Cheese - Not for the Faint of Heart!

So, I was wandering down to the far end of the cheese counter last Saturday, and came upon the craziest cheese. It looked like it was 100 years old, or a victim of serious teenage acne! This bright orange cheese was covered in pock marks, and just looked mysterious and ancient. I innocently asked Tony the cheesemonger how long the cheese had aged. Turns out that it had aged for 18 months, which is a relatively long time for a cheese to sit and wait in a cave. But, it wasn't age alone that made that lunar surface.

The cheese was Mimolette, from the north of France, and according to some sources, it was Charles DeGaulle's favorite cheese. While that is neither here nor there in my book, there may be some history buffs out there that will want to try it for that reason. You should try it, but not because you harbor a dream of having a huge French airport named after you, but because it is a really delicious hard, bright orange cheese with a nice sweet nuttiness that melts on your tongue and hangs out in your mouth being happy.

But you should know that there is someone else out there that loves this cheese. Actually, it's not someone, but something. Remember the craters on the rind that make it look a little like a cantaloupe? They don't grow there on their own. There is a very specific little critter that loves Mimolette almost as much as I do, and they're called cheese mites! These little mites love the rind of this cheese, and while the cheese is aging in its cave, these little mites burrow in and have a serious snack in the rind. Some people say that they even help make the cheese taste better. Who knows if this is true. There is a little bit of "cheese dust" residue that you need to brush away that might be a delicacy... Some say it imparts a bit of minty-ness, but I didn't taste that. I just think it tastes great with a little Pinot Noir. They also say that the mites are gone by the time it gets to your local cheesemonger. I sure hope that's true! But in any case, there is no way that the mites get any further than the incredibly hard rind. I promise.

So gnaw away. This is a great cheese, even if it has some weird little friends.

And if you aren't afraid of some bad bug dreams, check this out. Cheese mites were the subject of the very first science film... More recently, they were magnified 100x for a slightly more graphic effect.

Mwa ha ha ha!

Cheese for a Wednesday, pt. 3

Yes, it's Wednesday again. And I sure hope your day was better than mine! But you know what? While any and every day is a good day to eat cheese, cheese for a Wednesday is a special thing. Its a cheese that you can think about all day, while you are busy dealing with tedious book keeping, a pile of essays to read, saxophone lessons, whiny volunteers or misbehaving experimental bacteria. (Shouts out there for some of my loyal readers - you know who you are!). This has to be a special cheese.

Tonight, that special cheese is is Roaring 40s Blue from King Island Australia. (The other cheese on the board that looks a lot like cantaloupe will be discussed later. I promise!) I know I've raved about this before, but tonight, it really was the right cheese for a Wednesday night. This creamy blue cheese is just blend of sweet, salty, creamy and spicy. We had it tonight with a little Zinfandel and it was just love on a cracker! The minute it hit my tongue, all the thoughts spinning through my head just slowed down and I was really home.

The grass the cows eat on this remote island comes with a great legend. One story goes that the straw mattresses from all the boats that wrecked off the coast floated ashore and the seeds inside the mattresses grew into the lush grass the cows snack on, when they aren't indulging in a little kelp snack down by the beach. Really.

I love this story. And who knows, it might be true. This cheese is really something special. Something to make any Wednesday more than just a Wednesday. Enjoy your cheese any night, but don't forget Wednesday!

A Little French Lesson...

I got the most amazing nugget of cheese on Saturday at the Cheese Shop. I'd gotten a hunk of my favorite Roaring 40s Blue from King Island, Australia for dessert and asked Tony if he could suggest a "main course" cheese to go with it. He hands me this little hunk of love called Reblochon. This washed rind cheese comes from the Savoie region of France - near the border of Switzerland and Italy. Even though it is part of the "stinky cheese" club, it is a great cheese to share with your stink-a-phobe friends. Another fabulous cheese from this area is Beaufort (see Aug. 23 post). Amazing things come from these mountain pastures, and the cows that make the milk for Reblochon are no exception!

According to Steve Jenkin's Cheese Primer, the word Reblochon might come from the word reblessa (French Savoyard slang for to steal or swipe). In the bad old days, you would milk your cow, but then you'd have to give everything you milked to the taxman and/or over-lord. Bummer, right? But if you were clever, you'd fake like you'd gotten all the milk possible out of Bessie, only to go back after the bad guys left to milk her for yourself. Sneaky, right? And the best news is that for whatever reason, the second milking would result in even richer milk with higher butterfat! Whoo Hoo!

This cheese has the most wonderful texture. Smooth and soft, but confident and not goopy. The rind is brine washed, so it has that distinctive smelly-ness, but not so much that you're worried about what is going on your cracker. It has just enough saltiness, and is so rich, with just a little nuttiness. It tasted great with the Pinot Noir we had open, but I bet it would have been even better with a bigger wine. The DH and I could have kept eating, but I knew I had artichoke ravioli with a ricotta/pepper sauce coming out next. Plus, now I have enough left over to have for "Cheese for a Wednesday Night!"

So, don't "reblessa" any of this amazing Reblochon, but keep an eye out, and enjoy whenever you can!

For All You Dog Lovers...

This is Philby. He is a VERY spoiled greyhound (as you can see from the fact that he has managed to take over the entire couch and ALL the pillows). He loves all kinds of treats, and will stand behind you in the kitchen hoping that you will accidentally trip over him and fall backward holding a steak.

Because he is so cute, however, I just don't mind (except when he is making a pest of himself at dinner parties). In fact, I tend to encourage it with new stuffed toys and left over pieces of chicken skin.

Yesterday, however, I entered a whole new world of pet pampering when I discovered a new reason to go to the Cheese Store of Beverly Hills. Cheese Rinds! Most dogs love cheese, but don't tend to be that discerning about whether they get Velveeta or artisinal cheddar. I have given Philby more than one pill buried in a slice of pasteurized processed cheese food. The problem with giving dogs cheese snacks to regularly is that it tends to do weird things to their tummies, and the snack lasts for all of 2 seconds and then they are begging for more. Not so with rinds of Parmigiano Reggiano! These rinds (also delicious thrown into minestrone soup) are the perfect dog treat. They are tough but tasty. Plenty of cheese still left on the rind, and since the rind is really just extra hard cheese, it's all natural! More like a rawhide chew than a cheese nip. Philby loves them, and so do I. I think it took him a whole 10 minutes to chew through it, and when he came back, I have never seen him look so happy! I picked up a whole sack of these rinds at the Cheese Store. People don't tend to want them (they don't grate up very well), so they are kind of like left-over bones at the butcher counter.

I don't know if you can pick these up at other cheese stores - I haven't asked - but you should!

Here's to happy cheese dreams - for you and your dog.

Great Minds....

After a delightful day off pre-Labor day, I staggered into Bay Cities Italian Deli still a little delirious from my facial, and in the daze of too many layers of moisturizer, I wandered over to the cheese counter, where I found a pre-sliced, plastic wrapped hunk of Tallegio. I grabbed it and proceeded to wander the store picking up ridiculous things like tubes of tomato paste and aloe vera juice and putting them back down again. When I was done, the only thing I still had from the beginning was the Tallegio.

Tallegio is a traditional Italian, washed rind cheese - ie: stinky. It was a good sign when I could smell it through the plastic wrap! I love the fact that this is traditionally a square cheese, rather than a round one. It stands out at the cheese counter. So I get home and show my finds to my sweet DH, only to find out that he had almost bought a hunk of the exact same cheese! How wild is that? And how sweet!

So, it warmed up, and we are enjoying it with a little Pinot Noir. It's a funny thing that just because a cheese smells crazy stinky because of the washed rind doesn't mean that it is hugely mushroomy and barn-yardy. This cheese is almost meaty, maybe even a little bread-y or yeasty. It isn't very gooey, it keeps its shape when you cut it, and it has an almost velvety "mouth feel." Very sophisticated. It knows its a great cheese, and doesn't need to shoot off any fireworks. I almost want to eat it with raspberry jam! Maybe a richer red wine might have done the trick. But it is still delicious, and makes me want to keep eating.

Unfortunately, I can't keep eating right now - we're out the door to the movies. Guaranteed, though, that if I fall asleep, I'll dream of sitting in an outdoor Italian cafe drinking a big red wine and eating on a giant hunk of Tallegio.

Buried Buckets of Butter!

A few weeks ago, my darling dad sent me a great link about some 3,000 year old butter that was recently found in a English bog. Crazy stuff. Three thousand year old butter!! These two blokes "harrowing" the bog found the butter barrel with their hoes, and the smell of the ancient butter brought the crows (the archaeologists came later!). The wooden barrel was packed with 77 pounds of butter and hidden away in the bog. It isn't edible anymore (surprise!). It has expanded over the years splitting its oak log container, but the lid was still on, and there it all was, waiting for its Iron Age creators to come back looking for something to spread on their morning toast.

While this sounds like a one of a kind find, it isn't completely unheard of. This one may be one of the biggest, and the fact that it wasn't damaged at all until the hoes whacked into it earlier this year is unusual. Apparently, there was a lot more butter being made back in the day than there were people to eat it, and lots of butter ended up getting buried for later use. In addition to going on toast, it may also have been an important trading commodity, and was something worth hiding. In fact, according to "Butter through the Ages" points out that it was a 12th century Scandinavian export, and that one of the most common artifacts found in Ireland is an ancient buried bucket of butter. According to these butter educators, the butter was often mixed with garlic (probably to make it taste better after its time in the ground!). "Butter through the Ages" also points out that the people who buried these buckets and barrels of butter knew it would be a while before they came back, and would sometimes plant a tree to mark the spot! I wonder if there used to be a tree over the barrel they just found in the bog. Amazing that a bog, and a barrel of butter have been in the same location for THREE THOUSAND YEARS. This buried barrel simply boggles my brain.

Makes me appreciate the nub of butter I put in my risotto tonight just a little bit more!

Feeling Cheesed Off?

Have you ever had one of those days? You know, when nothing really goes the way you want it to? When meetings you have been dreading are just as bad as you were anticipating? When you waited and waited for that one signature (that never came) to complete a project and get it out the door? When you got the eggs home after a miserable shopping trip only to find a couple broken with egg goo all over the bag? Ya, me too.

How do you feel on those days? Miserable? Crappy? Fed up? Cheesed off? Really? Why would anyone want to equate feeling crabby with cheese? Doesn't everyone feel happier when they eat cheese?

From what I've been able to glean from various internets, including Merriam Webster and "World Wide Words", the phrase is British in origin, and strangely Merriam Webster lists its year of origin as 1942. And darn those Brits, but apparently in olden times, they didn't like their cheese stinky (though they do make amazing Cheddar and other tasty cheese). Sadly, the phrase "cheesed off" refers to the delightful "stinky" smell of cheese. I have this vision of a miserable Brit having a bad experience with a washed rind cheese that had just been patiently waiting for someone to come and love it, sending its fumes off into the world looking for a friend, only to run across this crabby patty, who wrinkles up his nose, and the rest of his day is ruined. To his mind, that complex, charming cheese was "off," and from that day on, whenever he was having a really miserable day, with his quirky British sarcasm firmly in place, he would tell people he was cheesed off. Somehow, it caught on.

Anyway, that's just my version of events. Please feel free to share your own version of events!

Sleep on it. Wake up happy, and try always to eat cheese not get cheesed off!