Grilled Cheese Night II - Chaumes

You know you are in for it when the texts from Darling Husband begin at 4 pm and follow this basic trend:  "Cheese"  "I want cheese."  "Grilled cheese"  "Grilled cheese and us."  Awww!  Perhaps I've created a monster, but a sweet one, none the less!  

OK, sorry for the nauseating digression.  Anyway, when I got home, Darling Husband had the Italian bread sliced and the cheese was warming up on the counter.  I threw together a little tomato lentil soup while he broiled the bread, buttered it and layered it thick with Chaumes.  Stupendous!  I would have taken pictures of the finished product, but it went straight from the broiler to the stomach in about 60 seconds.  

Steve Jenkin's Cheese Primer kind of talks some smack about Chaumes (shohm).  While he does point out that it is a very popular cheese, he focuses on it's mass-produced-ness, and complains that it doesn't have the "power nor the rusticity of the true Munster."  While that is true, the slightly less agressive nature of Chaumes is what makes is great for a Tuesday night grilled cheese.  It also makes it a great intro to washed rind cheese for those afraid of the stank!  There isn't any barnyard here, which I didn't miss.  There is a nice garlic/spicy thing going on with this cheese.  Sticky goodness!


Because it is mass produced, it is a pasturized cheese, which is great for anyone worried about little critters in their cheese (but really, you shouldn't be that worried unless you are buying cheese on the side of the road ...).  It takes four gallons of milk to make a single 4.5 pound cheese, which ages for two to three weeks before being sent to the store. Peel off the thin plastic coating before eating, but be sure to taste the actual rind.  It really makes this cheese special.  


We probably could have eaten the entire wedge straight, but heaven forbid we put it together with some tasty carbs for a fabulous feast.  I'll be dreaming about this one tonight!

A Lot Can Happen in 15 Years!

What were you doing in 1994?  It was a pretty exciting year for me.  Tony and Julie Hook had a pretty great year too.  That year, these two Wisconsin cheesemakers made a thousand+ pounds of cheddar that has been aging ever since.  Much like wine, all cheese ages differently.  Some taste great at 6 months or 18 months or even 5 years (delightful aged Gouda anyone?).  It is rare, though, for a cheese to age this long.  Not only is it hard to resist temptation to sell and/or eat it, if there are any weird flavors buried in the cheese, they will become obvious and ruin the cheese.  If everything is perfect, however, it could probably age indefinitely, only getting better with time.

Anyway, while Hook's Cheese Company has a regular 10 year and 12 year cheddar, this 15 year stuff is very rare, on the market for a VERY limited time and is selling for $50 a pound.  If you put money into an investment and waited for 15 years, you'd want a pretty good return too, right?  This cheese sat patiently on a shelf, aging peacefully, getting tested periodically, and not paying attention to much other than making itself tasty.  It aged itself through the dot com bubble, grunge music, a Presidential impeachment, two Iraq wars, The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, Harry Potter and the iPhone, not to mention the million much more important things that have happened in the last 15 years that I'm not thinking of at the moment.  I can't think of a better collectible to remind me of the rich variety of things that have happened in my life.  A rich, crystallized structure holding the memory of green pastures in a field when the ozone layer was just a little thicker.

While watching cheese age is a bit slower than watching paint dry, with a little help from time lapse photography, you can see how it really does change over time. Check this out!  Even over a year, a lot can happen.  The little core samples are the periodic taste tests.  I love how they fill in the plug after!

Quicke's Cheddar - Hurry Up!

Saturday was my quarterly food bonanza in Beverly Hills with my dear friends Man Who Sneers at Goats (Cheese) and the Shopping Queen.  So of course, we went to the Cheese Store of Beverly Hills (and the cupcake store, and the chocolate store...).  That place is crazy!  So many people, and so much cheese all crammed into a little space.  A little claustrophobic, but the cheesy smells kept me from loosing my mind while waiting for our number to be called!  It gave me a little time to snoop around and figure out what I wanted samples of.  Remember - even when it's busy, you are a customer too.  Take your time, ask your questions, get your samples, leave happy.

I decided that Darling Husband needed a little reminder of home, and asked for a nice English Cheddar.  Tony the Cheesemonger brought out this giant half wheel of butter colored goodness.  I could see from the crystalization that it was well aged (turns out it this one is 18 months old).  Look at the crumble!  Made by Mary Quicke and her Devon herd of grass fed cows, this cheese gets wrapped and rubbed with lard to keep it moist while it ages.  And, with many things, this just gets better the longer it sits!  You can still taste the grassy milk, and can almost picture Mary and her team of rosy cheeked cheese makers stirring the milk as it heats, slicing the curd, packing the molds...but the time aging on the shelf give it a nice crunch from the crystals, a great salt, and a hint of caramel.

There is something about a really dry cheddar that is just so satisfying.  Seriously, if this cheese wasn't named for it's creator, I'd think it was because it gets gobbled us right quick!  In desperate need of a snack this afternoon before going to the grocery store, I grabbed Mrs. Quicke's Cheddar from the fridge, chunked it up, munched on a Granny Smith, and was confident in my ability to stick to the list.  Which is important as my cheese budget grows!

Vacherin Nont d'Or - the Holy Grail of Cheese? Perhaps.

To every season there is a cheese, and winter belongs to Vacherin Mont d'Or (vash-er-ANN moan-DOOR).  This incredible cheese is only available during the winter months, and once it's gone, you have to wait till the next December!  When I got to Andrew's this afternoon, there were so many people there!  I didn't know what to do, and then I saw the guy in front of me getting this a Vacherin Mont d'Or it's darling wood box, and I knew that would be the perfect cheese to celebrate the end of a looooong week.  And lucky me - I got the last one!  Ha!  Collector's victory!

Every book I've read calls this part of the Holy Grail of cheese.  Andrew claims that it is "one of the finest achievements of human civilization."  I'd probably put it behind fire and the wheel, but it might come shortly after that on the list.  What else can I add?  Well, I can agree that it is pretty amazing, and it comes with some cool bells and whistles.  Even though it looks like a scary orange washed rind stinker, it isn't.  It's soft, fuzzy coral rind has beautiful ripples. It comes wrapped in Spruce bark from the mountain trees of Switzerland to keep it from falling apart in it's lovely softness, and is wedged into a safe little box for shipping.  I tried to bang it out of the packaging, but it was stuck.  Which is good because once I dug into the top of this cheese, it was so soft I could probably have used a spoon, and I would never have gotten it back in!

The spruce bark definitely gives this cheese a piny nose.  I also got a little pepper, and when I closed my eyes, I was almost transported to a Swiss mountain top covered in snow.  Unlike the milk in some of the cheese that I've talked about that tastes like grass, or flowers or whatever, this one has a purity to it that comes from cows eating nothing but fresh hay and grain.  It does have a bit of "barnyard tang" but really what you taste is beautiful milky, buttery goodness, a crazy pine tree flavor and a tiny bit of pepper.  Some people say it tastes like scrambled eggs.  I didn't get that, but who knows.  I like my eggs poached.

This is not a cheap cheese - you can't get less than a whole cheese (you'd probably have to pack it in a bag it would be so goopy!).  I spend $32 on it, but it we'll snack off it for a while.  It won't be an every day purchase, but it isn't an every day cheese.  It's a celebratory cheese - for a week survived, for an exam passed, for good times with friends.  Hey - if you're in the neighborhood, drop in, and I'll scoop you out a little on a piece of bread!   We'll share a glass of wine, maybe some figs...mmmm.  Better hurry!  The dog looks hungry!

Lancashire - Three Milkings and Some Butter!

When is a blue cheese not a blue cheese?  When it's Lancashire.  Duh.  Or not.

I was looking for something fun from England - I didn't really want Cheddar, and I've had plenty of Blues for a while.  What to do?  So I went to Andrew's Cheese (again) and got the hook up with this Lancashire.  It's a creamy white cheese with a cool blue streak through it.  I guess that some people think that streak is a bad thing, because the cheesemonger was very quick to let me know that it wasn't really a "flaw," but something that comes with the territory for artisinal  cheese.  I think it makes it kind of cool.

Anyway, I love surprises, and this was a good one!  Lancashire has a nice tangy flavor with maybe a hint of lemon and a nice creamy crumble.  The flavor really hits in the back of your mouth if you break off a chunk.  "They" call it a butter crumble, and that's a pretty good description.  Each little bit that crumbles off is so soft and creamy.  What an interesting texture!  I think it may also be called a butter crumble because the cheese is rubbed in butter to protect it during the aging process.

Additionally, this cheese is made from milk collected over three days - an homage to the old days when a farmer might only have one cow, and it might take three days to get together enough milk  to make a cheese.  This might be where some of the tang comes from.  There's a great website devoted to Lancashire cheese, if' you're looking for something else to kill a few minutes on the internets.

While this was great on a cheese plate, it did cause a little confusion (Friend - Can you make me up a cracker with some of the blue cheese?  Me - Oh, this great Berkshire Blue?  Friend - No, the other one.  Me - That's not blue cheese, but it's tasty!  Friend - Really?  Ok.  I'll try that!  Oooooh Yum!).  I think it might actually make amazing cheese toast.   Mmmmm.  I've got a little hunk of this left.  That may be tomorrow nights dinner.  Darling Husband if you're reading - don't take this one in to school tomorrow!

Cheese for a Wednesday, pt. 14 - Just for Fun!

Dare you to give this a go!

Great Gouda!

I love gouda.  It's so good!  Remember - it isn't actually pronounced "goo-da" but "how-da."  Whatever.  It tastes great!  When its been aging for five years, it gets crystals in it that give it a crunch kind of like parmesean and it has this incredible sweet butterscotch, nutty-ness.  I love it aged so much, that I have yet to really try some of the younger versions.  While the older cheese has a crunchy crystalline texture, the younger cheeses have a nice creamy, buttery texture that I can't wait to get to know.  I've got some guidance now.  The latest issue of Culture (an amazing magazine for cheese heads), has a sexy gouda centerfold!  Oh yes it does.  Want some statistics?

1)  All gouda has to be at least 48% fat.  Yum!
2)  Worried about little holes in your gouda?  Perfectly normal.  If fact, some cheese makers add enzymes to intentionally make the curd "burp."
3)  Think flavored gouda is weird?  Actually, since the Netherlands was an early spice trade hub, putting cumin seeds in the cheese has a great, old history.
4)  Wondering where the incredible sweetness comes from?  After the curd has been cut, and the whey is being released, some of it is drained off and the curd is rinsed with warm water to remove some of the lactose.  Less lactose minimizes lactic acid development, and creates a sweeter cheese.  Again yum!  This sounds like a pretty complex process.  In fact, if you change the temperature of the washing water by just one degree, you get a different flavor/texture profile.
5)  Wax on, wax off?  A real gouda isn't covered in red wax like the ones at the grocery store, but it is covered with a thin layer of plastic to keep the rind clean during the aging process.

As with all cheeses, the food the cows eat really impacts the flavor of the cheese.  While cows make more milk when they're eating "silage" (dry feed), grass makes for tastier cheese.  When you can close your eyes and feel like you're in the pasture with the beasties, that's  a good cheese!  Don't take it from me - check out these happy Dutch cows on the first day of spring!   Just remember this as the sun sets earlier, and the skies fill with clouds and snow!