August Cheese Round-Up

At the American Cheese Society, earlier this month

August was a good month for cheese, from recipes to reports on the American Cheese Society (ACS) conference in Montreal. Greatly inspired by these, I submit to you my dairy montage from the blogosphere. If I missed any choice posts, drop me a line. 

Here's what August looked like on the cheese web:

Cookbookman examined the canned cheese, Cougar Gold.
Kevin over at Closet Cooking waxed poetic about blue cheese guacamole.
Maddie, a lit lovin' cheesemongeress at Artisanal, launched a cheese and poetry web.      Alexandra Cooks concocted homemade ricotta pizza.
AskChefDennis rocked the squash blossom with zucchini blossom cannoli.
Janet Fletcher's column in The San Francisco Chronicle plugged new cheesemakers.     
The grrls at Cheese and Champagne offered an all-American goat cheese round-up.
Cheese Underground highlighted new WI cheeses.
At the sandwich blog, Grilled Cheese Social, MacKenzie fried a Bee Sting.
In Montreal, Gordonzola captured cheese graffiti.
And in case you missed it, cheesemonger Anne Saxelby made The New York Times.
Off the cutting board, a cool new organization formed, Bloggers Without Borders.

A Hurricane Cheese Party

When you face blowing away, you want to be among friends. And so, last night, we invited the neighbors over for cheese in the face of Hurricane Irene. 

Just the day before, we’d driven out to Chester County, Monsieur Fromage and I, and we’d picked up some extraordinary wedges, so our larder was stocked with Sue Miller’s entire line of Birchrun Hills Farm cheeses. I couldn’t stand the thought of losing them all if the power went out and the fridge went dark.

Luckily, my neighbors dig the funk. Here’s how the storm of cheese and Irene went down.

6:30 p.m. The rain hits.

7:00 p.m. Madame Fromage sets the table.

7:30 p.m. Cheese lovers dash across the street for nourishment.

8:00 p.m. There is windswept salad, plenty of beer.

9:00 p.m. Our very own “storm catcher” receives texts on her Bad News Blackberry 

10:00 p.m. Loved ones ring. There are phonecalls in the foyer.

Midnight: I'm still thinking about Little Chardy, Sue's great Brie. 

4:00 a.m. The chimney falls in. The ceiling snaps.

10 a.m. I’m blogging, feeling lucky to have a roof and good friends, but I'm also wondering about the cows I met at Sue's farm two days ago, like Little Chardy (below), the namesake cow who inspired the great Brie we all consumed at the height of the storm. Little Chardy, you still there?

New Pairings for Parmigiano

My post for Di Bruno Bros. this week is all about pairing Parmigiano. Until I was introduced to the authentic stuff -- the kind with tiny crystals and a gargantuan flavor spectrum -- I never found Parm that interesting. Click over to the Di Bruno blog to check out the 12 Parm pairings I put together. You'll never think of Parm as a "grating cheese" once you try some of these. 

Also, if you're curious about what's happening in the world of raw-milk legislation, listen to the program that Peter Crimmins put together for NewsWorks on WHYY in Philadelphia. Peter interviewed Al Renzi of Yellow Springs Farm, Emilio Mignucci of Di Bruno Bros., and yours truly. 

For the story, Peter actually came over to my house to sample two kinds of cheddar with me -- one pasteurized, the other unpasteurized. I chose two local cheddars (PA Noble and LeRaysville XXXX Sharp) that were aged approximately the same amount of time. Fascinating. You can hear his response here.

    

Fall Cheese Pairings: A Class at Wedge & Fig

Dreaming of fall? Join me for an evening of autumn flavors at Wedge+Fig, where Marisa McClellan (foodinjars.com) and I will teach you the pleasures of pairing cheese with homemade jam, pickles, and chutney, along with local brews.

This is a great Cheese 101 for anyone interested in developing a palate, and if you’re a home canner you’ll leave with recipes you can use for parties and gift giving. Make a night of mixing and matching with six styles of cheese and plenty of accompaniments. We look forward to seeing you!

Autumn Pairings Class: Cheese, Beer & Homemade Preserves

Instructors: Marisa McClellan of Foodinjars.com &

Tenaya Darlington, a.k.a Madame Fromage  

Sunday, September 18

4-6 p.m., Wedge+Fig

160 N. 3rd St., Old City, Philadelphia

$65, limit 15 participants

For tickets, please visit Eventbrite.

The staff at Wedge+Fig

On Keeping A Cheese Notebook

“It all comes back,” writes Joan Didion in her famous essay on the subject of writer’s notebooks. Now that summer is slippering away, I find myself flipping through pages of cheese notes on rainy afternoons. It's true. It does all come back.

For almost three years now, I have recorded every nibble, every recommendation overheard at the cheese counter, along with lists of cheeses to try. Bad Axe. Gamonedo. (I have yet to find either.) But I will tell you this: it’s a pleasure to go back in time and relive first impressions – the first bite of Moses Sleeper, the first whiff of Comte: like nutty brown sugar – gorgeous, perfect, no ragged edge.

So now that I am 3 dog-eared notebooks deep, allow me to nudge you, Lover of Cheeses, Dreamer of the Golden Dream. When you shop for school supplies, pick up a small notebook to carry in your sock or back pocket. Why?

You can write down all your cheese desires. Then, when you go to the store and you can’t for-the-life-of-you recall whether you ate Boursin or Burrata at your cousin’s bat mitzvah, you’ll only have to flip open your little Bible.

You can scribble notes at the cheese counter. Cheese counters should have scratch paper. The mongers always have great tips for pairings and sometimes tell scandalous stories that are worth recording for later histrionics. Won’t you be a clever fly on the wall with your new Moleskine?

You will develop a glittering palate. Cheese can seem daunting, but if you begin to describe flavors on paper you’ll begin to recognize certain qualities that reappear – like grassiness or peanutty tastes. Soon, you’ll see that these flavors are distinct to certain cheese styles.

You can read aloud from your cheese notebook at poetry readings. Let me give you an example: Tuma Di Fobello, smells meat lockery and ripe. Looks vaguely leopard print. A real fly magnet.

You’ll make fabulous friends. A cheese notebook leads to tastings. Tastings lead to cheese parties. Cheese parties draw Europeans. Europeans bring great cheese, and the beastly cycle continues.

Best of all, you can tell others that you are writing a memoir. Some people need a farm in Africa. Others need sad divorces in order to eat, pray, love. A good cheese is all the journey you need. Let’s remember that. Say it after me. Now write it down. 

Peach Bruschetta with Mascarpone

My go-to summer appetizer has become a singular obsession. It’s simple: Mascarpone, speck, and sliced peaches. Put this on toasted baguette rounds, and you’ve created the last rays of summer.

Each time I make these for a party, I tweak them a little. I add a few cranks of  pepper or some tiny nodes of flowering basil. The minute I set them on a table, they vanish and itty bitty taste-gasms ensue.

The key is good Mascarpone. I’ve experimented with different brands and I have to say that, although it’s cheeky expensive (as much as $8.99 for a wee tub), the BelGioiosi brand boots the Whole Foods brand ($2.99). The latter is silken but virtually tasteless, whereas BelGioioso is sweetly milky.

If you’ve never tried Mascarpone, prepare to wallow. It’s like Nutella’s blonde cousin – you’ll want to slather it on bread and then fall, panting, onto the couch. It’s great with jam, and it’s got half the calories of butter – as if you care.

If you’ve never met speck (pronounced shpeck), you’re really in for a breathless moment. Imagine Prosciutto’s suave brother – a slightly smoky character from the Alto Adige region of northern Italy. It’s less salty and more nuanced than Prosciutto.

Enough naughty talk. Go to the store. If you have leftover Mascarpone, you might want to make anchovy toasts. They're my favorite thing to make on New Years Eve with Champagne.

Peach Bruschetta with Mascarpone and Speck

Mascarpone

Speck (about ¼ lb)

2 peaches

1 baguette

Olive oil for drizzling

White or black pepper

Fresh basil

1.    Preheat oven to 375.

2.    Thinly slice baguette into rounds and drizzle with olive oil. Bake on a cookie sheet until brown, flipping once.

3.   While baguette rounds cool, slice peaches and toss with a little olive oil and a few cranks of pepper – this will keep them from drying out.

4.   Shmear baguette rounds with Mascarpone. Add a layer of speck, a peach slice, and top with chopped fresh basil.

Wedge and Fig

I am not the sort of person who can walk by a cheese shop without going in. That’s what led me through a red door to discover the perfect sandwich: Quickes Cheddar, Marmite, avocado, and watercress pressed into a crusty baguette.

At Wedge and Fig, a new cheese shop and cafe in Philadelphia's Old City, this is called The Ex-Pat. It could also be called The Diary of Mary Quicke, after the British cheesemaker who makes this gorgeous clothbound cheese on her family's 450-year-old farm and blogs about it.

At Wedge and Fig, the cheese sandwich has been redazzled. Consider The Blue Fig, a shmear of Fourme D’Ambert with fig spread and prosciutto on pretzel bread.

Then there’s The Betty Draper – truffled egg salad (no cheese) and coins of thinly shaved cuke, served with a side of candy cigarettes.

Wedge and Fig impresses me as the sort of shop that mixes all the right vibes: it’s a little bit Left Bank -- think artists, streams of sunlight, a cafe garden bordered by fire escapes -- and a little bit lipstick. You’re just as likely to see a shop girl carrying a dog in her purse as you are to see a hipster with a drawing tablet.

The staff knows and loves its cheese. The front case keeps clear of deli ruckus – thank gawd – to keep the focus on interesting beauties: from gooey Pont l'Eveque to my favorite toasty Gouda, Old Amsterdam. A wildly large wedge of Quickes Cheddar lives front and center.

To encourage cheese and lounging, the café stays open late on Fridays and Saturdays (until 8 p.m.) to serve custom cheese boards. Bring in a bottle of wine, and you can have a cheese plate made to match. It's served on a slate with chalk-drawn arrows to show you the order in which to eat each selection.

Desserts made by Rebecca Torpie (above, right), formerly of Flying Monkey Bakery, should not be skipped, in particular her tuffet of goat cheesecake topped with caramel. And don't forget to check out the back garden -- down a dark alley just to the left of the shop.