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

Mozzarella di Bufala Campana

Fresh Mozzarella di Bufala Campana

A couple facts from Wikipedia about "Buffalo Mozzarella":

• The Italian city of Aversa in the Italian province of Caserta is recognized as the origin of this cheese.
• It really is made from buffalo milk, the milk of water buffaloes that is.
• Asian water buffaloes were brought to Italy by Goths (as in Wisigoths) during the migrations of the early medieval period. They were widely used in plowing compact and watery terrains, both because their strength and the size of their hooves, which do not sink too deeply into moist soil.

A Fairburn Farm Water Buffalo (Duncan, BC)

With this kind of history, it's not surprising that "Mozzarella di Bufala Campana" has a Protected Designation of Origin but there are also American and Canadian cheesemakers who rely on water buffalo herds to produce an authentic-as-you-can-get new-world version. Even though imported Italian stuff is available in North America, the cheese doesn't have a good shelf life (it's maybe only ideal for 12-24 hours after opening) and is best used the day of purchase so these local producers may have a bit of an edge (when I get out to Vancouver Island at the end of August, I will try to find out if that's true).

I mention this because this cheese is an essential ingredient in Caprese salad (above), which because fresh tomatoes finally taste good (and are in season!) two-thirds of the office in which I work is obsessed with. So buy yourself some good tomatoes and this cheese, or find a good Italian restaurant and spend the extra money to get Buffalo mozzarella instead of the ordinary stuff. It's worth it.

Omeleterrific

Spinach Omelet for One (avec tomates)

Mark Bittman, aka the NY Times Minimalist, taught me to make a decent omelet. Previously, my attempts would end up scrambled but reading his recipe for "Spinach Omelet for One" in an older cookbook of his I have out from the library taught me a few things:

1. Use a good non-stick pan
2. Lightly beat the eggs (2 of them or 2 whites + 1 yolk)
   
3. Medium-high heat
4. Melt some butter in the pan
5. "When butter stops foaming and just begins to color, pour in the eggs"
6. Once the edges of the omelet begin to set, add the filling*; spreading it mostly down the middle of the egg
7. When the bottom is browned, you're ready to fold the omelet
8. a) If you're talented and brave, follow Bittman's cookbook directions for doing this without using your hands; b) Or, if you're not (like me), use a spatula and your fingers to fold the omelet in half to seal in the filling.
   
9. Cook for a little bit longer, then gently slide the omelet out of the pan and onto a plate
10. Eat immediately
    

* Steam spinach separately in advance for the filling (and toss with a bit of nutmeg according to Bittman) and sprinkle with goat cheese (according to me)

It's a Good Friday for Cheddar

Sometimes you're in a rush because your friend is supposed to be coming to visit and you're trying to finish off some schoolwork, which means you just want to eat whatever's easiest to extract from the fridge (somewhat overloaded at the moment after a pre-birthday $74.59 splurge at Fiesta Farms). And you don't want to heat anything up. So you start by piling a bunch of things onto a plate before realizing that a bowl would make more sense, particularly because some of the things you're pulling out are round and liable to roll off the plate. But despite this urgency to eat lunch, you will take the extra time to grab what's important: CHEESE, aka what remains of the small block of "X-tra Old."



When the cheese is unwrapped a few minutes after leaving the kitchen (after all the sweet-potato hummus has been scooped up with celery and you've eaten the greenhouse-grown mini Roma tomatoes), you'll find this particular aged Cheddar smells like good cheese. Your nose knows. And when you take a bite, its bold, salty flavour (with very slightly sheepy undertones) will take over your tastebuds with a singular Cheddar taste and remind you again of the deliciousness of this type of cheese. Yes, this nearly anonymous cheese you bought at the market on Saturday is very near to being perfect, helped by having good texture and the fact that it doesn't crumble the way some aged cheddars do. Which means that you can't help but want to tell people to go forth and eat good Cheddar this weekend. (Chase it with an apple if you can: the Washington State Galas are perfect right now.)

Nearly a cheese-free month (oops...)

First of all, apologies to those who keep checking back looking for updates only to find nothing new. I know it's been over a month but, to tell you the truth, I'm not sure what happened to March. I didn't eat a lot of cheese, that's for sure. In fact, all I can really remember consuming in the last month is:

• a decent block of President's Choice organic white cheddar, which reminded me how much I love cheddar
• molto mozzarella on a slice of veggie pizza from Pizza Gigi
• whatever cheese was in the veggie lasagna that B. made to share with everyone in celebration of her 30th birthday on Tuesday
• a good deal of chevre (I think) in the delicious purple cabbage(!) enchiladas (with tomatillo salsa!!) that T. made on Friday night
  
• (very slowly) half a wedge of Tre Stelle Asiago, which was best melted on top of a loaf of homemade foccaccia that I made using this recipe (photo of bread below, but not from the loaf with cheese—that one disappeared too quickly!)

Cheese No. 6

On Sunday afternoon, I visited the cutest, tiniest cheese store. When C. suggested that we check out this new cheese shop that had opened around the corner from her on Roncesvalles, I hadn't imagined it would be so small. In fact, I am writing this post from an office that feels bigger than the store! But crammed into Thin Blue Line's small space were a myriad of tasty treats -- fresh breads, olive oils, tapenades, crackers, salts -- and, of course, a small but well chosen selection of cheeses, many of which seemed to be Quebec-sourced. I was tempted to buy some Applewood Smoked Cheddar because that's on my list of recommended cheeses to try but I was on a mission for some Parmigiano Reggiano. Fortunately, TBL had a wheel in stock and was willing to accommodate my request for under 100g. I had come across a recipe for a chickpea salad on a foodblog I've started reading that called for it, and after reading this website, I was sold on only using the best of the best.

The cheese I purchased at TBL

The salad didn't blow my mind but it made for a pretty yummy lunch yesterday and I think I will try mixing the cheesy chickpeas with some spinach today to give it some crunch. However, as is the case with each cheese I try, in reading about the traditional cheese-making process for Parmigiano-Reggiano in Italy, I learned a couple of fascinating things:

1. Quality control involves a hammer

[T]he sound produced by the whole cheese when it is hammered by a special hammer is extremely important for an expert of Parmigiano-Reggiano. A trained ear is able to give a judgement about the inner structure of the whole cheese and its consistence: if the sound is hard the content of Parmigiano-Reggiano is homogeneous and compact, while if the sound is deep-toned and booming it's very likely that there are some swellings, bladders or empty zones; in this case the "whole cheese" is inevitably depreciated or it can also be rejected.

2. It aides the digestion of other foods

Parmigiano-Reggiano stimulates the gastric production thus helping to digest other foods, too. That’s why it is useful and correct eating flakes of Parmigiano-Reggiano as hors-d’oeuvre or at the end of the meal. 100 grams of Parmigiano-Reggiano are assimilated in 45 minutes (contrary to, for instance, 4 hours needed for the same quantity of meat)

3. It's another "place of origin" cheese

Parmigiano-Reggiano is strictly bound to its place of origin. Both the production of milk and its transformation into cheese take place in the provinces of Parma, Reggio Emilia, Modena, Bologna to the west of the Reno River and Mantua to the east of the Po River. The secret of such goodness originates in the place of origin, in the natural feed, and in the high quality milk with no additives.

Some Parmiagiano Reggiano statistics:

• 20-24 average ageing of the wheels (in months)
• 38 average weight of a wheel (in kg)
• 16 litres of milk to make 1kg
• 600 litres of milk to make one wheel
• 3,136,191 number of wheels produced in 2005

BONUS READING: An interview with Gurth Pretty, the author of a book on Canada's artisanal cheeses

Cheese No. 2

Not having had the chance to eat any of the Island Bries in Victoria, I carried this cheese with me to Vancouver and used it in a delicious salad. I wanted to make K. dinner as a thank-you for letting me stay with her the night before my flight back to Toronto and I remembered a salad recipe in the Rebar Cookbook that included both Brie and pears. Fortunately, K. had this cookbook and I tinkered with the recipe for the "Mesclun and Fresh Pear Salad, with Brie, hazelnuts and blackberry-thyme vinaigrette." My salad was regular red lettuce, pear slices, yellow pepper slivers, almonds, and, of course, Brie, the lettuce pre-tossed with the following vinaigrette (a variation on the Rebar recipe, halved):

1/2 cup thawed frozen strawberries, blenderized
2 tbsp raspberry vinegar
2 tbsp orange-grapefruit juice
2 tsp honey
2 tsp raw sugar
1 tsp dried thyme*
4 tbsp vegetable oil
salt and pepper to taste (i.e. lots)

* would be better with 1/2 tbsp fresh

The dressing turned out really well but the cheese was the highlight of the salad: it was sufficiently salty and creamy but not too mushy, and leaving the "rind" on didn't affect the flavour at all. When we'd had enough of the greens, K. and I started picking pieces of cheese and pear out of the bowl and eating them with bits of the foccacia that accompanied our meal.

As you can see in the photo at right, Island Bries is packaged in an interesting way: it comes with a wooden coaster stamped with the name of the cheesemaker. When I was looking for info on this cheese on the Little Qualicum Cheeseworks website, there was a note about the coaster included in the cheese description: "Our best seller. Its creamy texture, velvety white rind with mushroomy overtones goes beautifully with a crisp Chardonnay. The little wooden board rescued from the burn pile of a guitar body manufacturer can live again as a coaster."

Other cheese tasting: I also ate some delicious vegetarian lasagna that B. made to celebrate my return to Toronto and going back on cheese -- her recipe used cottage cheese and mozarella (I think). She also served some tomato and bocconcini salad, which is one of the things I'd missed most about not eating cheese after discovering how fabulous the simple combo of fresh, in-season tomatoes, basil, and good-quality mozzarella can be when S. took me to Feenie's in Vancouver.