The hunt was on for cheese! Any cheese, please!

Rummaging, I was, through the refrigerator searching for cheese; any cheese! I couldn’t find a single morsel. Nothing behind the half-full bottle of Sun Luck oyster sauce, nothing behind the mayo, nothing under the celery or the bok choy, nothing on the other side of the box of butter.

My anticipation was rapidly fading.

Wait! What’s that? I recognize that wrapping! Quel Fromage! What, oh what had I pushed all the way to the back of the top shelf and forgotten? More importantly, was it still edible or had it become just another moldy science project?

Lordy! Lordy! A wee bit of cave-aged Gruyère! Thanks be to the good god of all that is cheese!

I remember having used most of the originally purchased wedge in a 3-cheese sauce for macaroni, but with a shy ¼-cup of Gruyère left, there wasn’t enough for a sauce.

Gruyère is one of the firm raw cow’s milk cheeses of Switzerland that crumbles readily, but is well known for its superb melting capability. It’s the basis for any good Swiss fondue, and is preferred for au gratin onion soups. But I didn’t have enough for such.

The only recourse was to simply open my mouth and savor and enjoy each sliver and crumble. And enjoy it I did!

Because of the aging in a cave for at least 6 to 13 months to, in some cases, 3 years, and the process of washing the wheels of cheese, the taste of this Swiss cheese is more intense, more complex than some other Swiss cheeses. And especially more flavorful than most Swiss cheeses bricks and slices found in the supermarket.

I felt it stood on its own merit by eating it, rather than including it in a sauce—it was delicious! I love the words used by Sam Gugino, in the September 2008 issue of Wine Spectator magazine: “…a rich mouthfeel and a long finish.”

I didn’t eat it with crackers or apple slices because the taste was ever so slightly salty with a hint of sharp, and musty, and a complexity because of the aging, that I didn’t want to be distracted by any other taste.

In The Cheese Plate, authors McCalman and Gibbons say, “… one of the best things about Gruyère is that it’s salty on the attack but not on the finish.” I totally agree!

I did learn that a very good American Gruyère is made by the Swiss family, Wisconsin-based company Roth Kase.

Amazing the taste power in that slightly less than ¼-cup of Gruyère.

2010 Seattle Cheese Festival

Photo credit: Nataworry Photography

Should have hyped this earlier, and now that it’s almost over I feel a little sheepish even mentioning it. Nonetheless, I felt moved to bring it to your attention in case you wanted to put it on next year’s calendar of things to do.

Pike Place Market, Seattle’s destination farmers market, is once again the venue for Seattle Cheese Festival, May 15 and 16, 2010. This is the annual go-to place for cheese foodies and general folk alike to taste, learn more about, and enjoy artisanal cheese locally made, and from around the globe!

Wander along the cheese concourse sampling dozens of cheeses. It’s an excellent opportunity to taste cheeses you may have never tried before and not have to buy a whole wheel or wedge of it from your cheesemonger or cheese retailer just to see if you like it. A treasure trove of experts are on hand to learn from and to broaden your cheese palate.

This is a marvelous opportunity, too, to buy these lovely cheeses directly from the producers who have taken time away from their milking and separating curds and whey to be on hand to meet you and tell you about their pride and joy!

I’ve wanted to attend this hoopla for years, but work demands have always kept me from joining in on the celebration.

If you were one of the lucky ones to have attended this year, I invite you to share your experience with me, and I’ll include your comments and/or photographs here on my blog, or send me links to your write-ups about the Seattle Cheese Festival and I'll include links directly to your commentary.

There are several dairies and creameries from my neck o’ the woods presently represented down in Seattle right now! Let me know how it went for you!

If you want to find out more about this festival or want to attend next year, view http://seattlecheesefestival.com/ for details.

2010 Cheese Concourse participants:

Agour

Amaltheia Organic Dairy

Ambrosi

Arla

Beemster Cheese

Black Sheep Creamery

Cellars at Jasper Hill

Champignon North America, Inc. (Cambozola)

Cheeseland Inc.

Chevre Noir

Coach Farm

Culture Magazine

Cypress Grove Chevre

DPI Specialty Foods

Emmi

Estrella Family Creamery

Faribault Dairy Company

Ford Farms

Interval

Isigny

Jana Foods

Kauzlarich Smoked Products

KH De Jong

La Buchette

Laura Chenel's Chèvre

Le Pommier

Macrina Bakery & Café

Maximilien Restaurant

Mozzarella Fresca

Mt. Townsend Creamery

Norseland

Organic Valley

Papillon

Partners Crackers

Peterson Company

Pike Place Market PDA

Ritrovo Italian Regional Foods

Roth Kase

Samish Bay Cheese

Sartori Foods

Saxon Creamery

Seattle Weekly

Serve et Belle

Sierra Nevada Cheese

Silver Springs Creamery

Specialties

Terre Des Volcans

The New York Times

Tournevent

WSU Creamery

Willamette Valley Cheese

Willapa Hills Farmstead Cheese

Willis Marketing

Yancey's Fancy

Let’s all try to make it to this event next year, shall we?

Postscript
It’s a silliness on my part, but I've been told to go to Montana, a place I’ve never been before and really had little motivation to consider. Admittedly times and motivations change. But, Montana?

In putting together this entry about the Seattle Cheese Festival, I clicked randomly—was it really random—on the link of one of the participants at the Festival—Amaltheia Organic Dairy—only to find that it’s a goat cheese dairy in MONTANA! I love goat cheese!

Maybe I need to take a roadtrip to Montana, and learn a wee bit more about Melvyn’s and Sue’s operation in Belgrade, just outside of Bozeman.

Oops! Major faux pas!

In my last entry I went on and on about this wonderful cheese blogger I came across. I mean, I waxed to the max ...

However, I totally did a switcheroo on the name of Jeanne's blog. I've corrected it on my previous entry, but wanted to bring my error to the fore, just to make certain you get to the right blog!

Please visit Jeanne Carpenter's blog Cheese Underground! You'll correctly find her at http://www.cheeseunderground.blogspot.com/. It will be worth the effort!

My apology, Jeanne!

"Cheese is food, not a status symbol."

Since this interest in cheese has come over me, I’ve been following and learning from various cheese blogs. One that I particularly enjoy is Cheese Underground, written by Jeanne Carpenter in Madison, Wisconsin. She blogs mostly about up and coming artisan cheesemakers in Wisconsin, but she travels around to the many competitions and artisan cheese events nationwide and then reports on the latest.

Back in January, she wrote about a book she had just finished reading. I’ve included her entire blog entry here. On the basis of her recommendation, I went to Village Books in Fairhaven and purchased a copy. I have to agree 100% with Jeanne’s assessment! I found it to be so much more than just a book about artisan cheese and a cheesemonger.

The reason I’m bringing this up now is that Village Books, co-sponsored by Bellingham’s Community Food Co-op, is scheduled to have Gordon Edgar, the cheesemonger himself, at Village Books at 7:00 pm on Monday, May 17, 2010. I’ll be there just to see and hear this good fellow in person.

Here is what Jeanne wrote about Gordon in The Antithesis of a Cheese Snob, posted 18 Jan 2010 to Cheese Underground:

“’Cheese is food, not a status symbol.’

And with that simple sentence, Gordon Edgar won me over in his new book, ‘Cheesemonger, A Life on the Wedge’ (Chelsea Green Publishing, January 2010, $17.95). As the cheese buyer for Rainbow Grocery Cooperative in San Francisco, Gordon was a cheesemonger before cheesemongering was cool. He's the Barbara Mandrel of the cheese counter.

Fifteen years ago, this former punk rocker bluffed his way into being hired at Rainbow by proclaiming his favorite cheese was ‘anything raw and rennetless.’ Today, he's considered to be one of the hippest, most knowledgeable cheese buyers in the country.

I bought and sped read his book last week as a writing assignment for a magazine and have to admit I was not looking forward to it, as I've really started dreading reading cheese books. Most of the cheese guides hitting the book stores these days are full of pretentious verbiage written by people who assume that by reputation alone, they are THE authority on cheese.

Not Gordon. While several parts of his book caught me off guard - as in spew coffee through my nose surprised - the preface alone was enduring. Here's how Gordon starts:

‘There are plenty of great cheese guidebooks out there. This is not one of them.’ Alrighty then. Well, Cheese Underground readers, I guarantee that by the end of Gordon's book, you'll disagree. While ‘Cheesemonger is billed as the story of one guy's memoir of his journey into the cheese business, it's also an inspiring, introspective read for people like me who have always struggled with being cool enough to fit into the hip cheese crowd.

Not that I really fit into any hip crowd - evidenced by the episode this morning at the doctor's office with my daughter. After speed reading Gordon's book for the assignment last week, this week I've been carrying it with me everywhere, taking my time, re-reading it word for word and highlighting passages that especially speak to me. My daughter, who is almost always embarrassed by the fact that she has a mother who eats and writes about cheese for a living, was literally mortified when I pulled the book out of my bag and started talking it up to a complete stranger this morning who, like us, was waiting for his throat culture results (strep throat is making the rounds). Avery immediately ditched me and sprinted across the room, not wanting to be seen sitting with the resident cheese geek.

But now, thanks to Gordon, I fully and whole-heartedly am embracing my inner cheese geekness. I am proud to join Gordon as a fearless leader of non-snobs o' cheese everywhere, keeping in mind that ‘in the end, the cheese always does the talking.’

Amazing cheese doesn't need people like me describing it as a frou frou piece of art. It also doesn't need pretentious authors talking up its "artisan" characteristics or its ‘terroir.’ One of my favorite parts of Gordon's book is actually the ‘Cheese Buying for Beginners’ appendix, with helpful hints such as to spend your money on real Parmigiano Reggiano. He states: ‘Some Reggianos are better than others, but all are top quality. For the sake of Sweet Cheesus, don't buy it pre-grated unless you doing a large event.’

Gordon reminds the reader that after all, cheese is just food. Eat it. Enjoy it. Don't be afraid of it, and don't let other people tell you what you like or dislike. And by all means, ‘buy the cheese that makes you happy.’ Well said.”

And with that well said by Gordon and Jeanne, if you’re in the area, I encourage you to go see Gordon Edgar at Village Books on Monday, May 17th! I’ll definitely be there and look forward to seeing a full house of cheese geeks!

Village Books, 1200 Eleventh Street, Bellingham WA 98225
(360) 671-2626
http://www.villagebooks.com/

Jeanne Carpenter, author of Cheese Underground
http://www.cheeseunderground.blogspot.com/

"Gordon Edgar, Cheesemonger: A Life on the Wedge"
$17.95 ISBN-13: 9781603582377
Chelsea Green, Publishing Company

Thank Goodness for Mommy!

Mother’s Day advertising is blossoming all over the television, the newspapers, magazines, walking through the mall, et cetera, as the countdown to May 9th continues. Remember good ol’ Mom! May comes along and we inevitably think of mothers and Mother’s Day, yes?

It struck me, as I was eating some fresh goat chevre, that I wouldn’t be enjoying that delectable treat if it weren’t for a mother, or lots of mothers; goat mothers, sheep mothers, cow mothers, buffalo mothers.

Bless those mothers!

I enjoy this time of the year when babies are being born; they are so adorable. Who isn't emotionally moved by cuddly young babies? I love, too, that milk is starting to flow and cheeses are being created. Some cheeses are enjoyed fresh, others need to age before they’re at the point of enjoyability—is there such a term?

As I talk with folks throughout my day-to-day activities, there sometimes seems still to be a disconnect about how food is made before it is delivered to our supermarkets and placed on the market shelf or in the refrigerated cooler. Not only are some children clueless about where milk and cheese come from—or French fries, bread, or hot dogs, or catsup and mustard—but some adults also aren’t cognizant that the “mother” has to be lactating in order for there to be milk, and therefore, cheese.

Cow’s milk is a major industry here in the United States and the availability is managed so that cow's milk is combined from many different sources so that it’s in the store refrigerator year around.

But, if you’re an artisan creamery, and you have a finite number of cows, or sheep, or goats, then the lactation cycle is much more obvious; some cheeses are only available during a specific time of the year.

Although some artisan cheese dairies and creameries practice extended lactation management, the following appear to be the norm:

Ewe (sheep) lactation

is about 180 days.
Doe (goat) lactation

is about 300 days
Cow lactation

is about 305 days

I’m not sophisticated enough to understand the animal husbandry whys and wherefores, but I know that during certain months I can’t get some of the cheeses I enjoy. However, that makes those cheeses that more appealing and cherished when they are available at my cheesemonger’s counter!

Therefore, I want to applaud mothers everywhere and in every realm!

Happy Mother’s Day!

Postscript

On Fox News a few weeks ago, there was a mention of a NY restaurant owner, Daniel Angerer, who made cheese from his fiancee’s milk. Public reactions were mixed, which seems a little silly to me. If I had been interested in artisan cheese when I was lactating with my two sons, I think I would have been curious enough to try to make some cheese from my own milk.

Does it creep you out that patrons were eating cheese made from human mommy’s milk?

All the Irish angels were smiling upon me ...

I’m a little behind the times, so bear with me as I catch up with some cheese experiences I’ve had this spring.

St. Patrick's Day … you’re right, that was March 17th, over a month and a half ago. At the time I was swamped with too many other distractions to even think of green … or partying … or cheese … or even about writing a blog entry. But the day after I had time to think, and I wondered what kind of Irish cheese I could have set out on a festive platter.

On March 18th, I was in Fairhaven on business, so while there I headed to Quel Fromage to see what lovelies Rachel had in her cheese emporium. She kidded me about being a day late, but good cheese is good cheese. And an excellent Irish cheese is exactly what I found.

Whiskey Cheddar from County Limerick (I ought to have a limerick to go with this. There was a man from Nantucket, who … Oh dear, can’t share that one!) Rachel cut a sample taste and I was sold! It was so yummy!

Dave and Marion Cahill, of Cahill Farm, create this one. They’ve been offering cheese since the early 1980s in County Limerick, Ireland, and Marion makes flavored cheddars from vintage Limerick recipes. Some of their creations aren’t available in the United States, but we’re lucky to be able to purchase their Kilbeggan single-malt Irish Whiskey infused cheddar here.

Their semi-hard cheese is made from pasteurized Friesian cow’s milk, and Marion uses vegetable rennet to separate the curds and whey, making Cahill’s a vegetarian choice. They also make their farmstead cheddar with Irish Porter they brew themselves (like Guinness Stout) and another cheddar flavored with elderberry wine.

I am interested in why people decide to make cheese. The typical thought is that the skill has been honed through generations of farmers and cheesemakers, and sometimes that is the case. However, Marion Cahill was once a bank clerk, but decided to become a cheesemaker in 1966 when she and Dave married. Years later and with the help of a small dedicated staff, they are an established gourmet cheese legend!

How does it taste? Faith & Begorra!!!! It is wonderfully mellow and a little tangy, but not sharp, and there’s also a delightful “breath” to it, I suppose because of the whiskey infusion. The alcohol disappears during the aging process, but a pleasant residual complexity remains. Delightful!

Somewhere I read that a traditional country ploughman’s lunch consisted of cheddar and pickles. There is a Country Ploughman’s served at The Honor Oak in London that consists of honey roast ham, Dorset cheddar, pickles, Braeburn apple and bread. Sounds great to me!

One cool service that I appreciate at Quel Fromage is that on their sales receipt is a little history of the cheese you’re buying, the price, suggested beverage pairings and what to serve with the cheese.

Quel Fromage suggested serving this cheese with pickles and sweet onions, and with whiskey, pale ale, Riesling, or Gewurztraminer.

I tried it with a bread-n-butter type of pickle I had in the frig and sweet onions. It was okay. I also ate it with braeburn apple slices, which was excellent, and I used some of it, with 2 other cheeses, in a mac-n-cheese, washed down with some Riesling, that was marvelous!

There’s also a Kerrygold Aged Cheddar with Irish Whiskey, that has a similar robust flavor, with distinctive undertones of smooth, nutty taste. There could be others that I’m just not aware of. If interested, check out the selections and taste for yourself how they differ in taste slightly or greatly!

I may have been a day late for St. Patrick’s Day 2010, but I can now enjoy a wee bit o’ the Irish any ol’ time I want throughout the year!

I hope you’ll enjoy this Whiskey Cheddar from County Limerick, too!

PS I just read on Wikipedia that the shortest St Patrick's Day parade in the world takes place in Dripsey, Cork. The parade lasts just 100 yards and travels between the village's two pubs.

It's a matter of personal preference ...

Yesterday I went into our little beach market on the corner and handed the cashier a couple of heads of garlic I wanted to buy. As she rang up the purchase, she said she had never used fresh garlic; she just sprinkled on what she wanted from a little jar of dried garlic powder. I told her how simple it is to use garlic cloves and how it makes whatever one is cooking so much tastier. She said she would have to try it one of these days. I knew she was just being polite and I didn’t belabor the issue … to each their own …

But, the conversation got me to thinking about the Parmesan article I just uploaded and the vast taste difference between Kraft grated Parmesan and grating my own imported Parmesan.

Cooking with the freshest ingredients results in better tasting food. It may take a little more time and it may cost a little more for your groceries, but it’s better for you and tastes better--a good value in my estimation!

Speaking of good tastin’ stuff, try out this appetizer recipe that combines Parmesan AND garlic:

Hot Garlic-Parmesan Soufflé

15 cloves garlic peeled

2 cups low-sodium chicken broth or stock

2 (8-ounce) packages cream cheese, room temperature

(Dare I suggest substituting Mascarpone—Italian style cream cheese—for cream cheese??? It IS more $$$ Maybe we’ll save Mascarpone for another day. Or, perhaps you have a local creamery that makes its own cream cheese! Yay!)

1 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese

1 (10.5-ounce) can cream of low-sodium mushroom soup, undiluted

2 egg yolks, beaten

1 loaf baguette bread, thinly sliced.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

In a medium saucepan over medium-high heat, combine garlic cloves and chicken broth; bring to a boil and poach 15 minutes or until garlic is soft. Remove garlic cloves to a small bowl and allow them to cool. When cool, mash with a fork; set aside.

Cook and reduce chicken broth to a glaze; remove from heat and set aside.

In a large bowl, combine cream cheese, Parmesan cheese, mushroom soup, garlic-chicken glaze, mashed garlic, and egg yolks; stir until well blended. Transfer into a shallow ungreased 1 1/2-quart soufflé dish.

Bake, uncovered, 45 to 50 minutes or until golden brown. Remove from oven and serve with bread.

Serves many!

Enjoy!

PS ... of course you could go the extra kilometer, and make your own chicken broth with less sodium, and your own mushroom soup without all the preservatives, and use those in the above recipe. Wouldn't it be fun to see how much it actually DOES taste better making your own than using canned broth/soup?

Isn't it wonderful to have a choice?