Blue Cheese: NOT the final frontier!

My Dad LOVES blue cheese. I never really cared for the flavour and once it really turned my stomach. But this summer, at M&E's baby shower, there were appetizer-sized bits of bread with mushrooms and melted blue cheese, of which I ate several and they were DELICIOUS. But, still, I put off buying any "bleu" for myself.

Until last week. Last week, I was at my favourite within-walking-distance-of-work organic grocery store and, as usual, they had free food samples by the cash (why do you think it's my favourite?). This time it was blue cheese. "From Quebec." The cashier couldn't tell me anything else (though there was a hand-written sign taped to the fridge in the back with some more info written on it but I forgot to take note of it). The small amount I tried while paying for organic apples left a lovely taste in my mouth and kept me thinking about it for the rest of the afternoon. So after work I went back and bought more. And I made an omelette for dinner. What flavour! I've since bought more, which is the block in the photo above. We had a mini in-office party when B brought in two cheeses (see below) and walnut bread, and I went out and picked up fruit and some more of the blue (which B doesn't like but C LOVED).

The other two cheeses we had were:


















Both were yummy but I preferred the Mamirolle (cow's milk, from Quebec if I remember correctly) because it had the stronger taste but the Corsu Vecchiu (sheep's milk, from Corsica) was also very nice.

The more cheeses I try in this project, the more I seem to crave more pronounced flavours... Any suggestions for what I should try next? Post 'em in the comments.

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.

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)

100-mile Cheese

On the website of the Toronto-based cheese educators Cheese Culture, I found an entire newsletter article devoted to Toronto's 100-mile cheeses. You can download the newsletter and read it yourself, but here are some interesting nuggets of information I learned from it about cheddar and the names of a number of local cheesemakers (a number of which are new to me!):

LOCAL CHEDDAR

• "In 1903 there were 3000 cheddar makers throughout Quebec and Ontario... Most of these producers closed or were bought out as cow milk cheese operations mega-sized during ensuing years."
  
• "The unfortunate thing about cow dairying is that with the exception of on-farm processors (none currently making cheddar in Ontario), milk comes from pooled sources, and in some cases has traveled quite a distance to arrive at the cheese maker. This mixed and unidentifiable provenance frustrates localists, cheese makers, environmentalists, and raw-milk cheese advocates alike."
• Toronto's 100-mile cheddar: Pine River Cheese (Kincardine)
• Under 150 miles: Black River Cheese Company (Prince Edward County), Jensen Cheese (Simcoe), and Maple Dale (Plainfield)
  

Other 100-mile cheesemakers mentioned in the article:

• Paron Cheese (Hannon) for Montasio (and other Italian-style cheese)
  
• International Cheese (Toronto) for pizza cheeses
• Portuguese Canadian Cheese [PDF] (Etobicoke) for cow and goat's milk cheeses named after individual Azores islands
• Monforte Dairy (Millbank) and Ewenity Dairy Co-op (Conn) for sheep's milk cheeses
• C’est Bon Cheese (St. Mary’s) and Woolwich Dairy (Orangeville) for goat's milk cheeses

More 100-mile cheese options for Torontonians
(based on my own research):

• Salerno Dairy (Hamilton) for Italian-style cheeses
• Mornington Heritage Cheese (Millbank) and River's Edge Goat Dairy (Arthur) for goat's milk cheeses
• Upper Canada Cheese Company (Jordan Station) for single-herd cow's milk cheese
  
• Under 150 miles: Ivanhoe Cheese (Ivanhoe), Empire Cheese and Butter Cooperative (Campbellford), Eldorado Golden Cheese Company (Eldorado), Fifth Town Artisan Cheese Company (Picton),
  

Goodbye to summer

This really should be a blackberry and the background shouldn't be Parkdale but Metchosin but until I get the photos from my trip off my camera it will have to do...

I spent the last two weeks of August on Vancouver Island, a true "vacation" that climaxed with my brother's wedding on the first day of September (congrats to D & L!). Part of this trip, which will be detailed further this weekend, was devoted to discovering and enjoying local food and drink. This pursuit began nearly immediately when my dad insisted we stop to buy Silver Rill corn on the way home from the airport, then we stopped at a second farm market on Oldfield Road and I discovered that they grow figs in Victoria! And so kicked off an Island visit punctuated by delicious discoveries and tastings, including:

• mead (Sooke)
• blackberries (Galloping Goose Trail, Metchosin)
• corn (Saanich Peninsula)
• basil and yellow & green beans (backyard garden)
• apples (frontyard orchard)
• buffalo mozzarella (milk from Duncan, made in Courtenay)
• blueberries (between Duncan & Ladysmith)
• tomatillos (grown locally, bought at the Moss St. Market)
• golden beets (grown locally, Luxton Farmer's Market)
• garlic (Rocky Point Road, Metchosin)
• hard cow's milk cheese (Parksville)
• hard sheep's milk cheese (Cowichan Bay)
  

I also learned that you can invest in a cow at Little Qualicum Cheeseworks (Parksville), ate a very local-produce-friendly meal at The Superior (James Bay), and learned that my parents are planning an "100% Metchosin meal" (inspired by The 100-Mile Diet, whose authors they heard speak on Salt Spring Island). Needless to say, it was a wonderful visit.

What's Your Desert Island Cheese?

About two weeks ago, in his Toronto Life blog review of C5, one of the new restaurants in the newly "crystallized" Royal Ontario Museum, food critic James Chatto mentioned that his favourite cheese is mimolette:

I was sitting in the ROM’s new restaurant, C5, late last week, when the mimolette question arose yet again. Properly aged mimolette is one of my absolute favourite cheeses. A whole one looks like a beaten-up stone cannonball until you prize it open. Inside, the paste is dark orange and so firm that it’s better to dig out fragments with a wedge than try to cut it with a knife. The flavour is bizarrely rich, like aged gouda only much more so—like hazelnuts and caramel and condensed milk and salt—incredibly delicious and with a finish as long and intense as Göttedamarung. I think it would be my desert island cheese. Indeed, I have always imagined this was the cheese that Ben Gunn fantasized about and begged for after his sad marooning.

Which makes me wonder, what's your desert island cheese?* Post your preference in the comments and I'll try to figure out what mine is...

*provided, of course, that your island came with a way of keeping the cheese from melting...

Two Little Bits o' Cheese

Two recommendations from my co-worker J.G. in Vancouver that I will have to track down:

Ok, the name of the cheese at my dinner party was “Fleur D’Aunis”- I’m not sure how widely available it is but it was delicious. It had a strong smell to me but the taste was smooth, creamy and a little nutty.
The other one you need to try when you are out west is San Pareil from Little Qualicum cheeseworks on the Island. A. brought some in last week. It is sharp like a cheddar but soft.

Also, while I keep promising to make a pilgrimage to Toronto's infamous Cheese Boutique, I haven't yet. However, one of the bloggers over at Taste TO did recently and you can read her report here.