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.

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.

I bought cheese in the park

Just call me the omelette-master (mistress?): I have figured out how to make a one-egg omelette, which is perfect as a second course for breakfast. My latest favourite filling (as seen above) is garlic-sauteed organic rainbow chard and fresh feta from Monforte Dairy, both of which I bought at the Trinity Bellwoods' farmers' market on Tuesday afternoon.

There's something fun about buying cheese in a park direct from the cheesemaker. But the Monforte Dairy cheese is no novelty: it's delicious. The feta I bought for $5 (which I later saw in a store for $8.99) is the best I've had this summer.

As you may remember, I was trying to track down Monforte's Halloumi earlier this summer but had no luck. Next week, though, the cheesemaker (who also tried to sell me on the merits of an unlabelled smoked cheese that I thought might be Halloumi) has promised to bring some to the market. If it's as good as the feta, that would be excellent...

"Grilled" Cheese

I was introduced to the concept of barbecued cheese by K. in Montreal two summers ago. She used to host wonderful weekly all-comers' barbecues and if you were a vegetarian who arrived early enough there might be some grilled halloumi up for grabs before the grill became dominated by meat. Halloumi is Cypriot in origin and is typically made with sheep's milk or goat's milk (or a blend). It's similar to mozzarella but chewier and usually saltier. Halloumi can be fried or grilled quite successfully due to its higher-than-normal melting point (according to Wikipedia, this from "the fresh curd being heated before being shaped and placed in brine"). When I found out that the place I was going to be housesitting for a couple weeks had a BBQ, I decided that I had to track down some halloumi of my own and invite some friends over to try it...

THE BARBECUED CHEESE EXPERIMENT

Hypothesis: That halloomi grilled on the barbecue will be delicious

Procedure:

1. Ride your bike to several high-end food stores looking for the Ontario halloumi you read about recently, which its makers tout as being "the only 100% sheep’s milk Halloumi made in Canada."

2. Strike out at Pusateri's, All the Best Fine Foods, and Whole Foods but sample several delicious cheeses during the (re)search -- including David Wood's Salt Spring Island goat cheese that certain Toronto foodies are excited about since it hit stores recently.

3. Forty-five minutes before guests are to arrive, fly into your last-chance grocery store. Luck out: not only does Loblaws have President's Choice "Halloom" in stock but it's on sale for $4.99. Grab two packages.

4. Back at home, set up barbecue and wait for B. to arrive because she has previous cheese-barbecuing experience (and also the matches needed to light the barbecue). Distract guests with sweet-potato hummous and potato salad while awaiting B's arrival.

5. On advice of B, have W. cut cheese into slices and soak in olive oil. Appoint another friend to quarter lemons (so that they can be squeezed over hot cheese).

6. Try grilling cheese directly on the BBQ, which is only moderately successful (let's just say, it sticks) but friends still say it's delicious when they try it.

7. Decide that B. was right: it might be better to just pan fry the cheese so scavenge around until you find a cast-iron frying pan (it's still barbecuing even if you use a pan).

8. Figure out that the pan works pretty well (but still some sticking) and that putting lots of oil in the pan makes it even better.

9. Serve cheese to everyone present and conclude that hypothesis was correct: the halloumi is delicious...

YUM!

10. Plan to repeat experiment to doublecheck findings.

For another story of barbecuing halloumi (with prettier pictures), check out 101 Cookbooks.

Note: Halloumi is Cypriot but the Greeks also do a version of fried cheese: it's called Saganaki and typically uses Kefalograviera, Kasseri, or sheep's milk feta.

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."

Cheese No. 12

I am eating out of order it seems. Having forgotten that I numbered my cheeses from the farmer's market, I went ahead and ate No. 13 (the X-tra old Cheddar) before No. 12. My apologies to anyone following my progress with a checklist for whom this misstep causes a problem. But on with the Manchego!

As I've already mentioned, this cheese was a recommendation.* All I knew before buying it was that it was a Spanish cheese. Turns out Manchego is from the La Mancha region of Spain (you know, like The Man from La Mancha, aka Don Quixote?). It's a sheep's milk cheese and one that's supposed to be aged for at least 3 months, according to its "Denominación de Origen" (yes, it's another one of those cheeses, not surprising since it's "Spain's most famous chese"), but J.G. suggested trying some that's been aged 1-2 years. I think the block I picked up at the market must have been of the "curado" variety (aged 3-6 months) because I really couldn't pick out any notes of either sheepiness or tanginess, nor did I find it to be "Delicious-slightly piquant and nutty". However, Manchego does have a nice texture and there's a cool-looking herringbone design pressed into the rind, visible in the photo at right (and which Wikipedia has just advised me is inedible, only after I ate all of it...).

Anyway, when I think of European cheeses, Spain isn't a country that typically comes to mind. Though, via the Cheese from Spain website, I've since learned that Spanish cheesemakers produce nearly 100 different kinds and each region has its own specialty:

In general cow's milk cheeses are found in the north, along the Cantabric coast, from Galicia to the Basque Country, and along the northern Cantabric Mountain Range and the Pyrenees. Sheep's milk cheeses are found inland, from the north, in Cantabria and the Basque Country, down to the flats of Castilla-León, Castilla La Mancha, Aragón and Extremadura. And finally goat's milk cheeses are found mostly along the regions of the Mediterranean coast, from Cataluña to Andalusia, as well as in Extremadura. [Click here for a map]

If you're curious and want to read more about "The Cheese of Don Quixote," click here.

*You, too, can recommend that I try something! I'm compiling a list and, eventually, I promise, I will get around to trying everything. Just leave a note in the comments section. (You can even remain anonymous if you like)

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)