It's the fear I never had until now: to return to my hotel room and find everything—walls, ceiling, furniture, floor—covered in melted cheese. In 1999, Canadian artist Cosimo Cavallaro covered Room 114 at the Washington Jefferson Hotel in New York City in 1,000 pounds of cheese from the Swiss Cheese Foundation. I wouldn't have wanted to visit that room on a hot day. Watch the video after the jump.
I have been humbled, surprised, and, frankly, a bit overwhelmed by the outpouring of support and advice in response to my post last week about my lactose intolerance discovery. You have shared many ideas, from the practical to the fanciful.
Probably the best advice I received was to make an appointment with my doctor to get tested. Lots of folks said that gallbladder problems, dairy allergies, and celiac disease can all produce symptoms similar to lactose intolerance. I have heeded this advice and will be seeing my doctor soon. I have a feeling he'll send me straight to a gastroenterologist, so I may not have any official updates here for a while, though I do think this is probably the best and safest approach.
But back to my adventures, which is why, I think, you are all tuning in. Apparently lactose intolerance (or whatever is ailing me) isn't so black-or-white. Over the past week I have been experimenting in a somewhat haphazard way with dairy of different stripes.
I was able to eat, without issue, a half-glass of one-percent milk, a small cup of yogurt, and a delicious Queso Blanco Torta from Cinco de Mayo, my local Mexican restaurant.
I was honestly a tad underwhelmed with the Logan Square Farmers' Market last year. There were too many pre-made food vendors, and not enough whole vegetables for me to buy and take home. I went back this weekend to see if I had caught the market too late in the season last year, or just on an off week. And luckily, I had. The Logan Square market was bursting from its seams with fresh vegetables, mounds of lettuce, and interesting stalls. It was a glorious Sunday.
About a month ago I went with my family to get some Argentine-style gelato from Cones on Bleecker Street. A couple of hours later I had an unbelievably awful stomach attack, which I first attributed to food poisoning, but later reasoned that it might have been a bout of sudden-onset lactose intolerance (since no one else in my family had had food poisoning, and they ate the same things I did).
A week later, I ate a slice-and-a-half of pizza and had a similar (but not quite as bad) reaction. Oh no! My wife then reminded me that I had had the same symptoms a few weeks before the gelato event, from some Tibetan food that had a cottage-cheese based sauce. What? Lactose Intolerance? But I write the Serious Cheese column for Serious Eats! What was I going to do?
Photograph from Goulven Champenois on Flickr
The combination of crusty dough and melted cheese has spawned some of the greatest foods in the world. Pizza and grilled cheese come first to mind for many Americans, but the United States can hardly claim ownership. Indeed, thousands of miles across the world, in a land wedged between the Black Sea to the west and the Caspian Sea to the east, the bread-and-cheese meme has perhaps reached its apex in the form of the Georgian food khachapuri—literally, "cheese bread."
Photograph from Balakov on Flickr
For some reason the American kitchen is a breeding ground for useless gadgets, tools, and knickknacks. Do we really need a separate tool to make balls out of melons? (Actually, melon ballers are quite useful for many different tasks, but that's a subject for another post.)
Living in New York City, where most apartments have tiny kitchens with only a handful of cabinets, I am forced to be ruthlessly Spartan with my gadgetry. This is why I am generally opposed to cheese knives. I tend to follow Alton Brown's golden rule: never own a kitchen gadget that has only one use. So what kinds of knives do work well with cheese? My suggestions, after the jump.
Photograph from cheese-rolling.co.uk
I'm not the most outdoorsy person, but this is a competition I can get behind. Every year on Cooper's Hill in Gloucester, England, a cheese-rolling race is held. No, it isn't a race between different rounds of cheese—it is something much better: One round of cheese is rolled down the hill and participants chase after it.
Last year our cheese correspondent Jamie Forest wrote about 2008's winner and the cheese used in the race. You can see photos from this year's race, which took place on May 25, in today's post at The Big Picture from The Boston Globe. The tradition has been going for for at least 200 years and is always growing in popularity. Despite the high possibility of injury, I can see why. [via EMD]
Most people, when they hear the words coffee and cheese in the same sentence, wince at the thought of two such vastly different foods coming in such close contact. But Utah's Beehive Dairy is boldly cutting straight through that taboo with their coffee-covered Barely Buzzed, a blue ribbon winner in the 2008 American Cheese Society Awards. The first time I'd tasted it was back in March at Beecher's Cheese in Seattle.
As I bit down through the cheese, the bitter nuttiness of the espresso and the caramel sweetness of the cheddar-style cheese made me realize this is a match made in some really quirky and hip corner of heaven.
Photograph from wili_hybrid on Flickr
There was an article in last weekend's New York Times that I found utterly fascinating. In a memoir-style piece, author Jennifer Mascia described the epiphany she experienced when realizing that goat cheese had made it to her East Harlem supermarket. To her, this signaled that gentrification was truly taking hold.
When I read the story, I wondered why goat cheese—a very basic, rustic food—has become so symbolic of "gourmet" food in America, specifically the gastronomic revolution that has taken place in the last 30 years. One could even argue that goat cheese is more indicative of gentrification than even the supremely-yuppified arugula.
Photograph from dearanxiety on Flickr
Last week, there was an interesting story from the McClatchy newspapers about a group of Italian agronomists helping some Palestinian farmers set up an Italian sheep cheese operation in the West Bank. The dairy goes by the name of Golden Sheep, and produces a small variety of Italian cheeses like pecorino (a generic term for an aged sheep cheese), smoked ricotta, and scamorza (a close relative of mozzarella).
The economy in the West Bank is, for obvious reasons, relatively stagnant, and the agronomists at Italy's Ucodep have launched this development project to help get some money flowing. The target market for the cheese is middle and upper class Palestinians who have lived abroad, as well as foreigners (journalists, diplomats, etc.) stationed in the West Bank.
It's a smart idea to target this admittedly small, but niche, market, and bring them some of the more Western tastes they may be craving.
Stinky cheese lovers, rejoice! While the US had been threatening to impose a 300% tax on Roquefort cheese—in response to the EU’s refusal to import hormone-treated beef—that twice-delayed tariff is now off the table. Roquefort prices should stay safely where they are.
Spring is naturally the season of new beginnings, and during these warm days rife with optimism, I like to think about all the wonderful things this season kicks off. Spring harvest, baseball, the first days of the rest of a college graduate's life, and of course the effective start of cheese season.
In this third installment of Cheese 101 (we've already covered blues and Alpines), we take a detailed look at some of the best cheeses for spring—the aged goat cheeses—largely inspired by the "chèvres" of France's Loire Valley.
Leave it to the French to spend their hard-earned tax dollars sponsoring wine and cheese parties here in the U.S and around the world. Last Friday, the Wall Street Journal reported that the French government, along with a handful of wine and cheese producers, is spending over $2 million to sponsor these parties in order to "show that French cuisine can be relaxed."
If you want a chance to have the French pay you to throw a party, head on over to the contest form at houseparty.com. One thousand winners will get a 15 percent discount on certain French wines and receive a free gift when ordering French cheeses from specified websites.
Okay, so they're not paying for the whole party, but in these trying economic times, we all need a little stimulus package—even if it's only 15 percent.
Editor's note: On Thursdays, Babbo pastry chef Gina DePalma checks in with Seriously Italian. After a stint in Rome, she's back in the States, channeling her inner Italian spirit via recipes and intel on delicious Italian eats. Take it away, Gina!
Pecorino from Pienza tastes different from that made in Maremma, which is distinctive from what you find in Chianti, and so on.
My mouth is watering for Pecorino Toscano this week, probably because I featured it in the dessert I prepared at the Pebble Beach Food & Wine Festival last weekend. Not that I needed a reminder—we’ve always featured this DOP (Denominazione di Origine Protetta, or Protected Designation of Origin) sheep’s milk cheese on our menu at Babbo, and over the last decade I’ve tasted a delectable array of offerings from Tuscany’s best artisan producers.
If Parmigiano-Reggiano is the undisputed king of all cheeses, then Pecorino Toscano must be considered a prince.
“Pecorino” as a label can be a source of confusion for American consumers, since we are most likely to identify the word only with Pecorino Romano, the hard, snowy-white grating cheese easily found in supermarkets and delis, pre-grated into plastic tubs or sold in fat, stacked wedges. While equally majestic for its own qualities, Pecorino Romano is an entirely different cheese: firmer, dryer, saltier, made with a unique process and given its own separate DOP status.
A first encounter with Pecorino Toscano as a table cheese is a revelation; depending on the age it can be bright and grassy or buttery and nutty, but always rich, concentrated and ultimately unforgettable.
In these tough economic times, it must be difficult for companies to take the long view on things. Especially one like Grafton Village Cheese, larger than many small-scale artisan producers but still tiny compared to the struggling giants making news on Wall Street Journal covers. But by temporarily subsidizing the dairy farmers they rely on to produce their cheese, this small Vermont cheesemaking collective was in the news yesterday for doing just that.
The price of milk, a commodity traded on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, has fallen almost 40 percent in just one year (just like my 401k!). In March of 2008, a "hundredweight" (abbreviated "cwt." and equal to 100 pounds) of milk cost $18.
In March 2009, the price was at $11.20 per cwt. At prices this low, dairy farmers can hardly sustain their operations. Half that amount could be spent on feed alone.
Your favorite cheese snack multiplied by your favorite nerdy wordy board game. Kellogg launched Cheez-It Scrabble Junior in January, and it's supposedly hitting shelves nationally. No clue why it refers to the munchkin version of the game, but it's still a good day to be a wordsmith with the munchies. [via Endless Simmer]
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The day before I flew home from Seattle, I received an email from Tami Parr, author of the always-informative Pacific Northwest Cheese Project blog. She proudly announced the release of her first book, Artisan Cheese of the Pacific Northwest. Oh, man, did I wish I'd had this book before going to Seattle.
Largely a guidebook to the small-scale cheese producers in Washington, Oregon, Idaho and British Columbia, the book is similar to Jeffrey Roberts' Atlas of American Cheese. It would be perfect for the intrepid agrotourist with a strong interest in cheese.
For each producer profiled, Parr gives a brief one or two page summary, along with contact information, visitor information (if appropriate), and of course information about the cheeses they make. The book also includes several handy maps in the front so that you can plan your journey accordingly.
Photographs courtesy of Beecher's Handmade Cheese
Seattle's Pike Place Market delicately straddles two seemingly antithetical modes: down-home city produce market with plenty of local flair, and crowded tourist trap complete with fishmonger hijinks and overpriced hippie regalia. But to paint this place in such broad strokes is to miss the real beauty of it. What it comes down to for me is that for all the spectacle, a lot of the food you can get at Pike Place is really, seriously good.
Other than the fishmongers, nowhere in the market is food performance as important to the experience than at Beecher's Handmade Cheese, where tourists and locals alike can witness real, high-quality, artisanal cheese being made right before their eyes. To be sure, cheese is a largely rural enterprise, but Beecher's has brought it right into the downtown of a major American city. And yet the place still wouldn't pique my interest if the cheese they made weren't so damn good!
It's not always clear who decides these things, but April is National Grilled Cheese Month, so let's get our goo on.
All month, Pithy and Cleaver will feature grilled cheese recipes (they started with the tomato soup classic, except the soup is in the sandwich!). The Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board also has some ideas. For the plastic-looking cheese fans, Kraft Foods launched a site where people can submit 50-word testimonials to Kraft Singles for a chance to win freebie coupons. On April 25, there's a Grilled Cheese Invitational happening in Los Angeles (the seventh annual, mind you). New categories this year include: the Missionary Position (standard bread, cheese, and butter with nothing fancy); the Kama Sutra (any kind of bread, butter, and cheese; just go crazy); and the Honey Pot (dessert versions).
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Editor’s Note: Serious Eats correspondent Carey Jones, eating her way around Italy, will be reporting back from Rome, Bologna, Tuscany, and Puglia.
There’s no cheese like fresh cheese, as any bufala-lover knows. While a Parmesan or a Gouda might age for months, even years, softer specimens are best straight from the cow—mozzarella can go from udder to wrapper in just a few hours, and is then shipped out the same day. And so too with burrata, as I learned on a visit to the Mozzarella Gioiella factory in the southern Italian region of Puglia.
Among the least appreciated of Italy’s soft cheeses, burrata is like the postmodern version of mozzarella: stringy scraps of leftover mozzarella, stirred into salted cream, and enclosed in a stretched mozzarella casing. While other fresh cheeses might be called creamy or milky, burrata actually is. Sliding a fork through the smooth, soft cheese unleashes a satisfying ooze of cheese-speckled cream—just like cutting into a perfectly poached egg.
First invented by farmers from the city of Andria in the early twentieth century as a way to reclaim unused curds, it’s now a respected Puglian product in its own right. So off the pastoral farmstead, how is burrata made? A tour of the cheese factory, after the jump.
Last week my family and I spent some time vacationing in Seattle, and of course whenever I visit a new place my first goal is always to scope out the local cheese scene. Seattle, and the Pacific Northwest in general, has a great local cheese scene. Over the next few weeks I plan to profile some of the exciting things going on out there, starting this week with one of the best American cheeses available: Mt. Townsend Creamery's Seastack.
New Yorkers like me have access to only a subset of the wide array of artisan cheeses now being produced across the U.S. Most of the cheeses made on the eastern seaboard are available, as are some cheeses from the larger producers in the Midwest, South, and West. But what we don't get are the small batch varieties that sell out locally or are prohibitively expensive to ship across country. That's why when I travel I love to find those small-batch cheeses like Seastack that I simply can't find where I live.
Photograph from Wikimedia Commons
A few weeks back, JGordon left a comment on my post regarding France's raw-milk cheese war: "Could someone explain the difference between pasteurized cheeses and raw milk cheeses? Does pasteurization just destroy the flavor of cheese?... Despite the near-illegality of raw milk and its rare consumption, several hundred people a year become ill from drinking raw milk, with the occasional death. Is cheese safer, or is the taste difference very significant?"
The raw-milk debate isn't going away anytime soon, so I thought it would be a good time to answer questions like those above and lay down my take on the matter.
When I was a kid, Kraft used to run a very memorable commercial for their boxed Macaroni and Cheese in which they marketed their product as "the cheesiest." In fact, it was so cheesy, the ad argued, it should be called "Kraft Cheese and Macaroni," as if the order of the components determined their relative importance.
Well, Kraft's dirty little not-so-secret is that their boxed macaroni and cheese doesn't even contain real cheese but a sort of alchemical admixture of cheese's component parts: whey, milkfat, and milk protein concentrate. And now, if Sen. Darrel Aubertine's bill passes in the New York State Senate, Kraft and other companies selling products that contain milk protein concentrate, caseins, or caseinates will have to label their food as "cheese products," and not "cheese."
Wow. Jeremy, a self-described computer and food nerd in Springfield, Oregon, started a blog called Cheese a Day, in which he makes, duh, a cheese a day. As someone who often neglects to make his bed each morning, I have to say that this is a mighty ambitious theme for a blog. Good luck, Jeremy!
The knowledgeable folks at New York's Murray's Cheese have launched a series of interesting and helpful cheese videos on their website. The first series covers Portion Control, or how to properly cut different types of cheeses based on their shape and texture.
Taylor Cocalis, Murray's director of education, hosts the videos, which cover exactly how to cut and portion all of the major types of cheeses: lightly aged goat, bloomy rind, washed rind, pressed, cooked, and blue. Usually learning such things requires purchasing an expensive ticket to one of Murray's otherwise excellent classes, but these videos are free.
For almost two years now, we at Serious Eats have been following France's long and arduous battle over raw milk Camembert. Last spring we reported that the clash had been settled—that French authorities had ruled that cheese made from lightly pasteurized milk could not be called A.O.C. Camembert.
This week Business Week ran an interesting and detailed piece on the issue, which reports that the two large corporations that had been lobbying for pasteurized Camembert, and that had ceased production of raw milk cheese entirely, are now in fact considering a return to raw milk production. Ultimately this is a victory for traditional foodways and small producers everywhere.
Cheese, wire, and sculpture come together in this series of intricate wire sculpture cheese portraits by artist C.W. Roelle. 200 of these sculptures, which measure 4.75" high, 4.5" wide, and 1" deep, are available to preorder for $65 each. Sculptures will be assigned at random and no two are the same. [via Michelle Higa]
Ever since a college friend baked a bar of fine Swiss dark chocolate between two halves of a wheel of Brie, I've been intrigued and a little obsessed with the idea of pairing chocolate and cheese. It's tougher to get right than, say, pairing fruit and cheese, and sometimes it's downright nasty, but when you do get a good match, it can be truly sublime. And it also happens to be a really nice way to end a special Valentine's Day meal with two of the greatest foods humans ever created.
Using biology professor David B. Fankhauser's tutorial, learn how to turn five gallons of milk into six pounds of cheese. Aside from five gallons of milk, you'll need yogurt, rennet tablets, a thermometer, a stainless steel pot, a strainer, and a cheese press. In just a few weeks you'll be able to dig into your newborn baby cheese wheel. [via kottke.org]
Related: How to Make Cottage Cheese
Terrance Brennan, chef-proprietor of New York City's Picholine Restaurant and Artisanal Bistro, and the man largely credited with introducing European-style cheese plates to American diners in the mid 1990s, will be opening two new restaurants in greater Seattle come September.
The Artisanal Table will be an upscale pizzeria, with a tapas and wine bar, and Artisanal Brasserie & Wine Bar will likely be a replica of the bistro-style Artisanal restaurant in New York. The latter will feature what Brennan is calling the "Bar du Fromage," a wine and cheese bar run by a professional fromager, the cheese world's equivalent of the sommelier. An interesting and novel concept—cheese plate as bar food. Both restaurants will be located in The Shops at the Bravern, an upscale mall in the suburb of Bellevue, Washington.
Those of us lucky cheese fans that live in New York know the unique joys of an Artisanal fondue or their deliciously savory gougères. Start with a selection of some of the world's greatest cheeses, carefully selected and tenderly cared for by some of the best-trained fromagers in America, and combine it with the wonderful bounty of fresh produce available in the Pacific Northwest, and Seattleites are in for a real treat. It will certainly be interesting to watch whether Chef Brennan can recreate the gustatory magic he has conjured up here on the East Coast.
About the author: Jamie Forrest publishes Curdnerds.com from his apartment in Brooklyn, New York, where he lives with his wife, his daughter, and his cheese.
For the last eight years, Americans have seen their fair share of questionable leadership and head-scratching policy decisions. Leave it to Dubya, however, to save the best for last. The Agence France-Presse is reporting that before leaving office, Bush has enacted legislation that will increase tariffs on France's beloved Roquefort cheese to 300 percent, an amount that would make purchasing it in the U.S. untenable.
As the Huffington Post pointed out yesterday, Bush has never been known for his gastronomic tendencies, preferring canned vegetables to fresh, so it isn't too surprising that he would use Roquefort as a pawn in a trade war that began when the E.U. banned growth hormone-treated meat in the late '80s. But the result—that Americans won't be able to buy Roquefort cheese anymore—is abhorrent to cheese-lovers, foodies, and thinking people everywhere.
Over the weekend, Ed asked us to name our favorite American artisanal cheeses. As of Monday night there were almost 400 responses, a wonderful testament to the strides made in recent years by cheesemakers across the country.
In fact over the last few years, the explosion of the American artisanal cheese industry has made it quite difficult to pick just one favorite. But that is the task we were given, and that is the question I will answer. My favorite American artisanal cheese, for several reasons I'll discuss below, is Sweet Grass Dairy's Green Hill.
Green Hill is a sumptuous bloomy-rind cheese, similar to Camembert, made from pasteurized cow's milk. When young the texture is crumbly--as Janet Fletcher says, like whipped butter. As cheese gets older and the white penicillium mold ripens the cheese from the outside in, the texture loosens up and runs at room temperature. The taste is rich and buttery, with an underlying mushroomy and grassy complexity that makes you forget the cheese is pasteurized.
The two subtitles to American Cheeses tell us a lot: "The Best Regional, Artisan, and Farmhouse Cheeses," and "Who Makes Them and Where to Find Them." Food consultant Clark Wolf has written an interesting book for anyone remotely interested in the birth and development of the American artisanal cheese movement. And thanks to the good folks at Simon & Schuster, we have four copies of this tangy read to give away. To win a copy, just tell us what your favorite kind of American artisanal cheese is here in the comments. —Ed Levine
Contest will end and comments will close at 3 p.m. ET, Monday, January 12, 2009. One entry per community member. The standard Serious Eats contest rules apply.
Photograph courtesy of Artisanal Cheese
The cheese world can be overwhelming, especially if you're buying a bunch of different varieties to serve at a party. What wine do I serve with a triple-cream like Pierre Robert? Should people eat the Beaufort before or after the Idiazabal? Thanks to the folks at Artisanal Cheese, creating a well-balanced cheese plate has just gotten a lot easier. They have created the "cheese clock" (pictured above), an apt and simple metaphor for guiding you through the process of selecting a group of cheeses.
While France, Italy, and Switzerland have been basking in the cheese spotlight for centuries, other countries in Europe have quietly been perfecting delicious, functional, down-home cheeses that can certainly rival their more famous counterparts. Germany and Austria, two nations not widely known for the cheeses they produce, have been at it for a long time, and are only starting to get noticed here in the States.
Indeed, if you love stinky cheese, these two countries are making some amazingly pungent specimens that will challenge your very notion of "edible." New York City's Murray's Cheese recently began carrying a whole spate of rare German and Austrian cheeses, four of which were focusing on here, after the jump.
Is there such a thing as too much bacon combined with too much cheese? Look at this Bacon and Cheese Roll—a log of woven bacon strips rolled around cheese—and decide for yourself. (My answer: "Yup.") [via Holy Taco]
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Last week the Wall Street Journal reported on an interesting story that lies at the intersection of economics and cheese. According to the paper, the Italian government is planning a bailout for, of all things, the Parmigiano-Reggiano industry. The bottom line is that at current prices the cheese costs more to produce than it does to purchase; a cheesemaker cited in the article spends €8 to produce a kilogram of cheese that he then sells for €7.40.
Cheese—really good cheese—can be an expensive hobby, especially in these fiscally challenging times. This year's cheese gift guide is focused on ideas $25 and under, but will still impress the caseophiles in your life. (Prices don't include shipping unless otherwise noted.)
Max McCalman, the Maître Fromager at Artisanal and Picholine in New York, has created a beautiful deck of cheese-themed flash cards—a companion set to his book, Cheese: A Connoisseur's Guide to the World's Best. Each card in the set of 50 displays a photo of a particular variety as well as information about "how each one is made, who the best producers are, where to store it, and how to serve it for maximum enjoyment." $10.17 at amazon.com
From the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board comes Cheese Cupid, a site to help you pair wines, beers, and spirits with cheese. [via AdFreak]
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Président Cheese, makers of the ubiquitous wheels of "deli" brie, have released a new cheese they're calling the "Brie Log." They claim it has the same taste as their normal brie but comes in a convenient log shape with a 1-inch diameter, which means that its slices fit perfectly on crackers or bread rounds. A cool and interesting twist on an old classic, but how does it stack up?
The folks from Président sent me a log last week, just before Thanksgiving. It arrived at my office frozen in a cooler pack and enclosed in a sealed wrapper. The whole thing was reminiscent of a Good Humor Chocolate Eclair—not the kind of image that inspires confidence in this cheese lover. Freezing cheese usually kills it, as the ice crystals that form in the paste can break the delicate membranes of the fat globules in the cheese, leaking milkfat once its defrosted. At first I was planning on breaking the cheese out during Thanksgiving, but since it was already frozen when I got it, I decided to keep it in the freezer and wait till after the holiday.
Last year around this time, we offered our suggestion for the perfect Thanksgiving Day cheese plate, one that featured five delicious American originals that ran the gamuts of taste and texture.
This year, given the economic environment, we decided to simplify down to a single, powerfully flavorful cheese. With all that other food on the table you definitely don't need an entire cheese plate; just serve a square of Maroilles along with your dessert course to top off the meal in the right way. It's the perfect fall cheese, with its red-orange rind the color of fallen leaves and an earthy, rich taste reminiscent of mushrooms and roasted vegetables.
Yes I am, according to a Chow video called "How to Serve and Cut Cheese" with Laura Werlin, noted cheese expert and author of many books including The New American Cheese.
There aren't any hard and fast rules when serving cheese—or any other food, really. You're only doing it wrong if you don't like the end result.
Serving cheese should be easy, not fussy; it should be fun, not stressful. That said, some of the guidelines in the video can help direct you towards a positive cheese-serving experience.
Serving tips, after the jump.
Every Tuesday, Jamie Forrest drops by with Serious Cheese.
Yesterday's Wall Street Journal ran an interesting article about folks who have given up the corporate life for a life on the farm making cheese. It profiles Wisconsinite Brenda Jensen, whose Hidden Springs Creamery burst on the scene last year with a first place finish in the fresh sheep's milk cheese category at the American Cheese Society annual competition. Crafting small batches of hand-made sheep's milk cheeses, Jensen is beating a new path in a state with an entrenched dairy industry that is decidedly non-artisanal and heavily cow-focused.
I (and probably most cheese lovers) have at least fantasized about leaving their urban existence behind to start a small cheesemaking operation. There's something about the connection to the land and to history that makes cheesemaking particularly appealing to those disillusioned with the ennui of corporate living. The New York Times, in fact, ran a story not too long ago about urban hipsters leaving behind their "trucker hats" for the simplicity of rural life.
Photograph from WordRidden on Flickr
As we close in on the last few months of a year many of us would soon rather forget, it seems somehow fitting to delve a little deeper into a class of cheeses whose pungent spice can soothe the aching heart: the blues. Like winter, blue cheeses are loathed just as much as they are loved. But love them or hate them, blues are some of the most important cheeses in the world, and some of the most interesting.
When an election lasts this long, people start doing all kinds of crazy stuff. For one man, that meant rendering the faces of both presidential candidates on slices of American cheese. Artist Esteban Pulido used liquid photo emulsion for his art piece, which will be on display in Normon, Oklahoma, at Forward Foods through the rest of the day. CNN even sent a crew out there to document the decomposition, which is nasty and, according to Pulido, metaphorical. Short video, after the jump.
If you're in the habit of incorporating cottage cheese into your breakfast, you might want to know how to make it. It's pretty darn easy and makes good use of any milk you might have that's about to go bad. It takes only some vinegar, a thermometer, and cheesecloth—along with a colander and a pot. Savvy Housekeeping has the details.
On Tuesdays, Jamie Forrest (CurdNerds.com) drops by for some Serious Cheese talk.
Photograph courtesy of FactoryFarm.org
The answer, according to a recent study from the University of Minnesota, lies in the slim ratio between agricultural revenues and today's cost of living. The authors of the study found that it takes $74,804 in annual revenues to support a Minnesotan farm family of 3.4 people. This amounts to a herd of 127 dairy cows (where each cow earns a little less than $600 a year on average).
By comparison, Jasper Hill Farm in Vermont has only 37 cows. And ten years ago the average U.S. farm had only 80 cows on it. Simply put, the cost of living has far outpaced the price of food in the last 20 years or so.
But what does this all mean for cheese freaks like you and me?
Gone are the days when the Pillsbury Bake-Off stood proudly as the only recipe contest in the world worth entering. Nowadays every food company has a contest; there's the Uncle Ben's Rice Recipe Contest, the Quebecois Grain-fed Veal Recipe Contest, and absurdly specific Jif Most Creative Peanut Butter Sandwich Contest. But for a cheese geek like me, Ile de France's Cheese Recipe Contest takes the cake, so to speak.
Unfortunately the deadline to enter the contest has passed, but until November 3rd, cheese lovers can go to the Ile de France site to peruse and rate all the thirty-seven recipes chosen as finalists for the grand prize ($1000 cash--a paltry sum compared to Pillsbury's million dollar prize).
There are few sensory juxtapositions as important and ubiquitous as the "sweet and sour." From apple pie to wine, it is arguably the most fundamental taste combination in all of food. However, among all the many examples of it in cuisines across the world, there is one that rises above the rest: cheese and honey.
To be sure, lots of sweet things go really well with cheese: wine, sake, quince, apples, but there is something special about drizzling a bit of, say, chestnut honey on a wedge of Tumbleweed cheese. Some cheeses and honeys do work better than others--here's what to look for.
This past weekend I drove about 2 hours down to Bucks County, Pennsylvania, to see a good friend from college get married in the backyard of his parents' beautiful historic farmhouse. The food in general was better than average, but was topped off by an incredible dessert spread of Italian pastries and cakes all baked by the groom's sister, an Italian-trained pastry chef.
During the cocktail hour, I was given insider information from the groom's other sister not to miss the mini-cannoli (also called cannulicchi), which were the real deal--made with sheep's milk ricotta rather than mascarpone or, heaven forbid, custard. Adding to their value was their relative scarcity: there were only 30 of them for a wedding party of more than 100.
In the years after WWII, the Bureau of the Dairy Industry (an early division of the USDA) commissioned expert George P. Sanders to scour the planet and document the characteristics and methods of production for a wide variety of cheeses. The purpose wasn't to provide recipes for cheesemakers but rather "so that consumers may be better able to recognize the various kinds by name." The Cheese Varieties and Descriptions handbook is a great overview for cheese lovers everywhere—even more than five decades after it's first publication in 1953.
To be sure, methods of cheese production have not changed much in, well, centuries, which is why this book has aged so well. I first discovered this book while trolling Ebay for cheese-related items, and bought it back then for just a few dollars. But I recently discovered that it is freely available in PDF form on the USDA website. It's definitely worth downloading and printing out as a reference.
Photo from GirlieErin on Flickr
The second season of Pushing Daisies is back on ABC this Wednesday, and as a pie enthusiast, I believe this can only be good for the world. The show is about a guy with magical death-reversing powers, but more importantly, it's about pie. Ned is a pie-maker at "The Pie Hole," where, last season, he whipped up an apple pie with Gruyère baked into the crust to cheer up his girlfriend's cheese-loving spinster aunts. (He also laced anti-depressants into the batter, but that's another story).
The apple pie with cheese theory has roots in England, where it developed the nickname "Yorkshire pie." At first slightly gross-sounding, the concept grows on you. The marriage between fruit and cheese has always been a functional one, so how's a pie crust going to stop that?
Once I heard someone say, "an apple pie with cheese is like a kiss without a squeeze." Do you agree? Would the combo cheer you up, as it did for the spinster aunts? With apple season here, this question is especially timely.
On Tuesdays, Jamie Forrest of Curdnerds.com drops by with Serious Cheese. Here, pairing cheese with apples, which are just now hitting the peak of deliciousness.
You know it's autumn in the Northeast when your lips begin to chap, when organic grapes are reasonably priced, and when crisp, juicy, sweet-tart apples hit farmers' markets. Autumn is also a great season for cheese: aged wheels made with the sweet, grassy milk of summertime are just now coming into their own. Indeed, I've always been a big fan of pairing cheese with apples (and apple cider), and so every September my mind begins to think about new and interesting ways to put them together.
First off, you want to start with a great match. A classic pairing is a soft, sweet blue cheese like Roquefort with a tart, crisp apple like Granny Smith. However, I have also found that Granny Smiths are a bit too mild, and when matched with a strong cheese like Roquefort, they often get drowned out. Not to worry, I have a solution for you: I happen to know, because I am just that geeky, that Stayman Winesap apples go really well with Roquefort. Try it, and let us know what you think in the comments.
Photograph from scott361 on Flickr
Last month the Times Online published a fascinating article on the growing trend of backyard farming, with particular attention to the Dexter cow, a miniature breed that "gives 16 pints of milk a day...keeps the grass mown and will be a family pet for years before ending up in the freezer." In the U.K., as in the U.S., the rising costs of food are inducing many people to build miniature farms in their backyards, and what better animal could there be for a miniature farm than a miniature cow?
The first time I ate brunost, or brown cheese, was when I visited Norway two years ago. The brown block of sweet, caramelized cheesy goodness, a cheese slicer, and toast was a breakfast staple. (We also had jam. Lots of jam.)
I didn't continue the practice back in the US, but reading Jude's post dedicated to the Norwegian cheese at Apple Pie, Patis, & Paté made me want to reintroduce the habit into my life. I wouldn't mind starting my day with a few thin curls of brown cheese and sliced apples.
Related: The Omnivore's 100
Editor's note: Serious Eats readers Kathy Park and Rob Price emailed with this account of their recent trip to Montreal—and their first taste of poutines. Yum. Thanks, Kathy and Rob! —Adam
Words and Photographs by Kathy Park and Rob Price | After a seven-hour road trip from New York City with only one food stop for breakfast, we were ravenous when we arrived in Montreal for Labor Day weekend (it was Canada's Labor Day, too!). For the drive, we had printed out pages of Montreal food chatter from Serious Eats and Chowhound, and learned about poutine. After many jokes about the word poutine, we decided that the dish Montreal is famous for, made of fries, gravy, and cheese curds, was the equivalent of chili cheese fries in the U.S.
Once in Montreal (for the first time), we asked a friendly local where we should go for poutine and he said, "Trust me, Patati Patata." Another friendly Montrealer said, "The best poutine is at La Banquise." We decided to live life to the fullest and go to both establishments for our first tastes of poutines.
Here in the northeast, we are lucky enough to have access to some of the best artisan cheeses made in America. Sure Wisconsin and California have us beat on sheer volume, but cheesemakers in Vermont, New York, Connecticut, and elsewhere are definitely holding their own. One such relative newcomer is Consider Bardwell Farm, the West Pawlet-based brainchild of Russell Glover and Angela Miller. Along with cheesemaker Peter Dixon, they are making some of the best American artisan cheeses available.
The farm makes several goat cheeses using milk from their herd of Oberhasli goats, a Swiss dairy breed. The goats are allowed to graze rotationally on pesticide-free grasses, a process in which the animals are only given access to grasses that are at their peak growth and ripeness. This means they don't make any goat cheese in the winter, although they do make cow's milk cheeses during that season. And what about their cheeses? I recently had a chance to taste a few of their offerings, and I have to say each one was better than the next.
Pawlet, which I assume is named after the town the farm is located in, is a semi-firm tomme-style cheese, made with Jersey cow's milk. It's mild but has a nice sweet tang to it, with some flavors reminiscent of Swiss alpine cheeses.
Cheese lovers everywhere should run to their nearest newsstand to pick up a copy of this month's Wine Spectator magazine, whose oversized cover boldly declares what's to be found inside: 100 Great Cheeses.
A wine magazine covering cheese is a dicey proposition, but I have to say they've done it right. The coverage is spread across several articles, which include a background piece about the recent ascendancy of fine cheese in America, an article that presents four suggested cheese plates along with their respective wine pairings, a bunch of tasty-looking recipes, and, as the cover promises, a detailed description of 100 of the greatest cheeses in the world.
All of this great content is interspersed with very thorough introductions to some of the different types of cheese (alpine, washed rind, blue), as well as tons of spectacular photographs of cheese, each one more beautiful than the next.
One problem I have with the article is the glaring lack of ratings. For a magazine that places such a focus on giving a score to a bottle of wine, it is a bit disingenuous to produce a list of 100 great cheeses without offering ratings for them (or even so much as an explanation for the lack of ratings).
With only a few more weeks left of summer foods, it's time to start preserving the bounty of the season before the cold dark months to come. One of the simplest and most delicious things you can do is marinate a good sheep or goat's milk feta in olive oil and fresh herbs, an ingenious combination that can last throughout the winter and beyond.
Taking inspiration from David Lebovitz, here's a simple guide to marinating feta:
Fill a Ball jar, or similar glass jar, with two-inch cubes of feta. Add some fresh herbs of your choosing: oregano, thyme, rosemary, bay leaves, mint, red chili flakes, and/or fresh pepper. You can really use your imagination here.
If mice could talk in Internet slang.
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TGIF!
No, we're not talking about Eddie, Herman, and Grandpa, we're talking about the sumptuous cow's milk cheese whose beautiful rust-orange rind surrounds a supple, creamy center. But like the family on TV, not all Munsters are the same. In fact, the differences can be so great as to make one variety boring and bland, and another perhaps one of the greatest cheeses on earth.
Munster is a pungent washed-rind cheese with historical ties to the ancient monasteries of the Vosges mountains in the Alsace region of France. It is named after the French village of the same name, but in fact the word shares a common root with the word monastery. Munster grew out of the monastic tradition via the Rule of St. Benedict, which said that "two kinds of cooked food are sufficient at all meals; so that he who perchance cannot eat of one, may make his meal of the other. Let two kinds of cooked food, therefore, be sufficient for all the brethren." It also said, "Let all except the very weak and the sick abstain altogether from eating the flesh of four-footed animals." Given these requirements for a varied, vegetarian diet, it makes sense that the monks would so heavily rely on cheese. Real Alsatian Münster is an exquisite cheese, supple in texture and stinky to say the least, but earthy and rich, even chocolaty. A far cry from it's German and American cousins.
Photograph from Rhian vK on Flickr
First universal health care and now this: The government of Quebec announced last week that it will legalize the sale of raw milk cheeses. This is important and welcome news for North American cheese lovers, especially those like me who live in the Northeast United States and own a car—and several big duffel bags.
Like the U.S., Canada allows the sale of raw milk cheeses aged over 60 days, for the widely held belief that any harmful bacteria will have perished before that time. But now, in a move that is sure to stir up the age-old French-English tensions, government officials in Quebec have legalized the sale of raw milk cheeses aged fewer than 60 days, citing evidence that says raw milk cheeses produced under proper conditions are no less safe than pasteurized cheeses.
Photograph from mjkmjk on Flickr
Carr Valley Cheese won big at this year's American Cheese Society competition, held in Chicago last weekend. The renowned Wisconsin company, family-owned for more than a hundred years, won Best in Show for their Snow White Goat Cheddar, along with 17 other awards including third runner-up overall. Second place went to Virginia's Meadow Creek Dairy for their incredible washed-rind Grayson, a cheese similar to Taleggio or Livarot.
Down a bit from last year's record-breaking 1,209 entries, this year saw 1,149 cheeses in the competition. Thirty tireless judges tasted each one, evaluating aesthetic criteria (taste, texture and aroma), and technical criteria (how well the cheese is made).
If Van Halen wasn't talkin' 'bout love in their 1978 hit song, maybe they had cheese on the brain? On this plastic container of cheese chunks found by our friend Homesick Texan at a New York market, the band's famous lyrics appear above the barcode. "I've been to the edge, and there I stood and looked down / lost a lot of friends there, baby, I got no time to mess around."
Clearly, the lyrics refer to the edge of the grocery aisle, where they lost their pals after buying feta. The song was known for being very raw; much like this "assorted" pack of uncooked cheese.
One of the most common food themes is stuffing delicious cheese into something else equally delicious (such as filo dough stuffed with feta cheese). These dishes play with texture and flavor in a satisfying way. But whose idea was it to turn this notion on its head and stuff delicious things right into the cheese itself?
The most egregious example here is Sottocenere al Tartufo, an otherwise bland, white cow's milk cheese from Italy, studded with black truffles. Truffles, of course, have an amazing flavor, but why chop them up finely and embed them in an unmemorable cheese?
Beer photograph, Pink_Fish13 on Flickr; cheese photograph, Cwbuecheler on Flickr
There's a little-known secret that's actually not so secret anymore: beer pairs better with cheese than wine does. Sure there are some matches made in heaven with wine and cheese, like Champagne paired with a Triple Crème. But there are also lots of potential pitfalls; try a blue cheese with a big, bold red and you will see what I mean. Beer, on the other hand, is a much more forgiving complement to cheese. People often use similar terms to describe the flavors of both beer and cheese: nutty, caramelly, earthy, and tangy, to name a few. Many beers and cheeses also share a similar origin in the farmhouses and monasteries of medieval Europe.
Whereas your chances of finding a wine and cheese pairing that falls flat is rather high, most pairings of beer and cheese are rather serviceable, and many are sublime. Following are some tips for increasing your chances at beer and cheese pairing success.
Fans of David Rosengarten and cheese, rejoice! Devour.tv, a new website featuring videos on food, drink and other fun things, has posted a series in which David offers a Cheese 101 course on video.
You can learn, for instance, what it means for a cheese to have a washed rind, or why pairing wine with cheese can sometimes be a challenge. You can even catch a whiff of David's cheese-induced madness when you watch him break open way too many bloomy-rind cheeses in search of one that's even the least bit runny.
Like wine, olive oil, and lots of other serious eats, there are so many varieties of cheese in the world that it is often all one can do to find just one that they really like. And despite one's best efforts to branch out and discover new tastes, often the risk of veering off course is too high (especially with the current wave of rising food prices) and we end up sticking with what we know. If you feel like you're in a cheese rut, here are some easy upgrades that will get you going again.
There's Cheddar, the cheese, and Cheddar, the place, but there's also cheddar, the verb, which refers to the back-breaking process of cutting and stacking blocks of curds during manufacture. This process aids in the draining and acidification of the cheese and is what gives cheddar its unique tangy flavor and crumbly texture. A similar process is used to make the delicious English cheese Lincolnshire Poacher, but the latter is fruitier and nuttier than most cheddars, making it a worthy next step if you enjoy Cabot Extra Sharp and the like. More upgrades, after the jump!
Is the IT guy more likely than average to get his fingers caught in the mousetrap? Wired magazine has asked its readers to vote on whether nerds like cheese more than most people. There's no way these results could possibly be objective, considering the magazine's readership, but so far the poll indicates that cheese, with all its enzymes and microbes, is more of a nerd thing. What's your verdict?
Photograph of San Francisco's Cowgirl Creamery from Neeta Lind on Flickr
Supermarkets aren't the best place to buy cheese. For many reasons, cheese requires more individualized attention than most supermarkets can afford. Some cheeses are quite fragile unless stored, handled and presented properly. Other cheeses suffer when the wheel is pre-cut and wrapped long before they're purchased. You will also fare better in a real cheese shop, where a knowledgeable cheese monger can help guide you through the sometimes overwhelming selection to a cheese that well suits your taste, or to the wines and foods you've chosen for your meal.
To this end, below are 10 things every cheese shop should have; if a cheese shop nails these, you're in good hands. What do you look for in a great cheese shop?
Photograph from sabotrax on Flickr
This week is the Jewish holiday of Shavuot, which celebrates the Jews receiving the Torah on Mount Sinai. The holiday is perhaps most famous for its connection with eating dairy foods, a tradition whose origin is usually traced to a line in Exodus (3:17) that refers to Israel as a land "flowing with milk and honey." It is fitting, then, that one of the most prominent dairy foods Jews eat on Shavuot is cheesecake, one of the greatest expressions of the beautiful marriage between sweetness and cream.
Late last week, the FDA announced a voluntary recall of Caseificio Voglie di Latte Burrata (only those packages with an expiration date of May 24, 2008) because of possible contamination by listeria.
This particular brand is available in California from the distributor Fresca Italia, and although the news is certainly not positive, it is nonetheless evidence that burrata, an extraordinarily delicious fresh cheese originally from Southern Italy, is truly beginning to enter mainstream consumption in this country.
Burrata was created as an ingenious way to make use of the small curds left over from the production of fresh mozzarella. These curds are mixed with fresh cream ("burro" is Italian for "butter") and then wrapped in a thin pouch of fresh mozzarella. The pouch is then wrapped in leaves of the Asphodelus ramosus (an herb with leaves similar to leeks).
Roll down this hill and you too may be victorious! Photographs courtesy of cheese-rolling-co.uk
Leave it to the Brits to come up with an annual event as nuts as Cheese-Rolling: every year on the Monday that corresponds with the American holiday of Memorial Day (Spring Bank Holiday in England), dozens of crazy people line up on a steep slope in Gloucestershire, England and propel themselves head-over-heels downhill, chasing after a wheel of cheese. Whoever makes it down the hill first wins. And what is this lucky winner's prize? Cheese!
According to the BBC, which has also published an amazing video of the event, the tradition of chasing after a rolling wheel of hand-made Double Gloucester is centuries old, which just means to me that these folks will never learn.
Ever eat a slice of cheese but stop at the rind, unsure of whether or not it's safe for human consumption? Zoe Brinkley of New York City-based cheese shop Murray's Cheese reassures you that yes, you should try eating the rind ("Do you like it? Then eat more. Do you have wax and shreds of cloth in your teeth? Don't eat that one"), before going on to identify different rinds and why they exist. Look at the Affineur's Concept Map to get a quick glance at cheese taxonomy.
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Photograph by the Seattle Cheese Festival
For all you Seattleites and those from neighboring areas in the Pacific Northwest, the 2008 Seattle Cheese Festival starts tomorrow and runs through Sunday afternoon. Held outdoors every year at the wonderful Pike Place Market, the fourth annual Seattle Cheese Festival is open to the public, has a suggested admission of $1, and represents one of the largest gatherings of cheese aficionados in the country.
On display (and available for sampling) are hundreds of cheeses from around the world, and for the more serious turophiles, there are seminars and panels, cooking demonstrations, a wine garden and a children’s scavenger hunt. (Seminars, panels, and the wine garden have additional admission fees.)
Photograph from iwona kellie on Flickr
Our Quebecois cousins to the North may speak a different language and enjoy the solace of universal health-care, but when it comes to comfort food their North American tendencies peek through in the form of poutine, a fancy word for cheese fries with gravy.
OK, well they're a little more involved than that. The cheese is really a helping of fresh cheese curds, made soft by the heat of the fries, and the gravy is Canadian-style barbecue chicken gravy, which is quite different than traditional American gravy—dark, thick and vinegary. Last weekend the Boston Globe profiled Chez Ashton, a chain of Quebecois fast food restaurants that many consider as serving the best poutine around.
A reader of my blog wrote me recently with an interesting question:
I work at a Whole Foods in SoCal, we are debating which cheese is rightly called the "King of Cheese." My boss says Reggiano. I disagree, but not in whole. Most sites say Stilton is the "King of Cheese," more so than Reggiano (internet search). However, Stilton is called "the King of English Cheeses" at some sites as well. Would this make Reggiano "the King of Italian Cheeses?" Maybe you can point me in some direction to get this debate settled for me, either way.
I have seen each of these cheeses referred to as the King of Cheese, but I have also seen others as well: Comté, Gruyère, Roquefort. Legendary gourmande Brillat-Savarin apparently dubbed Époisses de Bourgogne the "King of Cheese." Truly, there is no end to the number of cheeses we turophiles are willing to elevate to royal status. But which cheese is the real King of Cheese?
Last year, the New York Times reported about the battle in Normandy over how its beloved Camembert could be made. It was a classic David-meets-Goliath tale of cheesy proportions: on one side you had large dairy operations lobbying the French authorities to allow them to call their cheeses Camemberts even if they had been made with pasteurized milk; on the other side you had the small-scale traditional Norman cheesemakers, still making the cheese from raw milk, ladling every scoopful of curd by hand, trying to fight this change to the decades-old A.O.C. legislation.
Well, the Guardian reported this weekend that David was victorious: A.O.C. Camembert must still be made with raw milk.
Don't ask me why, but April is National Grilled Cheese Month, and to celebrate, the Food Network ran Bobby Flay's exciting Grilled Cheese Throwdown this past weekend. Flay took on New Jersey's own Pop Shop in a sandwich battle for the ages.
The Pop Shop, which offers 31 different grilled cheese variations on their menu, put up a good fight with their sandwich called "The Calvert"--jack cheese, roasted turkey, bacon, avocado, and house dressing (balsamic mayo) on foccacia. Flay countered with his delicious-sounding Grilled Brie and Goat Cheese with Bacon and Green Tomato sandwich. In the end, Flay's sandwich won by a hair, with the judges saying it was a tough decision and that there were no losers.
As I tend to like fresh cheese in spherical form, I was instantly drawn to Marianna's homemade labneh, a creamy, fresh, Middle Eastern cheese made from strained yogurt and preserved in olive oil. Follow Marianna's directions to make it at home; it's part of a typical Middle Eastern breakfast!
Previously
Photo of the Day: Mshalalé Cheese
Hard Labor: A Look At Cheesemaking
With the housing market tanking, financial companies imploding, and the dollar weaker than a gin and tonic on the rocks, some are finding it hard to cough up the small fortune required these days to buy even the most basic artisanal cheese plate. Add to that the stress of Uncle Sam breathing down your neck this time of year, and you'll end up deciding to avoid cheese altogether.
After all, cheese can be quite expensive, and is one of those foods whose quality generally increases with the price. Small dairies cannot take advantage of the economies of scale afforded by a large herd, but, all else being equal, a small dairy will usually make a better cheese, since the farmers and cheesemakers are better able to control quality across the entire operation. So what's a turophile to do during these tough times? Get your hands on Vermont's own Grafton Village Cheddar.
As an American kid the phrase "curds and whey" entered my vocabulary at a bizarrely early age, though I had no idea what it meant. If cheese was a slick square-shaped orange sheet wrapped in clear plastic, then curds and whey must certainly have been some strange agrarian relic of a bygone era. So I was really shocked to learn, from Mr. Wizard of all people, that curds and whey was simply a stodgier term for a very normal food: cottage cheese.
I have always been fond of cottage cheese, an admittedly simple food whose milky sweet taste almost plays second billing to its texture: chunky curds bathed in rich, smooth whey. And even though it pains me to admit it, I can say without irony or apology that there aren't too many food pairs better than cottage cheese and cantaloupe. So when this month's Saveur magazine published a recipe for Ayib Be Gomen (Ethiopian Collard Greens and Cottage Cheese), I felt I had to revisit this versatile staple of the supermarket dairy case.
God knows that if I had a 1200-pound block of cheddar cheese lying around, I'd be tempted to carve it into something. And by "something" I mean "a mangled lump," not a detailed replica of the Statue of Liberty—I don't quite have the skill of champion cheese carver Troy Landwehr, who made his cheese statue over the course of four days.
Watch 35 hours of cheese carving condensed into two minutes, after the jump. [via CurdNerds]
Not long ago, the New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission began a program to outfit all yellow cabs with a backseat multifunction TV screen, one that can track the cab's location with GPS, show up-to-the-minute weather reports, and broadcast clips from local news shows. I kind of hate these screens because they make me nauseated (as does reading in cars), but the other day when I happened to see a short clip from ABC news about a local ricotta cheese making operation, I just had to watch.
Cheese from Durrus Farmhouse, Gubbeen House, and Ardagh Castle Cheese.
With a name like Erin, it's hard not to have family in Ireland. Last month, I was on an Aer Lingus flight to County Cork to see the Irish brethren, and along the way stopped at some cheese farmhouses. Most are teeny-tiny, with more sheep and cows than actual humans on property. Hardly any have formal visiting hours, but given the country's push for high-speed broadband net services, most farmers actually have email and are happy to orchestrate mini tours! (Fresh, free samples—what?)
In honor of St. Patrick's Day next week, here's our guide to the best rural cheese farmhouses in County Cork, Ireland.
Despite its status as a tired, dowdy party trick, Fondue remains a seriously delicious way to enjoy cheese. Artisanal Bistro has undoubtedly revived the lost art, offering two regular choices on their menu as well as a fondue of the day, all of which highlight the cheeses themselves in a deeply satisfying way. The classic blend features a mixture of Swiss Alpine cheeses Gruyère, Emmental, and Appenzeller, but this week the Associated Press published a recipe for a low-fat Cheddar and ale fondue that promises to mimic the creamy texture of the real thing using puréed white beans. Curious indeed.
Saturday night I went out to dinner with two friends, one who does not have children and one whose daughter just celebrated her first birthday. The former suggested that I might want to order a certain salad, but the new mother said, “No, she can’t have feta! You can’t eat soft cheese when you’re pregnant.” Sheepishly I thought of the occasional salads with pasteurized feta I had been enjoying at home and asked, “Isn’t it okay if it’s pasteurized?” Granting that her doctor is very conservative, she said she had been told to avoid soft cheeses like feta altogether. The week before at a dinner party, another friend (who is a little farther along in her pregnancy than I am) had mentioned her doctor’s opinion that anything pasteurized was safe.
Understanding what is and is not likely to give me listeriosis has been vexing. There’s a lot of conflicting information out there because there aren’t "safe foods" and "unsafe foods"—just relative levels of risk. My two biggest questions have been, "Can I eat pasteurized soft cheeses? And can I eat raw milk cheeses if they are hard and aged, like Parmigiano Reggiano and Gruyère?" I think I’ve finally worked it out, at least well enough for myself.
Photograph from jslander on Flickr
The humble mac and cheese—that staple of American wholesomeness—is experiencing somewhat of a renaissance as of late. From authoritative recipes to a survey of the 20 best places to get mac and cheese in New York City, to a segment on Good Morning America featuring cheese, bacon, garlic, noodles, Emeril Lagasse, and a well-meaning North Carolinian, everything's coming up cheesy noodles in 2008.
Then again, did the dish ever go out of style? As has been mentioned here before, the New York Times stirred up controversy two years ago by publishing a widely popular recipe that flagrantly snubbed béchamel lovers everywhere. Still, a fundamental question goes unanswered: what are the best cheeses to use for this classic dish?
Photograph from Fresco Tours on Flickr
The ongoing revolution in American artisanal cheesemaking really had its origins in the "back to the land" movement of the 1970s and early 1980s. In 1979, Laura Chenel began teaching people in this country that cheese didn't have to be made from cow's milk. Even before that, in the fall of 1975, Mother Earth News ran this wonderfully detailed story about farmstead goat cheesemakers in Andalusia, Spain—an article that I happened to stumble upon this week thanks to the wonders of the web.
I'm assuming this article was aimed at hippie homesteaders experimenting with "off the grid" communal living, but for us plugged-in 21st-century cheese lovers, it offers an amazing glimpse into some truly regional and traditional foodways.
When I first saw this photo of "mshalalé" cheese on Marianna's blog, Swirl and Scramble, I thought it was a bundle of pasta. Marianna explains that the name of the cheese means braids/braided. The cheese, which is from the Middle East around Lebanon, Syria and Jordan, is usually served drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with nigella seeds. She describes the taste as, "not too strong, slightly stronger in taste then mozzarella, firmer and a bit saltier too."
Is Pacman made out of cheese? John Watson proposes such a possibility.
Well it's only February, and 2008 is already living up to its title as the Year of the Cheese Cave. According to an article in last week's Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Fermo Jaeckle, one of the founders of legendary Wisconsin cheese company Roth Käse, has purchased an underground cave that used to be the site of a huge marijuana-growing operation 40 miles northeast of Nashville. Jaeckle, of course, plans to age some serious cheese down there beginning in 2009.
The cave is more than five football fields long, and at 100 feet below the surface of the earth, with stable temperature and humidity, is a perfect place to age cheese. The property was auctioned off last year, and Jaeckle's winning bid was for $285,000, a price he says is well below what he might've paid for it otherwise.
Literally speaking, tomme is French for "wheel of cheese." Unsurprisingly, this not-so-descriptive term is used to refer to a wide array of cheeses, many of which are of medium size and weight and made in the mountains of the Haute-Savoie in France. Across the border, the Italians make a related cheese that has a similar name: toma. But can we get any more specific? Do tommes share any unique qualities that separate them from other varieties?
Never before had I seen anything so marvelous that involve melted cheese product until the the nacho cheese fountain graced my monitor. DJ Grocery, creator of the mind-blowing General Tso's Philly cheesesteak, couldn't resist the temptation to fill his wife's chocolate fountain machine with cheese. I hear ya, man...I hear ya.
It turns out cheese fountains are acceptable alternatives to chocolate fountains, along with barbecue sauce fountains and egg nog fountains. However, I'd rather believe that the ideas behind these non-chocolate fountains come about because while staring quizzically at the ornamental food display contraption someone thinks, "Well, I'm gonna fill this with [insert questionable liquifiable food product], and no one's going to stop me."
One of the pitfalls of being a curd nerd in New York City is the brutal reality of having to transport your purchases home from your favorite cheese shop via the always crowded, chronically curmudgeonly subway system. Obviously I don't have the luxury of having a cheese shop anywhere near where I live, and since I never leave a cheese shop without at least one real stinker, this is a chronic issue for me. I have cleared out subway cars as if I haven't bathed for weeks. But I like my cheeses as stinky as they come, and I'm not going to let a little social awkwardness deter me from perfection.
The Super Bowl only comes around once a year, and you've otherwise been doing really well sticking to your New Year's resolution to eat healthier, so why not go a little crazy and make a killer blue cheese dip for your Super Bowl party? The key, of course, is choosing the right blue cheese.
Zoe, the affable affineur at New York's Murray's Cheese, helped me narrow down the selection to a few great contenders. I tested three very different blues with the same base, and it may be surprising but your choice of cheese really does matter.
In their latest newsletter, New York's famed Murray's Cheese has boldly dubbed 2008 the "Year of the Cave." In addition to their regular selection of cheese education classes, they have begun offering tours of their five aging caves to the general public. What a great chance to see some of the skill and magic that go into the practice of affinage, or cheese-aging, from some of the country's most renowned affineurs.
I'm not much a fan of winter in New York. The farmers' market in Union Square is all but shuttered, the weather tends more toward wintry mix than winter wonderland, and night falls even before the local news has kicked off. But there's one thing I look forward to every winter, something that's only available when the temperature drops below 60. I'm speaking of course of Vacherin Mont d'Or, also known as Vacherin du Haut Doubs—a pungently delicious washed-rind cow's milk cheese from the Jura mountains of Switzerland and France.
Michael Claypool and Sasha Davies started Cheese By Hand way back in the spring of 2006 with the mission of visiting American cheesemakers large and small and conducting audio interviews with them about "their craft and their lives." Over the course of that summer they took a cross-country trip starting in Vermont, posting a ton of blog entries and some rough audio files about such esteemed American cheesemakers as Rogue Creamery in Oregon and Crave Brothers in Wisconsin. Yesterday they posted the first completed interview, a conversation with Mateo Kehler of Jasper Hill Farm in Vermont.
A couple weeks back, on a blustery morning at the Union Square Greenmarket, I had a very interesting conversation with Karen Weinberg of 3-Corner Field Farm. A small dairy sheep farm on New York's border with Vermont, 3-Corner Field produces outstanding farmstead sheep's milk cheeses and yogurts. If you can get your hands on their luscious, showstopping bloomy-rind cheese called Shushan Snow, you will not be disappointed.
On this particular Wednesday, Weinberg was also selling a couple of aged Pyrénées-style cheeses, one of which was perfectly smoked by the Monks of New Skete. As we stood teeth-chattering among her hanging sheepskins, the topic of vegetarian cheese came up, and I discovered that Weinberg has some really interesting, if contrarian, ideas about the subject.
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