Cheeses of the Field

This is a scene from Friday's tasting at the home of Sue Miller, maker of some of the finest raw milk cheese in Pennsylvania. I've bought Sue's cheese for several years -- her Birchrun Blue and Red Cat are household favorites. Usually, I eat them at my dining room table. What a treat it was to eat at Sue's table, in the meadow behind her pasture.

Her house in Chester County is the kind of place that makes you want to abandon your laptop and curl up with a book on her porch. Or in the swing across the road.

I wanted to do just that, but I had cheese to eat. And candied bacon. Paul Lawler of Fair Food Philly (right) and Sue Miller (left) know how to plan wicked schemes.

Plus, Jean Broillet IV was on the scene, pouring something called Blood Root.

It was a great pairing, alongside Sue's cheeses. Then someone pulled out a jar of brandied cherries. You know how I have a thing for cherries and blue.

I don't think I have ever been to a more convivial gathering. Or a prettier one. Just before solstice. With Holsteins grazing at sunset. And cheese lovers carrying on like children who have just discovered fireflies.

Many thanks to Sue and her family for so much hard work. For the milking. For the planning. For walking through the mud to make good cheese happen.

Giveaway: Ticket to Birchrun Tasting

I have a thing for Red Cat, a bacony washed-rind made by Sue Miller. I want you to try it. That's why I am offering you, yes you, one free ticket to a Birchrun cheese (and beer) tasting this Friday at her farm in Chester Springs. It starts at 6:30 p.m. You'll have to wend your way there, along beautiful back roads. We'll pet some cows, watch the sun set over the milking barn, listen to cheesemakers and brewers talk shop, and then we'll feast. At least that's my plan.

If you'd like to be my guest, drop me a comment before 8 p.m. tomorrow, Tuesday, June 14, 2011. I'll roll the dice on my living room table and pick a winner. If you don't make the cut, you can still purchase a ticket. They cost $25 and should be reserved in advance. Here are the deets:

Local Cheese+Local Beer Tasting, June 17, 6:30-8

A Night at Birchrun Hills Farm,

2573 Horseshoe Trail, Chester Springs, PA 19425

Enjoy pairings of six local cheeses and beers at Birchrun Hills Farm in Chester County. Birchrun is home to Sue Miller, one of the area's premier raw-milk cheesemakers (Red Cat, Birchrun Blue). We'll taste her cheeses along with libations from Tired Hands Brewery, Victory, and Sly Fox. Sue Miller and Paul Lawler host (along with yours truly). Tickets are $25. To reserve a seat, email birchrunhillsfarm@verizon.net or call Sue Miller at 610-827-1603.

For a glimpse of Sue Miller's last tasting, click here. 

Cheese Heads United

I admit it, I was surprised by the huge turn-out for last Saturday’s cheese cook-off. As much as I love cheese, the thought of preparing 200 stringy bites for strangers didn’t turn me on, so I went to the Philadelphia Cheese Experiment as a spectator, as a sniffer outer and spy. There were 16 contestants – all amateur chefs – and within an hour, the venue was jammed.

“We’re trying to create a curated food party,” Nick Suarez, one of the organizers, told me. Nick comes with a row of cook-off trophies to his name; he won “Best Dog in Show” at the 2009 Great Hotdog Cookoff and went on to drop his day job at Wine Spectator to become a professional organizer. Of cook-offs.

“In Brooklyn, there’s a whole cook-off community,” he told me, appraising the Philadelphia crowd with a smile. “I always say winning is fifty percent logistics and fifty percent seasoning.”

Word. The best nosh I tried was a subtle but surprising bacon-goat-cheese-ball dipped in dark chocolate and rolled in graham crackers. The Smorgasm. It didn’t win any prizes, but it was a great example of balance and invention: faintly salty and tangy with contrasting textures. Hats off to Dave Glowka and Baylen Linnekin (below) for that.

I’ve posted more shots below but first, here are a couple more opportunities for cheese and camaraderie:

Meet the Cheesemaker, Friday, June 17, 4-6 p.m.

A State-wide Happy Hour

Cheesemakers across the state will throw open their barn doors for tours and tastings on Friday, June 17. A map of the farms can be found here. Participating cheesemakers include Birchrun Hills Farm, Yellow Springs Farm, Doe Run Farm, Stoudt’s Wonderful Good Market, Dove Song Dairy, Calkins Creamery, Dean Farms, Keswick Creamery, Clover Creek Cheese Cellar and Pipe Dreams Fromage. Note: I'll be hanging out with Sue Miller at Birchrun Hills Farm, then attending her tasting (see below).

Local Cheese+Local Beer Tasting, June 17, 6:30-8

A Night at Birchrun Hills Farm

Enjoy pairings of six local cheeses and beers at Birchrun Hills Farm in Chester County. Birchrun is home to Sue Miller, one of the area's premier raw-milk cheesemakers (Red Cat, Birchrun Blue). We'll taste her cheeses along with libations from Tired Hands Brewery, Victory, and Sly Fox. Sue Miller and Paul Lawler host (along with yours truly). Tickets are $25. To reserve a seat, email birchrunhillsfarm@verizon.net or call Sue Miller at 610-827-1603.

Fair Food Farm Tour, June 26, 9 a.m.-4 p.m.

A Field Trip to Two Cheesemakers

Hop in a van with Paul Lawler of the Fair Food Farmstand and drive out to bucolic Chester County to visit two star cheesemakers, Sue Miller of Birchrun Hills and Kristian Holbrook of Doe Run Dairy. Holbrook makes that luscious Hummingbird robiola I wrote about last month. This day-long tour includes transportation and lunch for $40. Reading Terminal Market is the pick-up and drop-off point. Tickets are available at eventbrite.

Di Bruno's Fermentation Dinner

I hope you have already eaten. If not, pull up a chair. Grab a napkin. You just might drool. This is the story of a fermentation dinner in celebration of two Philadelphia-area food artisans -- a cheesemaking pioneer named Sue, and a brewer savant named Jean. I want you to meet them.

Sue Miller, a.k.a. Lady Birchrun, makes some of the tastiest washed-rind cheese in the hills of nearby Chester County. She uses raw milk and salt brine to produce two fine specimen, Fat Cat and Red Cat. The first is bacony, the latter mushroomy. If you taste them, you will purr.

Jean Broillet IV is not the king of a small country, but he could be. He is a twenty-something saison superstar who started brewing beer as a high-schooler in his parents' garage (you know how those rural science projects get started). Brewer Broillet put himself through college by working at Weyerbacher and Iron Hill. Now, he plans to open his own brew cafe, Tired Hands, in the 'burb of Ardmore. Beer geeks, revv your engines.

Together, Miller and Broillet have made fermentation magic by washing Red Cat cheese with Tired Hands beer to create a lucky little star they call "Proto-Cat" -- soon to be christened "Tired Cat." Cat lovers, you may start yourrr motors.

Here's what happened when Chef Rob Sidor of Di Bruno's catering department decided to create a special pairing using local ingredients involved in this fermentation project. Hint: it involves crumbs of calf tongue.

You're looking at a wedge of Tired Cat with fried tomatillo ice cream, rolled in calf tongue crumbs and malt. Jean Broillet served this course with a glass of Vulpine, a "super saison" with hints of cedar, lemon, coconut, vanilla, and honey. I nearly wept. This might be the best saison and the best/weirdest/wildest cheese pairing I have ever eaten.

See aren't you glad I told you to get a napkin?

I love when cheese sparks creativity. I'm not talking about the invention of the Cheez-It. I'm talking about collaborations and pairings that make people experience flavors and textures that have never existed before. Here's another one. Ready?

You're looking at fava bean gazpacho, served with a raw clam and crumbled Birchrun Blue Cheese. "I like to subvert people's expecations," Chef Rob told me. "Most people expect blue cheese as a final course. That's why I served it first."

Chef Rob served the gazpacho in wee tuna cans -- they looked a little bit like, uhm, cat food cans, but then...this was a Fat Cat dinner, right?

For dessert: home-spun marshmallows made with D-2 syrup (it's used in brewing), alongside graham cakes, apple, and Equinox. The latter is Sue Miller's most approachable cheese, a baby Gruyere with a nutty halo.

Oh, Philadelphia, oh people of Pennsylavania, we are lucky to have so much culinary talent in our midst. Look for Birchun cheeses at local farmers' markets. Prepare yourself for a new microbrew king. Ready yourself the next time cheesemonger Rich Morillo brainstorms a pairing dinner.

This kind of culinary skill and appreciation for the land -- its plants and animals -- are rare. Chef Rob Sidor deserves a standing ovation. Thanks to everyone for a wonderful evening. May there be many more pairings to come.

Tasting Notes

Birchrun Hills Farm Cheeses

Proto Cat/Tired Cat: gutsy, robust, meaty, beautifully balanced

Fat Cat: big and bacony, creamy, great stuffed into a morel mushroom

Birchrun Blue: peppery, buttery, briny, with a hint of hops

Equinox: sweet, nutty, musical, like a Gruyere understudy

Tired Hands Brew

Farm Hands: a light, mellow Belgian with a golden glow

Hop Hands: a glorious American Pale Ale; a floral-citrus see-saw

Vulpine: a "super saison" w/ sublime honey roundness, vanilla-cedar-lemon afterglow

Guillemot: dark, chocolaty porter-purr

Full disclosure: I have a freelance relationship with Di Bruno Bros. and was invited to attend this meal as a blogger-in-residence.

A Blue Cheese Party

It was a gorgeous afternoon yesterday, perfect for ripe cheese on the patio.

Picture cherry trees in blossom, birds canoodling on telephone wires, carpenter bees weaving in loopy script around gutters. Such was the scene at yesterday’s Blue Cheese-Off in Center City Philadelphia, hosted by Blue Cheese Goddess Tracy T. She met her guests with ice-blue nails, a full skirt, and a bandana dotted with constellations.

When I arrived with my valise of blues, guests were sipping demi cocktails in the kitchen – thanks to the exquisite liquor cabinet that BC Goddess recently inherited from her landlord’s deceased kin. I enjoyed a thimble-full of something that tasted like my grandmother’s 4711 eau de cologne and began unwrapping my selection. Our man, the Blue Cheese Brit, followed close on my heels, full of gusto, as he had just paid a visit to his personal cheese boy at Di Bruno Bros., acquiring “a blue that would change our lives.”

A little background: the Blue Cheese Brit is a sciency sort with impeccable table manners and an elegant palate. When he snaps his fingers, fabulous cheeses seem to fall from the sky. Every few weeks he hosts a last-minute bash that is never to be missed; his cheese board is always immaculate, as in immaculately conceived. It is revelation.

Out in the garden, the BC Goddess pulled out her blue lawn chairs. Her guests – a pair of whippety boys – reclined and sipped in the sun. Our photographer, Fusty Camembert, readied his camera. In the kitchen, the Blue Cheese Brit and I dueled over placement on the cheese platter. Toothpicks were sent for. Scorecards were distributed. One of the whippets – a boy I’ll call the Official Cheese Bearer – offered his services as waiter.

As the sun dribbled low and the birds got down to business, Madame Fromage uttered a few grandiloquent things into the atmosphere, and began, for lack of better word choice, to cut the cheese. The Official Cheese Bearer passed out the first selection, followed by a dish of palate-cleansing baby carrots. Over the next hour, the six of us sampled 5 blues, ranging from mild to “life-changing,” with only a single near-fatality. Alas, the Official Cheese Bearer had to withdraw himself from the tasting after he suffered tongue-burn.

Here is our cheese flight, from mild to mondo:

1. Blue Suede Moo, Keswick Creamery of Newburg, Pa. (cow’s milk, raw)
2. Cremificato Verdi Capra, Italy (goat’s milk, raw)
3. Birchrun Blue, Birchrun Hills Farm, Chester Springs, Pa. (cow’s milk, raw)
4. Buttermilk Bleu Affinée, Roth Käse, Wisconsin (cow’s milk, raw)
5. Cabrales, Spain (goat and cow milk, raw)

The Blue Suede was a crowd-pleaser, likable and friendly. The blue-cheese novice in the group found this delightful. The Cremificato was the most beautiful cheese on the plate, a snow-white slab with pencil-thin blue lines; it was frosting-wet with a delicate bite at the finish. Birchrun Blue was deemed “most tempting for repeat samples,” while the Bleu Affinée garnered the most raves for tasting like a “true blue” – buttery and sharp with a strong slap at the end, plus an “incredible mouthfeel.” Alas, the Cabrales did change our lives.

We tasted it on spoons, as directed by the cheese boy at Di Bruno Bros., scraping the hard surface to loosen multi-hued crumbles. Friends, it was so blue, it burned. The Blue Cheese Goddess compared it to a “topical anesthetic,” while the Official Cheese Bearer ran into the kitchen, claiming he couldn’t feel his tongue. The Blue Cheese Brit simply inhaled deeply, as if from a fag, and declared, “This takes me into the cave.”

The sun went down, and the sky shifted from blue to blue-black. New guests arrived. Ceviche was served. Cucumber martinis appeared between the blue-tipped fingers of our lovely hostess, and when the night was almost over – as the gumdrop course arrived – I looked over at the cheese platter to see that it had been reduced to a few rinds in the moonlight. Ahhh, beautiful. What is better than strong cheeses in spring, eaten among friends? I think I will raid the crisper and read some Rimbaud.