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),
  

Cheeses I Have Eaten This Summer

Some highlights from the first half of the summer...

Fig & Feta Salad:

Probably with pecans and pears
Maple Cheddar:
231-kilometre cheese

Maple Cheddar (closeup):
you can see the crumbly texture

Gluten-free Cheese & Tomato-filled Crepes:
Made with organic quinoa flour

Gluten-Free Crepes (interior):
I think that's Black River X-tra Old Cheddar
Black River Extra Old Cheddar:
Very sharp, almost tangy flavour

Asparagus & Red Pepper Crustless Quiche (pre-cooked):
With goat cheese, naturellement

The Cheapest Goat's Milk Cheese at my No Frills:
My #3 Choice for Chevre

The Most Local Goat's Milk Cheese at my No Frills:
My #2 choice for Chevre

The Not-Local & Most-Expensive Goat's Milk Cheese at my No Frills:
My #1 choice for Chevre (it's the best tasting!)

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

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.

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."

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.)

Saturday morning at St. Lawrence Market

Yesterday was a Saturday and despite being up till nearly 3AM the previous night sitting around a campfire on the beach, I woke up at 7:20AM and decided that if I got dressed quickly and hopped on my bike, I could catch the 7:45AM ferry and make it to the farmer's market before the crowds. So I did and it was wonderful. Saturday mornings are special to me and it was so great to be up when the weekend still holds so much promise. And so it was that within a hour of waking up, I was in a foodie wonderland marvelling at the colours of fresh, local vegetables, the cuteness of pussywillow branches (such a symbol of spring), and tasting incredibly delicious cheese (the first food of the day to pass my lips!).

Amidst all the vegetable vendors, I came across a long table with a fantastic spread of different kinds of cheeses -- the majority of which could be sampled. I tried about 8 different kinds and settled on the four above. What led me to buy so many different kinds at once was the way that about a third of the cheese for sale was blocks that cost less than $3. Mind you, they're not huge pieces but for someone who's trying to broaden her cheese horizons, they're ideal: normally, I would feel bad buying such small quanties from a cheesemonger but this way I didn't have to. (Total cost for the cheese? $8.10)

I won't describe how they taste yet, despite the fact that I did try them all at the market, however, I will acknowledge that I am excited to try the Manchego, which was recommended by J.G., my co-worker in Vancouver, who says it's her favourite (not sure exactly how "aged" this one is but it tasted pretty sharp).

Cheeses on deck:

• No. 12 - Manchego
  
• N0. 13 - Extra Old Cheddar
  
• No. 14 - 3-year-old Cheddar
  
• No. 15 - Eweda Cru (Ontario raw sheep's milk cheese)
  

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!)

Man (and Woman, presumably) Can Live By Cheese Alone

If you can believe it, at the moment I'm too busy to eat cheese, let alone write about it. But to provide something new for my loyal readership (you know who you are!), I bring you breaking news from the world of cheese. According to this article in the Hunts Post, the extremely food-phobic 29-year-old Dave Nunley (see photo) survives pretty much exclusively on cheddar...

Cheese Recommendations

"3 types of pecorino and honey" (courtesy Flickr)

Apologies to anyone who thought I would be trying a new type of cheese every day. At the moment, I'm having a hard time just remembering to buy cheese on a biweekly basis. After a year of not eating the stuff, you sort of fall out of the habit of including it on your grocery list and when I have tried to buy cheese recently, I am baffled by all the choices. However, I have been soliciting recommendations from friends and family. Here are some of the suggestions for what I should try, in the hope that by making them public I will eventually get around to trying them all...

• "I recommend tracking down some Saint-Andre, a super-intense brie, and Epoisses, a stinky cheese par excellence. And if you're back on the West coast, check out Saltspring Island Cheese Company's Blue Joliette, which—though it looks disgusting—is surprisingly palatable."
• "One of my favourite cheese treats is to get a few types of pecorino (Pienza, Tuscany makes the best), one old and hard, one medium, and one young and soft. then you get a couple of types of runny honey, slice the pecorino and drizzle honey over them. I like to mix and match the honey and cheese. YUM."
• Applewood Smoked Cheddar
• Gruyere
• "As for cheese: you could always try the stuff we called "pikkeltjes kaas" as kids (roughly translated: "cheese with spots"). It’s also referred to a Leydse kaas (sp?) and is, I think, basically a Gouda with caraway seeds or fennel or some such thing in it. Very yummy. Then there’s always the stalwart Gouda. I remember living with an aunt in Amsterdam and being sent to the "kaas boer" (cheese farmer) at the street market for "jonge belegen" -- a young Gouda. (I’m not too sure what the "belegen" referred to...) Then there’s the old, old cheese with the black wax around the wheel. That one is trés yummy, but also trés expensive (at least, here in Canada)..."
• "Lately... I've been buying goat brie, which has opened up all sorts of possibilities for me. I also bought some fig preserve, which goes really well with the brie - highly recommended!"

Please feel free to post your recommendations in the comments section...

Cheese No. 3

I am currently living on an island with no grocery store so my cheese-buying has been restricted of late. However, yesterday I had to go "cityside" so I was able to pick up something new to try:

Low-fat Cheddar (7% B.F.) with Onion, Riverside Cheese & Butter Co. (Trenton, ON), $10.99/lb

Yes, it seems wrong to be highlighting a cheese that's the antithesis of cheese but it was actually pretty good, though incredibly crumbly when sliced. I ate most of it in sandwiches with organic pea sprouts and the onion flavouring made them interesting. Also, it wasn't bland like other low-fat cheeses I've tried, though it did suffer from the same problem all low-fat cheeses do: it dried out fairly quickly.

I had wanted to try something more adventurous but I was pressed for time and when faced with a large selection of cheeses behind glass, a store I dislike, and an overly attentive salesgirl, I choked. Fortunately, while she was slicing my selection, I discovered the dollar basket and I picked up something far fattier with a proper rind that I will try tomorrow. (Unfortunately, I can't remember the name and it's in a faraway fridge so you will just have to wait until then.)

I've also been asked to pick up some pumpernickel for S. & F. so I may try to hit the St. Lawrence Market on my way to the ferry after work. That could be dangerous...