Cheese Rolling!!!

What has a super steep slope, lots of lumps and bumps, separated shoulders, rugby playing catchers and a Double Gloucester as the grand prize? Why, the annual Cooper's Hill Cheese Rolling and Wake, of course!

Since perhaps the dawn of time (or at least the 1800s), people have gathered at Cooper's Hill in Gloucestershire, England, to participate, or to watch the crazies participate in a fantastic tradition. Folks in all types of dress or undress, wrapped in bubble wrap, loincloths or knee pads depending on their level of crazy wait for the MC to say "ready, steady, go" and hurl a 7-8 pound whole Double Gloucester cheese down an amazingly steep hill. Moments later, the "contestants" hurl themselves right after it! Cooper's Hill is a 1-1 or 1-2 grade all the way from the plateau at the top to where the rugby players catch people at the bottom so they don't just keep going. Needless to say, pretty much nobody makes it down without doing a little slide on their bum, or more dramatically, bouncing head over heels all the way down. (You MUST click there for an awesome video!!) When it rains, it's slippery, but the ground is softer (and you can get a nice mud slide going!)

The winner receives their very own cheese to take home. And not just any cheese, but one hand made by Mrs. Diana Smart of Churcham, Gloucester using traditional methods and milk from her herd of Brown Swiss, Holstein and Gloucester cows! Second place gets 10 pounds sterling and third gets 5 pounds. Not a lot of a prize considering that there is almost always a separated shoulder, or some other major/minor injury! It's all about the challenge and the tradition.

A pretty great way to celebrate cheese and the crazy things people will do for it!

(And BTW - The next race is coming up in May, 2010...visit the official Coopers Hill Cheese Rolling and Wake website to make your plans! Maybe I'll see you there!)

Shropshire Love in Wine Country

I've been feeling guilty about not taking care of happy cheese land these past few days, but I've just been having too much fun in real cheese land to have write up my adventures in virtual cheese land. But here we are, back in happy virtual cheese land with memories of Shropshire Blue and Robiola Bosina and Bermuda Triangle, Pinot Noir and cupcakes.

That's right - nothing like a day in Santa Ynez enjoying the best wines of the Central Coast of Cali, and pairing them with delicious cheeses and yes, cupcakes. Nothing like it to make for an amazing day, and nothing like it to make you want to spend the next day drinking gallons of water and taking many, many naps!

That said, I am now unabashedly in love with Shropshire Blue cheese. We were formally introduced in a glamorous tent, under the magical light of a chandelier. It may be because I'd had many, many samples of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, but it may also be that there is something inherently unusual about an orange-yellow cheese with beautiful blue veins throughout. It may be because there was an enormously humongous chunk of the stuff sitting right there in front of me. Who knows. But I do know that it had enough just enough sweetness to counteract the moldy saltiness of the blue mold, and just enough crumbly-ness to require eating with your fingers instead of spreading on a cracker. Yum. Plus, it tastes great with a 2007 Pinot Noir from the Foley vineyard.

This is a relatively new cheese, but it is a very confident, secure cheese, with a great sense of humor. It was developed in the 1970s, and the unusual orange color (for a blue cheese) comes from the natural annato food coloring. For our veggie friends, this cheese is made with vegetable rennet, so no animals were harmed (unless the milk maid hadn't moisturized in advance!). Originally, it wasn't even made in Shropshire, England, but in Inverness, Scotland. I guess they thought Inverness Blue just didn't sound as rich and creamy as Shropshire Blue. Funnily enough, this cheese is now made in Shropshire England.

At the end of our magical evening, it was a a bittersweet sight to see the Shropshire Blue devoured to within an inch of its life. To know that that many people share my love is exciting, but to see it so decimated made me a little sad. I guess that's the thing with cheese - you have to destroy it to really show your love....

Getting a little deep here. Sweet dreams of happy Inverness cows munching on highland grass!

Cheese Cruelty & How to Avoid It - Lesson 1

I love a full cheese plate. A whole, lovely goat cheese round, a two inch wedge of aged Gouda, a three inch wedge of my favorite Roaring 40s blue...It has something to do with proportion. Unfortunately, the suggested serving size for any cheese is one oz. per person per cheese. Any more than that, and you are asking for some digestive problems. So here's where I attempt to use the geometry I learned in High School... The radius of a Gouda is about six inches, so if you are only getting enough for two people, the wedge only needs to be about a 1/2 inch. A two person serving of Roaring 40s (probably a four inch radius) is an inch or less. If my calculus was better, I could tell you what the volume of a wedge that shape would be, but I can't. I can tell you that you are looking for 2-3 ounces. Insert sad face here. How insubstantial, if nutritionally sound.

Anyway, I've been trying to watch the budget (and the waistline), so I keep the wedges thin during the week so there isn't a lot left over at the end of the night. (I'm enough ADD to get bored with cheese leftovers after a day.) But, when I'm shopping for a party, I get to buy the thicker wedges; the full rounds. So exciting! And, when I've chosen right based on what I know of the guests and the menu, there still aren't any left-overs!

I guess the lesson for the day is to make sure that your eyes, dinner plan, and budget are all in agreement before you enter the cheese shop. Once you are there, and you get a few tastes, you might end up with more selections than you thought you needed, even if you have a specific shopping list. Stay strong, but be flexible. Cheese does keep in the fridge, but the little left over nubs look so sad. BTW - try wrapping your left over bits in paper (parchment, not waxed) - plastic wrap doesn't let it breathe. You don't want to be accused of suffocating your cheese. Avoid cheese cruelty - shop appropriately!

Cheese for a Wednesday, pt. 4

As promised, I am giving some love to sheep cheese, and no better day to give this love than a Wednesday, the day I have unofficially devoted to exciting new cheese. I managed to get out of the office and made it to Andrew's Cheese before it closed. I was looking in the case for labels with little sheep on them, and didn't find as many sheep icons as cow and goat ones, and realized that I needed to love sheep cheese for another reason - it's kind of the undersheep, as it were, in the cheese world, and I love an underdog!

I was going to get an Ossau-Iraty from France because my friend VG really enjoyed that cheese on vacation last month, but I got there and I saw a funny, almost flying saucer shaped cheese with a lumpy brown rind from Coventry, England called Berkswell with the sheep icon on the label. Hooray! Something totally new. And so delicious. Dry and crumbly, but not flaky. A sweet nutty-ness that went great with the chocolate almond crostini. Andrew says there's a pineapple finish. I don't know if I got that, but it was definitely amazing.

I asked him for another sheep cheese to serve as counterpoint to the Berkswell. Most sheep's milk cheese are hard cheeses, and I was hoping to find a nice soft sheep cheese. Apparently, that is because they have a higher protein content. The opposite is true of goat cheese, with it's lower protein content it is easier to make a soft cheese than a hard one. But I found a great semi-soft sheep cheese from Portugal called La Serena. It smelled like black olives at first whiff, and the first taste tastes just like it smells. The end is a little bit bitter, but in a good way. With all of these complex tastes and smells, it doesn't have any of that barnyard/ammonia smell that comes from a washed rind "stinky" cheese (because it isn't a washed rind cheese - duh!).

So, we had a delicious Wednesday dinner of sheep's milk cheese, chocolate almond crostini and Sangiovese. My skin is a little extra oily at the moment, but it's good for skin, right? We ended with a great over-the-fence chat with neighbors, an an evening of my favorite Fox television - Glee with a starter of So You Think You Can Dance. Nobody ever said I wasn't a little cheesy!

Sweet dreams everyone, and continue to count those happy little sheep!

Cheese - You Can Bank On It!

The economy has been on everyone's minds for a long while now, and far be it from me to ignore such a trend. In Italy, the Parmigiano-Reggiano makers have a creative way of raising money for general operating expenses on their diaries and other production expenses. They use aging rounds of their national treasure as collateral for bank loans! According to MSNBC, a wheel of this hard salty goodness is worth up to 300 euros, and a cheesemaker might put up as many as 2,000 of the 7,000 wheels they make each year (600,000 euros), and the bank would give them a cash loan for 60-70% of the value (420,000 euros). Not a bad deal, especially in difficult economic times. When the loan is due to expire (when the cheese is fully aged and ready for sale), the cheesemaker can either repay the loan, or allow the bank to sell the cheese at market prices. Considering the two year delay, a lot can happen to the price of cheese (commodity prices being what they are), and the 30-40% taken by the bank doesn't seem that high when you consider the risk they are taking (though I think it still seems a bit high). The BBC report says there is only 3% interest + a fee, which seems much more reasonable. I guess we'll have to travel to Italy and check it out for ourselves to clarify!

This isn't a new financial arrangement. Apparently, the Italians have been doing this since right after WWII. It's extremely organized, and banks even have in-house cheese watchers to take care of the collateralized wheels of cheese in environmentally controlled vaults especially built for cheese aging. They even check the wheels during the aging process to ensure that they are properly developing (they aren't worth as much if they have air holes in them).

Cheese deposits are up 10% during the current recession. Yet another indicator to watch as we look for signs of light at the end of the financial tunnel. In the meantime, grate a little Parmesean on your pasta and don't panic! There's more where that came from, and its tucked up safely in a bank vault.

Baa!

Oh yes, we went to the LA County Fair this weekend! We trembled at all the scary rides, ate all the weird fried things, saw all the prize winning tablescapes and quick breads, went to the pig races (Lindsay Loham was the big winner), and spent A LOT of time at the farm!

We saw sheep get sheared, and went to a goat milking demo, but wasn't allowed to try milking because I'm over 12 years old. Such a huge bummer! I got pics of the milking rig, but was so disappointed that we didn't stay till the end. The wool lining was that I ended up really bonding with the sheep.

Now, this isn't to say that the goats weren't totally adorable, and I still love them, their milk, and their cheese. There is even more love there now that I've pet their ears and stroked their fuzzy necks. The good news is that my heart has expanded to include woolly sheep! The way they look into your eyes and let you scratch their heads is pretty awesome. I think that I was the only adult in the petting zoo without a 5 year old, but I had so much fun, and got some great pics of my fuzzy dairy producing friends!

So, I've vowed to highlight more sheep's milk cheeses, starting today! At the moment, the sheep's milk cheese I'm most familiar with is Feta, with all it's salty yummy-ness, perfect in a summer Greek salad and Pecorino Romano, which I often substitute for Parmigiano-Reggiano. (BTW - Pecorino tranlates loosely in Italian as "little sheep" so whenever you see a pecorino cheese, you know it's got sheep's milk in it.) But a quick look in Murray's Cheese Handbook reminds me that there are so many great sheep's milk cheeses to taste and talk about!

I'll leave you with a fun one introduced to me by Andrew at Andrew's Cheese. Zamorano is a great Spanish sheep's milk cheese that he suggests when you are looking for Manchego (another sheep cheese). Manchego isn't regulated, so it can be made wherever and however (but it is always pretty tasty). Zamorano is regulated, which is good for consistency. It's a nice firm cheese, and still goes great with quince paste. It has a dry, confident nutty flavor that is really delicious. Check it out!

Sweet dreams all, and don't forget to count your sheep!

A Cheese and Tea Party

My dear friend VG hosted a birthday tea for herself today, and we all pitched in, bringing cucumber sandwiches, scones, tea, and of course, I had to bring cheese! I had never thought about how to pair cheese with tea, but I knew it was totally possible. There are not as many guides for tea and cheese pairings as there are for wine and cheese. Its a bit more complicated than goat cheese with Chardonnay! That said, I did find this great site that offered a few suggestions (I also subscribed to the magazine! Stay tuned for future insights). Very helpful!

I was running late, and had to go to to Whole Paycheck to pick up the cheese babies for the day, and so was deprived of an encouraging chat with my cheese monger friends. I was looking for the Mt. Tam triple cream that I knew everyone would enjoy, but they didn't have it, darn it all! Thinking on the fly, I settled on a very diverse trio, figuring that people would probably find at least one that they enjoyed, and perhaps one that even melded well with the tea. Since almost everyone snacked on at least two, I think it was a success!

The first cheese was a Bucheron goat cheese, which has a nice delicate flavor, with a soft, almost bloomy rind. It comes from the farm in a log shape, so what you get from the store is a lovely circle of goaty goodness. It is slightly aged to mellow out the goat flavor a little, and the one I got had an incredible "cream line" which is the ring of softer, gooey-er, more translucent cheese right underneath the rind that has ripened more than the bright white, firmer center. Yum! And delicious with green tea, as it turns out.

The second was an amazing Epoisse - a traditional washed rind cheese from France that gets its weekly rind washings with brandy! How about that. This stinker comes in its own cute little balsa wood box, and has a great saltiness that tastes much more mild than it smells. Once you cut into this one, it oozes gracefully out onto the plate - just waiting to be scooped up onto a cracker and eaten with Earl Grey.

Finally, I grabbed a beautiful, caramel colored hunk of 5 year aged Gouda. Now, I recently learned that this cheese is not called goo-da, but how-da. Those crazy Dutch. This hard cheese would probably taste amazing grated up and used instead of Parmesan on a pasta with a butternut squash sauce. It even looks a little like Parmesan, because as it ages, it somehow grows crunchy crystals, probably through dehydration. It tastes a little like a butterscotch candy that got mixed with hazelnuts. My goodness, delicious! I could have eaten the whole chunk myself. But I did share, and it was incredible with an Autumnal black tea infused with orange.

We all had a great time at the party and stuffed ourselves with little sandwiches, scones, champagne, tea and cheese! We didn't hold our pinky's in the air, as we discussed the craziness one of the ladies experienced during her week at Burning Man (unpublishable on this respectable page!), outdoor corporate karaoke (the horror!) and watched Tessa the dog do tricks for (non-cheese) treats. What can I say? We're a post-modern crowd, but we sure know how to have a good time!

In addition, I had fun experimenting with how tea and cheese can go together. It was great to share these cheeses with such a smart and eclectic group of women, and I'm looking forward to continued research! It's a gooey job, but someones got to do it!

Sweet dreams all. I hope that the caffeine has all been absorbed by the cheese and I'll be able to rest up for another day of cheesy exploration!