Long-weekend Agritourism

Because it's a long weekend, four of us decided to borrow an Autoshare car and spend a whole Saturday driving around Prince Edward County (a two-hour drive from Toronto) visiting cute small towns and other stops along the area's "Taste Trail." It ended up being a lot of time in the car but we did visit two wineries, a cidery, and a cheese factory.

Black River Cheese in Milford was our last stop and though the cheese "factory" wasn't open for tours, they did have lots of free samples (the Garlic mozzarella and Salsa cheddar were two of the more interesting ones available for tasting). I was excited to discover the ice-cream cooler of "cheese ends" and dug through it to find some small pieces of (yet another) extra old cheddar (Cheese No. 19) and some mozzarella (Cheese No. 20) because I want to make pizza. B. was more adventurous with her cheese purchases: she bought a piece of the garlic mozzarella and also purchased a twenty-dollar gift basket just so she could snag one of the last pieces of maple cheddar available for sale, which my co-worker C. had raved about to me and which it turns out they only make in March (they told us that usually they don't have any left by this time of year).

The Black River looks like a nice place for swimming

The best salad - as it's meant to look

With chèvre!

The best salad

I've been eating the BEST salad for almost a week now. There have been multiple variations but the dressing has been the same and I think that's what makes it so good. That and the chevre (aka, Cheese No. 18). I created the dressing by loosely adapting a recipe in the Rebar cookbook that uses olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and honey (it's for a salad with nectarines). There may have been some other ingredients but I don't remember them now and (stupidly) I didn't write down the proportions I used.

I first used the dressing on a salad of mixed greens, pears, pecans and chevre that I served to N., B., and E. when they came over for dinner last Sunday night. Because it was so good, I made myself the same salad for lunch on Wednesday and Thursday. Today, I had no more chevre left so I was forced to used some of my second block of President's Choice Organic cheddar, which I had in the fridge. It wasn't the same, though. The chevre, labelled "Fromage de Chevre" from Choisy le Roi and purchased at my local ultra-budget No Frills, definitely added some deliciousness to the salad. Since there's still leftover dressing, I think I'm going to have to buy some more before I make this salad again...

<< Even though this cheddar is pretty good (and organic!), it's no substitute for chevre in my new favourite salad.

Pecorino on the beach (Cheese No. 17)

As mentioned in the previous post, one of the best cheeses I've had the chance to try since starting this project was one that I had quite recently: Pecorino. I was quasi-abandoned on a beach with a block of this cheese, half a bottle of red wine, and a biography of Jane Jacobs, which led to a lovely few hours of drinking wine, shaving off bits of cheese, and reading about my former neighbour. The Pecorino was so flavourful that I would break off small bits and suck on them until they dissolved in my mouth. I didn't take a picture of it, nor do I really know anything about it except that it was purchased at St. Lawrence Market. It's one to seek out, though.

Cheese digest

As regular readers no doubt noticed, the cheeseblog took a break. But that doesn't mean I stopped eating cheese. Far from it. In fact, one of the best cheeses to date was something I sampled in the last month. To get us back up to speed, I'm providing briefer-than-usual cheese-tasting "blurbs," starting with my birthday purchase...

Cheese No. 16 - Frère Jacques

Killing time in Yorkville before catching a matinée of The Lives of Others on my birthday, I wandered into Pusateri's and picked out a nice piece of cheese on April 10th that ended up being quite tasty. I picked it sort of randomly: it looked good and the price was right. Turns out, it's another cheese with religious connections. This semi-soft cow's milk cheese is produced by Benedictine monks at the Saint-Benoit-du-lac Abbey in Quebec. According to the Abbey's website, "Saint Benedict said that to be a true monk, one must live by the work of one’s hands. Such work is meant to provide for the needs of the monastery and to maintain a happy balance of mind and body....The monks of Saint-Benoît-du-Lac assure their living above all by a cheese-factory, an orchard, a cider-factory, a farm and a store where their products are sold." These monks have been running a cheese factory since 1943!

Cheese No. 14 - 3-year-old Cheddar

I couldn't resist taking at least one photo of mouse and cheese - too goofy. Forgive me. According to my notes, I ate this mini-block on April 11th. The only other thing I wrote down was that it was "not as strong as the X-Old." Guess it wasn't that memorable.

Cheese No. 15 - Eweda Cru

I broke out the Eweda Cru on April 13th, this was the day I had to switch rooms, which was kind of traumatic in that I had to compress two rooms into one and give up my office. I thought eating some cheese might settle my stomach (but then I chased it with vitamins and coffee...) Anyway, I wrote down that the cheese was crumbly, slightly powdery, and not very "sheepy" at all. In fact, it reminded me of Asiago more than anything. It had a nice flavour: not so sharp, not that salty either - the website says "Comparable to: Young Pecorino Romano (but not as salty)" and a "traditional hard cheese."

I did find some time to poke around on the Ewenity Dairy Cooperative's website, mostly because I was curious about the raw milk thing. Essentially what this means is that the cheese is made from unpasteurised milk, which is okay because it's aged for just over 2 months. (Under Canadian law, any cheeses less than 60 days old must be pasteurised.) I also learned that sheep's milk contains more calcium, zinc and vitamins than other milks, which I suspect has to do with what the sheep eat. According to the website, the "main feedstuffs" of the co-op's sheep are "pasture (grasses, legumes, herbs and "weeds") and hay (dried pasture). At certain times of the year, the sheep are fed grain (barley, corn, oats or soybeans) as a supplement."