Cheesemonger Hunger Games

Last month, I witnessed the WWE smackdown of the cheesemonger world. You had staged attire...adrenaline-fueled battling...rowdy yelling...drunks. Substitute a rink with a cold-storage warehouse in Queens, elbow drops with wrapping contests, and hot dogs with a Raclette machine. Cheese elite from everywhere gathered to let loose for a little "friendly" competition. Behold the 3rd Annual Cheesemonger Invitational. 

For the last three years, cheesefolk have gathered in New York every summer for what some of us call the cheesemonger Hunger Games. Nobody dies, but everyone takes it VERY seriously...and knives are involved. Each cheesemonger showcases their skills in various levels of competition: blind taste-test cheese identification, written exam, quarter-pound cutting skills, wrapping skills, marketing/selling skills, and cheese plate pairings. 

The crowd of cheesemongers, makers and enthusiasts get to really nerd out, wildly cheering for a cheesemonger's consecutive perfect quarter-pound cuts as if a hologram of Tupac just appeared onstage. Except at the end of the day nobody understands how cool that was except for us. It's the little things in cheese. 

The eventual victor hailed from Cowgirl Creamery in my old hood of Washington, D.C. The multi-hour competition concluded, and a dairy-fueled dance party ensued. 

It was an opportunity to hang out with old cheese friends (the awesome Cato Corner crew and Bedford Cheese Shop homies) and make new cheese friends (who will probably never remember my name after their last trip to the open bar). As the excitement for cheese grows in this country, so do the creative, celebratory events that allow us to come together and really enjoy each other and what we do. Next year, though, I'd like to see more headbutts and clotheslining. 

Today's Forecast: Cheese Degrees Fahrenheit

During the hottest summer days, retailers generally see a significant decline in customer traffic and cheese consumption. At the shop, even the weekends became a manageable trickle of customers when warmer weather arrived. Same goes for farmers markets. Though warmer spring weather brings more products, vendors and traffic, the crowd begins to thin again as the summer mercury inches beyond the temperature sweet spot.

Once a threshold is breached, people just don't seem to want to rub their swollen paws and sweaty face all up in a slimy piece of cheese. To make matters worse, everything smells more ripe in the summer -- public restrooms, garbage cans, sidewalk pee. Odorous cheese nubs wreaking of wet earth or dirty sock don't strike a chord when hunger strikes.

Temperature, however, will never beat up on my allegiance to dairy. Until the day that I die, I'll eat ice cream when it's 10-degrees outside and cheese when it's 100. Yet, even I have to modify slightly when it gets too hot. If you listen to your biological need for cheese...and to me...you'll find there is a way for all cheese lovers and friends to enjoy cheese on a hot day.

In the warmer months, I tend to gravitate towards light cheeses. Fresh cheeses like chevre or burrata are a popular option for the summer. But cheeses with a little age on them can be refreshing as well. St. Maure, for instance, can have a little flavorful bloomy-mold-funk that is partnered with a mild citric tartness reminiscent of summer flavors. Even though the heat can easily turn soft cheese into a puddle, either young bloomy cheeses or un-aged fresh cheeses with higher moisture levels will leave less of an astringent saltiness on the palate. Because who wants the sensation of licking a salty armpit when it feels like you put your face into one as soon as you walk out the door? 

One of my favorite refreshing cheese treats for the summer is mixing fresh berries with fresh cheese. A bowl-full of whole-milk ricotta with honey and berries is a standard favorite. But I can do you one better with Barilotto + berries and honey. Barilotto is a young, pressed, buffalo milk ricotta made from the re-heating of the whey remaining after a buffalo mozzarella make. It's brought to us dairy nerds of America by Casa Madaio in Italy, who give us some of the best Italian cheeses you will find stateside. You should seek out their cheese whenever possible. 

Barilotto is light, smooth, moist, slightly sweet and spongy. It's whey-based so it doesn't bring the same heavy creaminess as whole-milk ricotta; and it's buffalo's milk which is naturally lactose-free and sweeter. When you douse it in raw honey and strawberries, you've basically got a deconstructed (somewhat healthier) cheesecake having a party on your tongue. And, trust me, there ain't no party like a cheesecake party...

Novelists:Cheese::Children:Scissors

Six months ago I made a cheese-related purchase that has haunted me. Finding myself alone in New York at Christmas, I treated myself to a fancy dinner and a new book. The book, part of a trilogy, was so hilariously titled and so amusingly blurbed on Amazon (you read it here first; blurb can become a verb) that I was ready to flaunt its sarcastic, nonsensical, tongue-in-cheek humor like a 2005 hipster wearing a Gettin Lucky in Kentucky t-shirt.

Sitting before the first course of my holiday prix fixe, I proudly opened page one of....ahem...The Long Quiche Goodbye, the first book in The Cheese Shop Mystery series (Lost and Fondue and Clobbered by Camembert being the other two). I was promised a modern-day Agatha Christie-esque murder mystery set in a small-town cheese shop, with the odd bonus of recipes in the back. What I got was an embarrassment that I forced myself to read a few pages at a time on the subway, doing my best to completely shield the front cover from onlookers with my hand and GIANT bookmark. 

I wasn't expecting Dickens but I had high hopes for a bit of sarcastic cheese humor peppering a moderately captivating mystery story. Six months later, I would sooner eat waxed Gouda rinds than read the next two books in the series. 

By the book's third sentence, the main character/first-person narrator was name-dropping a Humboldt Fog-Chardonnay pairing like it was a revelation. What the hell kind of lead is that? Would Agatha Christie use the first page to tell me what biscuits and finger sandwiches she likes best with her tea?! As a sidenote, if you work in cheese, that writer has just lost all credibility by trying to pull you in with that lame as hell nugget of information. But even the average Joe pleasure reader demands a little more literary skill in subtly finessing a quirky theme.  

It's set in a cheese shop. That's cute. The main character is in love with a local cheesemaker. That's believable. Really, that's pretty much all you need. But the book just ....goes....on.... with stilted, awkward (and sometimes obscure) cheese references, pairing suggestions, and flavor descriptions. If cheese must become a bigger player in literature, there must be some way of using the craft or vocation as a silent backdrop character like what authors do with a city or home. With this book, however, I'm bombarded with already awkward flirtations between the love interests interrupted with talk of Tomme Crayeuse paninis.

In the ultimate "heated" confrontation with the killer we get these gems of internal conflict in the protagonist's head: 

"Hurling something was out of the question. I stunk at softball, hence the concussion I suffered in high school.  I would miss my mark. Besides, getting whacked by china teacups probably wouldn't make [killer's name] drop the knife." 

"I didn't say what I was thinking out loud. As Tyanne would say, I hadn't fallen off a turnip truck." 

I wish you hadn't said the last 290 pages of what you were thinking out loud on all of this wasted paper! The only thing dumber than any of this is me for continuing to read. But when I spend money on something, I'm like Homer Simpson with a sandwich. I refuse to waste it, even if it's so bad that it gives me nightmares and makes me throw up and hallucinate. 

By the end, I was at least hoping for one of those surprising (but not really surprising anymore because it happens all the time now) second-ending twists utilized in scary movies.  But why, WHY, would I not just have expected the last sentence to be "...flashing on something Rebecca had said. Perhaps danger was not only becoming her middle name but mine, as well." 

I think I might have used a similar ending in a 5th grade essay about tornadoes. It was a pretty good essay, for a 5th grader.