A Wisconsin Thanksgiving Cheese Board

Here’s a little secret about fall spices like nutmeg, cloves, and cinnamon: they pair beautifully with cheese. It makes sense when you think about topping pumpkin pie with whipped cream, or grating nutmeg over a snifter of eggnog.

Last month, the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board invited me to put together a Thanksgiving cheese board using cheeses from my home state. How could I resist? Wisconsin produces some of my favorite Cheddars, Alpines, and Blues, so I ordered a dozen samples I wanted to try, then set about to creating.

I also came up with 2 recipes for pairings -- Maple Balsamic Pecans and slow-cooked "Drunk" Figs. You'll find the recipes at the bottom of the post. 

Cheese Selections:

Carr Valley Port Salue

I like the first cheese on a cheese plate to be creamy and mellow. Port Salue has a soft texture, and its orange rind offers a festive burst of color. You could also lead off with Les Frères or Petit Frère. 

Marieke Clove Gouda

Maybe you noticed my earlier post about this curious aged Gouda, studded with cloves and a hint of cumin. It tastes like the holidays, and it pairs nicely with slow-cooked figs and a snifter of brandy.

Virgin Pine Native Blue

I've wanted to try this blue-less blue since I saw it win a medal at the American Cheese Society this summer. It tastes like strong Cheddar with blues playing in the background.   

Tilston Point
In winter, I love to end a cheese plate with a gutsy Stilton-esque number. This strong blue from Hook's  pairs well with nuts and figs.

Serve this cheese plate before dinner with a round of Old Fashioned cocktails or dark beer; after dinner, break out the sherry or port. Baguette rounds, oat crackers and amaretti cookies make lovely accompaniments, too.

~

Maple Balsamic Pecans with Sea Salt

Servings: 4-6

Ingredients:

3 tablespoons maple syrup, or brown sugar, packed

1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar

1 cup shelled pecan halves

Sea salt

Cooking directions:

Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper and preheat your oven to 325˚ F.  Combine maple syrup and balsamic vinegar in a small mixing bowl, then add pecans and stir until well coated. Spread mixture onto parchment-lined tray and bake for 15 minutes, until pecans are bubbling and browned.

Sprinkle sea salt over warm pecans. Once the nuts are cool, store them in an airtight container at room temperature for up to a week.

Drunk Figs

Servings: 8-10

Ingredients:

1/2 cup boiling water

1/2 cup honey

2 8-ounce bags of dried Black Mission figs, halved

2 tablespoons orange zest, julienned

1/2 cup fresh orange juice

1/2 cup brandy

2 cinnamon sticks

2 cloves

Cooking directions:

These are easiest to prepare in a slow cooker – they take 4 hours on high and make the house smell amazing. If you prepare them on the stove top, use a lidded saucepan and cook them for 3-4 hours at a low simmer.

In a slow cooker or sauce pan, combine boiling water and honey, stirring until blended.  Then add halved figs, orange zest, orange juice, brandy and spices. The figs will plump up as they cook and are best stored overnight in their juices before serving. Refrigerated, these keep almost indefinitely.  

Wisconsin Cheese Coma

In the last 72 hours, I have eaten umpteen kinds of cheese and visited seven cheesemakers around Wisconsin. My 3-day media tour was fascinating, and the thing that stands out at this moment – as I detox on my brother’s couch – is that cheese plants, like cheese itself, are imbued with a kind of terroir.

At Roth Kase in Monroe, I took away an impression of impeccable cleanliness and regime. It’s a place where high-tech robots pass through dimly lit aging rooms, flipping wheels of cheese. And each employee wears a pair of white Crocs that never leave the building. Thousands of cheeses are made here, including gorgeous Gruyere and Buttermilk Blue, thanks to immaculate systemization.

At Uplands, home to the nationally reknowned Pleasant Ridge Reserve, Mike Gingrich and Andy Hatch stand around in ballcaps, surrounded by blue ribbons. They make one cheese (a second will be released soon), and the vibe is mellow, the plant a single pole-barn building. Gingrich and Hatch are so finely attuned to their cheese, they can tell how the wheels are ripening just by smelling the air when they open the door of the aging room. No robots here. No white Crocs. The plant is as serene as the sloped hills surrounding it.

Cheesemaker Mike Gingrich, giving a tour

But my favorite plant, the one that lives on in my mind, is Carr Valley in tiny LaValle. This 100-year old plant looks like a gas station in the middle of a corn field – it’s got a pop machine out front and a kitschy gift shop full of snow globes and bells. Walk into the “make room,” though, and you feel history. Sunlight streams through windows onto ancient-looking forms and presses, and the pasteurizer lingers in the corner like a giant squid haunting a bioluminescent reef. 

Something about the light makes me think of a Hopper painting or a reading room, full of newspapers, turning color with age. If a cheese plant can convey a sense of place, or terroir, as the French call it, Carr Valley does just that. I will never eat their squeaky curds without feeling a pang of nostalgia. 

Carr Valley's Marisa

Earlier this week, I nibbled my way around the Finger Lakes of New York state. One morning, a family friend invited Monsieur Fromage and me over to try her favorite cheese. We toured her garden, took a peak at her homemade pickles curing on the counter, and sat down to a mystery wedge that she served with Prosecco and a side of homemade chipotle-raspberry jam.

Jill Newton has been gardening and canning for 40 years. She makes a mean bread-and-butter pickle and was kind enough to share a few of her favorite recipes with us. But this cheese was what spoke to me, a sheep's milk cheese with a sweet, nutty taste that paired well with her piquant jam. Wouldn't you know it was from Wisconsin?!

"I got it at BJ's!" Jill was thrilled to tell me. It's interesting to see how much Wisconsin cheese makes its way out to New York and Pennsylvania. While I like to support my local cheese shops, I'm glad to see quality cheeses appearing in unlikely places. Even BJ's Wholesale Club.

Marisa is a cheese worth seeking out, especially for entertaining. It took 1st place in its class at the 2005 American Cheese Society Competition and 2nd place in its class at the World Cheese Competition. It's a cave-aged cheese, mild and sweet, without a pronounced sheepiness. At first, I mistook it for a cheddar. It has similar caramel notes and a flaky texture, although it's grainier.

Jill likes to serve Marisa with homemade pickles and jams. Perfect accompaniments. I look forward to doing the same. In fact, on August 28, I'll be teaming up with Marisa McClellan from the blog Food in Jars for a Cheese & Pickles tasting. More on that to come!

After our cheese visit, Jill Newton was inspired to start a blog about gardening and pickling. Check it out here.

Menage

Lately, I’ve been on a quest for the perfect desk cheese. That’s right, a cheese I can eat at work when I’m lunching avec email. It has to go with apples and pretzels, or whatever’s handy, and it can't be a cheese that stinks up the wine fridge under my printer cart. Mmmm, yes, I do have a wine fridge at work...for keeping cheese just the right temperature, of course.

So, here’s my star: Carr Valley’s Menage. It's a Spanish-style cheese that I think is, well, perfect for the office lunch. It’s not only fun to mention in passing ("yes, just having a little Menage at my desk"), but it’s fun to taste because you can actually taste all three milks: cow, goat, and sheep.

If you’re at your desk, close your eyes. Imagine a mild white cheddar mixed with Manchego. You can smell the sheepiness, but it’s not overpowering, and there’s very little goaty tang. Still, it’s well balanced. Alongside an apple, it’s quite nice, especially as the breeze coming through the office window rumples your hair, oh…where was I?

If you find Menage too distracting at work, serve it at home. Sid Cook over at Carr Valley in LaValle, WI recommends serving it with Guinness (or a Shiraz) – which sounds like one more indecent thing to dream about.

One last suggestion: as long as we’re talking about how to improve desk lunches, check out the cool, waste-free lunch kits put out by Kids Konserve, a company specializing in eco-friendly sandwich kozys. They're the latest thing I'm coveting. Note the insulated totes with non-toxic ice packs -- ideal for carrying cheese to work, non?

Billy Blue

When I saw all the blue cheeses in the Dean & DeLuca case during a recent trip to New York, I got weak in the knees.  There is almost nothing I love as much as a bitey, bitey blue.  I have a friend (call him the Blue Cheese Brit) who is always wowing me with his blue cheese prowess.  When he puts out a cheese board, he usually has the latest, most incredible blue cheese from his “cheese boy” at DiBruno Brothers, the finest cheese counter here in Philly.  I’m always terribly envious, and just once, I’d like to present BCB with a blue that will knock him on his arse.

 

Dean & DeLuca’s seemed like the perfect place to scoop him.  “Give me the stinkiest, most exotic blue,” I told the cheese baroness.  She rolled her eyes, bit her lip, and sauntered over to the cooler.  It must have contained two dozen wheels of moldy, beautifully marbled blue.  If I hadn’t had a bus to catch, I would have asked to try every earthy one of them (someday, I’m going to travel to New York with a valise full of costumes, and I’m going to spend the entire day making incognito trips to Dean & DeLuca so I can try all their blues without looking like a freak…or sort of). 

The cheese baroness gave me a slice of her “stinkiest, most exotic” blue, and it was a revelation.  It smelled beasty.  It tasted sweet and salty and oniony, and did I mention it melted on my tongue, leaving the taste of caramel?  Here was my blue cheese challenger!  Here was my swan song, the long-lasting, deep-textured, breath-haunting blue that would make BCB fall back on his teak porch chaise and rasp in his British accent, “I have to have that.  Where’d you get it?”  Then I’d be able to smile smugly and say something like, “Oh, it’s just a rare, impossible-to-find Blibbety Blue made in a sea cave off the coast of France. ”

“It’s a goat cheese blue,” the cheese baronnesss told me.  “Yes!” I said.  This was even better.  I knew BCB had never presented me with a goat-cheese blue, so it was certain that he would never have put his muzzle around this little crumble of heaven. 

Reader, I bought the blue, ran for the bus, boarded it, got home, pulled the cheese out of my purse, and would you believe that cheese was from my home state of Wisconsin?  I was agog.  And then I laughed.  Of course.  Where else would the most fabulous domestic goat blue come from?  I’ve been hooked on Carr Valley's Billy Blue ever since. 

And guess what?  It’s so good, I haven’t shared it with BCB.  I’m not sure he’s mature enough to handle it.

 

BILLY BLUE BISON BURGERS

2 medium onions, thinly sliced

2 Tablespoons olive oil

1 teaspoon brown sugar

1 pound bison (or beef)

1/2 cup crumbled Billy Blue Cheese

salt & pep 

Heat onions in oil for about 3 minutes over medium heat.  Then turn heat to low and let them soften for about 15 minutes, until they are translucent.  Add vinegar and sugar and stir to coat. Cook about another 2 minutes, then remove from heat.

Combine raw, thawed meat with caramelized onion, 1/4 cup of blue cheese, salt and pep.  Shape into patties.  Grill. Top with remaining cheese and add condiments.  (Dean & DeLuca's Balsamic-Shallot Mustard and a swoosh of mayo make a gorgeous combo.)