Always use the best ingredients

Reading the biography of Alice Waters reminded me that the best food starts with the best ingredients, which often means expensive. Not always, but with cheese it's usually the case. For example, pesto made with grocery-store pre-grated parmesan will never be as good (in my opinion) as pesto made with high-quality, imported-from-Italy, bought-from-a-cheesemonger Parmesan Reggiano, even if the former is dirt-cheap and the latter costs a bomb.
Having won a bit of money at a bike race yesterday, I decided to treat myself to some nice cheese to put in the pesto I was planning to make with the $0.99 fresh basil from Koreatown and pinenuts left over from our Montreal Thanksgiving meal. Even though the tiny 50-gram block I got cost more than all of the other ingredients combined, and I had to use it all up, it was worth it: the resulting pesto is fantastic.

Mimolette!

A couple posts back, I mentioned that a Toronto food critic's "desert island cheese" was mimolette and when my dad was in town I had the chance to try it. We were walking up Yonge St. to meet someone he used to work with and had some time to kill so I suggested we pop into All the Best, which typically has free samples on weekends. We were not disappointed: there was a guy handing out pasta and sauce just inside the door, slices of pickled beets a few steps away, and self-serve goat cheese and crackers towards the back of the store. We tried everything and it was all delicious but what caught my dad's eye was the mimolette for sale behind the cheese counter glass. James Chatto was right, the uncut cheese looks like a cross between a cannonball and a canteloupe. I didn't try any in the store but my dad did and was convinced by the taste to buy some. I'm glad he did and that he was willing to share.

I first tried the mimolette on its own and it was good: bright orange and salty, it was like a cross between aged cheddar and hard parmesan. In omelettes, for which I'm been won over to using hard cheeses, it was delicious. Not sure of its worthiness as a cheese with which to be marooned but worth a taste nonetheless.

A cheese-free recipe

SIMPLE LEEK SOUP

2-3 tbsp unsalted butter

3 leeks (preferably organic)

2 potatoes, peeled and thinly sliced

water

some cream if desired

salt

1. Wash leeks well and slice/chop finely (green and white parts).
2. In a large soup pot, heat butter on low heat until it melts.
3. Add sliced leeks and toss with wooden spoon to coat with butter, then sprinkle with some salt.
4. Cover pot with lid, turn up heat to medium and let the leeks soften, stirring periodically and turning down heat and/or adding oil/butter if leeks are burning/sticking.
5. Once leeks seem soft enough, add potato slices to pot, then enough water to cover vegetables and then some.
6. Turn temperature up to medium-high and simmer covered (with lid slightly ajar) until potatoes are very soft.
7. Let soup cool, then puree in batches in blender, adding more water (and up to 1/4 cup of cream) if necessary to achieve desired consistency.
8. Return soup to pot and season with salt to taste (at least a couple teaspoons).

Makes about four litres of lovely pale-green soup, which stores well in fridge for 1-2 weeks or frozen for several months.

Notes: I used 3 tbsp of butter and a couple tbsp of cream but soup would obviously be healthier with olive oil and milk (or just water).

Credit: after a recipe in S.O.U.P.S.: Seattle's Own Undeniably Perfect Soups by Michael Congdon

I give thanks for cheese

While shopping for Thanksgiving dinner supplies at Atwater Market in Montreal, M. and I found free samples of cheeses and fell in love with "Époisses," a pungent unpasteurized cow's milk cheese. Even though it was $7.50 for what seemed like a tiny piece (half of a 10cm round), we couldn't not buy it - it had such lovely mouth feel and was by far the tastiest kind we tried.

I knew I'd heard the name Epoisses before and when I checked the cheese blog archives it turned out that D. had recommended it way back in January - "Epoisses, a stinky cheese par excellence," he e-mailed in response to my request for cheese suggestions.

Thanks to Wikipedia, I learned that:

• it's made (not surprisingly) in the village of Époisses, which is located between Dijon and Auxerre, in France.
  
• it's washed in Marc de Bourgogne, the local pomace brandy, which is why it has a distinctive soft red-orange colour
  
• it's best served with a good red Burgundy wine (or even Sauternes).

Also, Napoleon was a particular fan of the cheese, and the "famous epicure" Brillat-Savarin himself classed it as the "king of all cheeses."

(As an appetizer for our Thanksgiving meal, we also ate Camembert, caramelized onions, and sliced pears wrapped in puff pastry and baked - DELICIOUS.)


BONUS LINKS!

Read about a rockstar turned cheesemaker:
http://www.thestar.com/News/article/264784

Grilled cheese goes gourmet in Toronto:
http://www.tasteto.com/2007/10/07/grilled-cheese-goes-gourmet/#more-2044
(spoiler: Beemster Vlaskaas turns out to be the best)