La Serena

Several months ago, while house sitting for our friends Noel and Carolyn in New York, I went through their cheese drawer – that’s right, some people go through bedroom drawers, I go through refrigerator drawers. One wedge intrigued me, a Spanish sheep’s milk cheese with a label that included “thistle rennet” among the list of ingredients. I filched a nibble and was transformed. This was an aromatic, vegetal cheese with a gooey center and a spiky aftertaste. Was I tasting thistles?

        

“La Serena” I typed into the notepad of my ipod.

For months now, I’ve been on the hunt to acquire my own wedge and to learn about cheese made with thistles. I’ve read up on rennet, which is an enzyme used in cheesemaking; often, it’s taken from the stomach lining of animals, but more and more cheeses include “vegetable rennet,” a coagulant that’s been introduced to appeal to vegetarians. Vegetable rennet is produced in labs, something purists pooh-pooh. Thistle rennet sounded sexy. It sounded natural.

In a curious twist of synchronicity, I found a wedge of La Serena at a local market the same week I received my latest issue of Culture Magazine, a new cheese rag with fabulous photo spreads. The cover story? Thistle Cheese.

So here’s the dealio: thistle rennet has been used in cheesemaking since ancient Roman times. Now, it’s used primarily in Spain, where it has evolved from cheeses that were made high in the Iberian mountains, thanks to some clever shepherds. The rennet actually comes from cardoons, those purple-tufted mega-thistles you’ve probably seen growing along roadsides. The stamens are steeped in warm water to make a “tea,” which is then added to the milk.

Amazingly, there isn’t a purple twinge to La Serena, but I thought I could detect the faint taste of artichokes, which are related to the cardoon. The cheese has a long-lasting sharp taste, like raclette, but its texture is much softer. If you let La Serena sit out for an hour or so, you can dip bread into it fondu-style. Beware the smell, howev, which calls to mind moldering grapes. It’s whiffy but wonderful. 

Monte Cabra

My friend – I call him the Blue Cheese Brit – has a cheese boy.  This is his cheese boy, the affable “Rich,” well-known in cheese circles for his owly glasses and vaguely Capote-esque style. I think of Rich as the cheese oracle. Whenever I see him, he doesn’t ask me what I want, he tells me what I want – which always turns out to be true. He knows my palate better than I do.

On a recent cookie-eating junket, I ran across Rich unexpectedly at a new cheese counter – he’s the second of two Di Bruno Bros. cheesemongers who have been poached by Philadelphia’s new Garces Trading Co. Okay, well, maybe not poached, but I’m just sayin’. There’s gonna be a rumble.

“You want Monte Cabra,” Rich said to me, when I saw him, and he unwrapped a wheel of charcoal-black butter, a cheese that had my name all over it. I like ash, what can I say?

Monte Cabra is a Spanish goat cheese (from Catalonia), very mild with a pleasant, sweet, pasturey taste. Like its black shroud, its story remains something of a mystery: I couldn’t find squat, not on the Net, not even in my go-to cheez books. Everyone who has written about Monte Cabra compares it to feta, which doesn’t make any sense. It’s dryer, like Manchego, with a firm, not-quite-crumbly texture. I didn’t taste salt, which is what comes to mind with feta; I tasted hay, wood shavings, an ashy sweetness with a tart hook.

It tastes, and looks, great with blackberries.

Someday I’m going to do a cheesemonger-of-the-month profile, and Rich will hopefully be one of them. Once again, I’m pleasantly surprised to discover the cheese of my dreams. 

Caña de Cabra

Around the corner from my house in Philly, there’s a wonderful mother-daughter shop that sells Spanish cheeses. Nicole Marcote and her mother Joan Sauvion, of Quince, introduced me to Mahon with quince paste this summer, and today I stopped in for my second round of Caña de Cabra, a soft-ripened goat cheese that I have come to think of as the cheese-lover’s salted nut roll. The rind is firm and tangy, while the center is soft and slightly sweet, like the nougaty filling of my favorite truckstop candybar. Hey, in a pinch, you know.

Earlier this week, I took Nicole’s advice and baked this cheese in a crock, then sprinkled it with toasted pine nuts, drizzled it with honey, and served it alongside some toasted baguette rounds. It’s served this way at Bar Ferdinand, a local tapas bar, and – I squeak inside, as I write this – it was delicious, every sweet-salty lover’s dream. If you eat it with your eyes closed, it tastes like a salted nut roll à la Julia Child.

Caña de Cabra wasn’t listed in Steven Jenkins’ Cheese Primer (horrors!), but Cowgirl Creamery’s Library of Cheese gave me the DL (a thousand bows to those lasses). Caña de Cabra is made in Murcia, an orchard-laden, mountainous region of southeastern Spain. If you’ve ever eaten French Boucheron, you know this style of goat cheese. It looks like it fell off a lumber truck. There is something earthy and mushroomy about it, and it’s so adorable, you’ll want to make felted pillows resembling it.

Please do. And send me one. In return, I will send you a box of salted nut rolls and a beautiful log of Caña de Cabra.

If you live in Philadelphia, stop by Quince Fine Foods, 209 W. Girard Ave., for a cheese-tasting this Thursday, August 20, from 2-4 p.m.