with the La Florette, he accused me of eating some! (I hadn't. Sometimes, a promise is a promise) His proof? It was almost all gone! Had it shrunk? Impossible! Had he simply forgotten how much he used on his uber-sandwich? Ridiculous! I protested my innocence, blamed it on the dog, and we finally decided that it would just remain a mystery. So, if you pick up some La Florette, be forewarned! It has a tendency to disappear.
It is quite a spectacular cheese, so I don't blame it for having a tendency to vanish. See the sample at twelve o'clock? With the waterfall of butterfat oozing out of the middle? That's our cheese! It's called a brie-style cheese because of it's gently flavored bloomy rind and soft, creamy paste. It is a goat cheese, so it does have a little more tang - my tasting notes say "barnyard lite." I would never try this cheese out on Man Who Sneers at Goats (Cheese), but it had a really lovely, delicate, complex grassy flavor that reminded me that spring was coming (eventually).
We may have to get more La Florette soon. Not only is a perfect, spreadable cheese for DH's lunchtime sandwiches, but it is great with a nice Chenin Blanc and good conversation too (when it isn't sneaking out of the fridge and disappearing all on its own!)
I always thought the only place for cheese curds was Wisconsin. Probably people in Wisconsin would say that anything calling itself a cheese curd that doesn't hail from Wisconsin is a total imposter. But that isn't to say that they aren't available elsewhere. In fact, when I braved my local Farmer's Market this morning - dodging triplet strollers and huge stalks of lilies, focusing instead on the rainbow of beautiful fruits and vegetables - I stopped at the Spring Hill Cheese Company stall. The creamery is in Petaluma (ie - Sonoma County and pretty far from LA!), so I'm not sure if the cheese drove down that morning, or was shipped to a local distributor. Must check. I'm assuming it took longer than a few hours for them to get to my Farmers Market. Next to the quark (a kind of German yoghurt cheese. I may need to try that next week), I spotted lumpy vacuum bags of cheese curds nestled in some ice. White, not the traditional orange, but none-the-less, what a find!
I'll mention here that I am from Michigan, but have never been to Wisconsin, and have never eaten world famous Wisconsin cheese curds. But I've always felt a little deficient because of this. To understand some of the hype surrounding those bright orange Great Lakes curds, check out this awesome website. This site comes complete with cheese curd etiquette including "Never yell out that you have fresh Cheese Curds in a crowded Wisconsin theater." The site also features info on how curds are made, and curd poetry. It's a very extensive.
Cheese curds are simply fresh curds (generally cheddar curds) that haven't been put into a shaped mold and let to sit and become aged cheddar cheese. They have a characteristic squeak because there is still a lot of air trapped inside them. There is a great quote from the New York Times that equates the squeaky sound to "balloons trying to neck." How fun is that!
The squeak is elusive, however. Curds must be fresh, fresh, fresh! That is one of the reasons you can't find them in many places. They tend to start loosing their squeak within 24 hours, and extreme cold doesn't do them any favors. They must be eaten at room temperature for full harmonic convergence. Sadly, even after I got my curds home, broke them up into individual curds and brought them to room temperature, I couldn't detect the slightest bit of squeak. And they needed salt. I suppose they were already a little too old to squeak in the traditional way, though they still tasted very milky and fresh. They might be tastier if I do another Mid-Western thing - dip them in beer batter and deep fry them! What's not to love there! If the DH doesn't consume all of them the minute he gets home tonight, I will give that a try and post the results.
Any cheese curd lovers out there? Apparently, you never forget your first one.
It's been quite a week. As nice as my dentist and periodontist are, I'm still terrified of the dentist's chair. Lucky for you, this blog is about cheese and not about excruciating dental work that includes extractions and implants. Sadly, however, my tender gums haven't been up for anything other than soup and soft, soft, soft food that can be easily chewed on one side of the mouth only. I haven't really been eating cheese since last Tuesday's Loire Valley cheese orgy. That has probably been more torturous than the healing process!
Anyway, I finally got bored enough to dive back in to the wonderful world of cheese, and decided to start with breakfast. Why not? It's the most important meal of the day!
That adorable little white hockey puck (above) is actually an incredibly soft, delicious French goat cheese from the Midi Pyrennes called Cabecou. I know that Man Who Sneers at Goats (Cheese) won't like it no matter what I say, but this little cheese is so mild, sweet and spreadable that I knew it would be perfect for a woman sporting a bit more exposed gum than usual. The goats who help make this cheese nibble on hawthorne, mulberry and juniper leaves, making delicious, complex milk and a cheese perfect on english muffin with a little honey and an espresso. The flavor is subtle, and there isn't any of the "tang" that MWSAG(C) hates so much in goat cheese.
I tend to only think about cheese after dark, or in an elaborate omlette at Sunday brunch. The closest to a simple cheese breakfast I usually get is a tub of cream cheese and a bagel. If I could afford to have a refrigerator full of Cabecou, every morning would be as delightful as this one was!
How/when do you eat cheese for breakfast? Let's start a revolution!
