September Cheese Horoscope

Equinox Gougere, Wooden Spoon Bakery, Phoenixville, Pa.

If you start to feel lazy or listless in the early part of the month, consider raising your derriere off the couch to attend a cheese tasting or farm tour. Expect creamy waves of pleasure as well as new thought patterns around chevre and personal fortune. Here’s a taste of what Mercury brings, especially around the full moon on the 19th:

September 9-11

Yellow Springs Fall Open House

Friday noon-6, Sat & Sun. 10-4

1165 Yellow Springs Rd., Chester Springs, PA 19425

Catherine and Al Renzi have one of the prettiest goat dairies in Chester County, along with a native plant nursery of fall-blooming shrubs, wildflowers, and trees. Their fall open house is a great time to meet some adorable loppy-eared goats and sample some remarkable handmade cheese. If you missed out on their goat cheese CSA this year, you can scope out the coolers for a selection of tender morsels (try Red Leaf and Nutcracker). If you plan to make a day of it, stop by Kimberton Whole Foods to check out the selection of local foods, have lunch at The Wooden Spoon Bakery in downtown Phoenixville for a sandwich and a cookie (the homemade Oreos and Oatmeal Smileys are not to be missed), and pop by Talula’s Table in Kennett Square to pick up dinner-to-go and grab winter provisions. For more info, visit yellowspringsfarm.com.

September 16

Autumn Pairings Class: Cheese, Beer & Homemade Preserves

Wedge+Fig, 160 N. 3^rd St, Philadelphia, 19106, 4-6 p.m.

Join Marisa McClellan (foodinjars.com) and Madame Fromage for the ultimate evening of snacking at Philadelphia’s newest cheese café and patio garden. We’ll teach you how to pair flavors and give you plenty of tips for holiday entertaining, using cheese and homemade preserves (pickles, chutneys, and jams), along with local brews and more. This is a great Cheese 101 for anyone interested in developing a palate, and if you’re a home canner, we’ve got recipes you can use for parties and gift giving. If you’ve never attended one of our cheese’n pickle parties or cheddar’n chutney events, this is the grand bomb.

To reserve tickets ($65), click here.

September 17

Adams County Orchard Tour

Bus departs Reading Terminal at 8:30 a.m.

The good folks at the Fair Food Farmstand (in Reading Terminal Market) have been rolling out some great road trips to local farms this summer – a terrific deal if you’re a car-free city dweller in search of green pastures. Board a bus, eat some nibbles on the way, and visit several area growers that supply food to the stand. You can bet there will be some cheese at this hoe down, which stops at Beechwood Orchards and Three Springs Fruit Farm for tastes of heirloom apples and other regionally grown fruit. A picnic is provided, along with live music. You may even see cheesemonger Paul Lawler trip the light fantastic. For tickets ($75), visit Eventbrite.

September 20

The Brewer, The Farmer, The Chef, and The Goat

Upstairs at Di Bruno Bros., 6-8 p.m.

It’s a nose-to-tail fete with Stoudt’s Brewing and 7^th Heaven Farm of Tabernacle, NJ, a local purveyor of rare and heritage livestock. Chef Rob Sidor goes to gorgeous extremes on his tastings (witness the Fermentation Dinner), so this meal is not to be missed. Dinners at Di Bruno Bros. are casual, and this one will feature tasting stations with special pairings of all things goat. Meet all the characters involved in brewing, farming, and cooking this meal. To reserve tickets ($45): call 215.665.1659 or email catering@dibruno.com

For more area cheese events, check out...

Anne Saxelby's Cheese Calendar (For all things relating to artisan cheese in NYC)

Cheese Classes at Artisanal (For master classes with Max McCalman)

Murray's Cheese Events (Note the Stinky Cheese & Wine tasting and the Cave Tours)

Tria's Fermentation School (Note the Cheese Happy Hours at this Philly institution)

An All Goat Dinner Party

It all started with a new cookbook: Goat: Meat, Milk, Cheese, by Bruce Weinstein and Mark Scarbrough. It got me thinking, why not host a caprine celebration? After all, it’s summer. And so far, it’s been goat oriented – from my reading list to my goat cheese CSA. So, I invited my closest friends over on Saturday to help me prepare an all goat blow-out.

The Prep

“Goat is the world’s primary meat,” Mark Scarbrough writes in his introduction. So, off we went to meet some butchers. We saw kangaroo. Crocodile heads. And we met some cranky old goats. But no goat meat.

Four butcher shops later, we landed at Esposito's in Philadelphia’s Italian Market. At the counter, a kid with a buzz cut held up a bag of cubed, frozen meat. “This is all the goat we have,” he shrugged. And so I paid my three dollars and change per pound and dreamed of my pretty feast.

If I had been smart, I would have planned ahead and ordered fresh goat. Ah well. Call it my a caprine learning curve.

Next, our friend Matt sleuthed out some goat’s milk at Whole Foods. He called dibs on making goat paneer. Bless his heart. What other house guest comes to town and offers to curdle milk in your kitchen? I felt such adoration.

After a morning of Philly foraging, we rode home in a taxi, carrying bags of provisions.

We killed off a few pastries for lunch, then did some goat milk shots. Good stuff. Happy faces all around.

Then the paneer-making began in earnest. Matt boiled a gallon of goat’s milk, and when it started to smell cooked, he squeezed some limes into it. After curds formed, I watched him press out the whey, then form it into a cake. 

By then the goat cubes were thawed, and full-on marination began, using a recipe from Goat, which includes a bevy of terrific-sounding recipes, from goat cheese danishes to chicken-fried goat with goat milk gravy. 

Goat meat flies “under our radar,” Scarbrough writes in his cookbook. “It’s got an earthiness that stands up well in deep braises and sophisticated stews – and even on the grill.” Because goat isn't popular in the U.S. (yet), it’s pristine as far as meat goes. “There are no hormones approved for goat production,” according to Scarbrough, “and few antibiotics to boot.”

Plus, goat is much lower in fat than any other meat -- compare 5.2 grams of fat per 6 oz. serving of goat to 12.6 grams in chicken, 15.8 in beef, 16.4 in pork, and 5.8 in lamb. Goat meat is lower in cholesterol, too. Humdinger.

The Party

Course #1: We started the night with an award-winning puck of Montchevre goat Brie from Belmont, WI. It was personally lugged home in ma suitcase from Madison, and I was glad to let the cheese state represent. This Mini Cabrie came highly recommended by Stuart Mammel, the cheesemonger at Willy Street Co-op. Hat tip, please.

For our beverage service, Monsieur Fromage – once a bartender – prepared backyard mint mojitos. 

Course #2: Biryani with marinated goat paneer in yogurt sauce. Astonishingly good, though not very pretty (hence, no photos). Even the dog wimpered. The paneer was creamy and dense, not rubbery. I liked that Matt used limes in his paneer, rather than lemon juice. It gave the cheese a delicate, floral quality.

Course #3: Goat skewers with herb sauce and grilled vegetables. Friends, I take full blame for buying lousy goat meat. Most of it was tough as a naugahyde banquette, but very flavorful. Next time, I will pre-order goat or butcher the billy myself. The few tender bits were wonderful, and the marinade was so good -- packed with scallions, cilantro, and cardamom -- that we reserved some as a bread dip.

Now the Good News

Just as I was sitting down to write about this post, I saw an ad for an all-goat feast with, would you believe, the authors of this cookbook? The details are below. I, for one, am going. If you live in the Philadelphia area, please join me. I am told there will be goat gnocchi, roasted goat, and house-made aged goat cheese. Oh, I swoon. 

If you live elsewhere, check out the authors' food blog. Their passion for goat is infectious, and I have a feeling they're at the forefront of a whole new meat wave.

Fork’s Goat Cookbook Dinner

Wed., June 22, $45/person

306 Market St., Philadelphia

tix: 215.625.9425