Winter Cheese & Airport Security: Americans Do It Better

I have always loved fall and winter. You know what's better than hot, sweaty summer discomfort; better than pit-stained tank-tops on sweaty men with hairy shoulders; and better than the smell of b.o. and back-alley public urinals? Warm blankets by the fire; sweaters, scarves, mittens, and completely-clothed strangers; a blast to the nose of caramelized oven-air from fresh batches of gingerbread or holiday cookies; averting those same fully advertised public urinals in fresh snow. The best thing of all about the colder seasons? The cheese.

Winter cheeses are traditionally richer because winter milk is higher in butterfat late in the lactation cycle. Milk composition is also affected by diet changes in winter months, when feed is supplemented by grain and silage as colder weather begins to limit pasture availability. What winter milk lacks in grass-fed nutritional benefits and delicate flavor nuances of terroir, it emphatically reconciles with a body slam of intense, fatty, unctuous, creaminess.

And guess what America? Despite what the old-world traditionalist and globe-trotting, new-age, landed gentry might tell you, the finest winter cheeses in the world are not all found in Europe. Two of the very best seasonal cheeses are American born. Both Rogue River Blue and Rush Creek Reserve also happen to appear on my list of foods I would request for my last meal on Earth.

Just last year Rogue Creamery's Rogue River Blue was named one of the best cheeses on the planet at the World Cheese Awards in England. The Oregon cheese was one of the first American-made cheeses to be exported to Europe (and for a long time only one of two American cheeses being sold in Europe). It is without a doubt my very favorite blue cheese. If I could find it for under $39/lb, I would buy it by the wheel.

The cost is absolutely worth it. Released only in the fall and winter when richer milk is available, it disappears again around late February and March (depending on demand). It is creamy and peppery, with a sweet nuttiness owed to being wrapped in grape leaves that have been macerated in pear brandy. The green leaf-ensconced wheel is reminiscent of the of the Spanish blue, Valdeon, similarly wrapped in Sycamore leaves. Valdeon is a delightfully peppery blue in it's own right. But in a head-to-head match up Rogue River Blue is the Maserati facing off against a guy riding a Rascal in a street race.

The second amazing winter cheese is Uplands Cheese Company's Rush Creek Reserve from Wisconsin. In 2011, I experienced Rush Creek Reserve with a good friend and fellow cheesemonger for the first time. We were both left on the verge of tears. At its peak, Rush Creek is a spoonable, thick, joy-filled custard dance of bacony, beef brothy, woodsy, and sweet grassy flavors. It is a small washed-rind wheel wrapped with spruce bark and sold whole. I call it a friendship cheese because the whole wheel is meant to be eaten in one sitting with good company.

Rush Creek Reserve pays homage to Vacherin Mont d'Or, a cheese nearly identical in appearance and style. Like many winter cheeses, Vacherin follows an Old World cheesemaking tradition based on transhumans, or the movement of people and livestock with the seasons. In the Alps, after the summer months are over and the reckless partying up on the mountaintop pastures comes to a close, the herd makes its way down to the valley for the colder winter months. The milk during this season, while fattier, is less bountiful. Therefore, the cheesemakers don't have quite enough to make the larger wheels of hard Alpine cheeses. But they do have just enough to make the smaller gooey wheels of Vacherin. Uplands Dairy honors this tradition by only making Rush Creek during the winter months, and making their firmer, larger Alpine-style Pleasant Ridge Reserve during the spring and summer when the cows are on pasture.

Vacherin and Rush Creek have similar flavor profiles, but in many ways Rush Creek does it better (in my opinion). Vacherin is an exceptional cheese with many devotees. It is equally worth the anticipation of Winter. But it is slightly more vegetal and not quite as beefy, bacony, and bold as Rush Creek. If you have the misfortune of being a vegetarian, then Rush Creek is a far superior route to a meaty flavor fix.

Washed rind cheeses like Rush Creek and Vacherin are potently smelly, especially when un-refrigerated. So let's say you are carrying a wheel of Rush Creek reserve in your carry-on luggage. You should, then, be prepared to have everyone assume you haven't bathed.

On a recent trip back to NYC, the very friend who shared that weirdly existential moment of first eating Rush Creek kindly gave me a wheel to take home. Knowing that I'd be hard pressed to find Rush Creek Reserve anywhere in Texas much less in Del Rio, I guarded that cheese with my life and kept it in my carry-on near my jewelry and wallet. If someone shoved rotting vegetables and a gassy toddler into my backpack, it may have come close to matching the smell. This did not please TSA. The multiple other greasy, brick-like pieces of cheese next to it also did not please TSA.

There was a moment of terror in my heart when I suspected the Rush Creek reserve may have sufficiently warmed and become too runny, and thus, akin to a liquid. I began pep-talking my gut, imagining I'd have to sit next to the security line and eat the entire wheel by myself before going to my gate. It would not be thrown out. Fortunately, a quick scan and second trip through the x-ray proved it was not a foul-smelling explosive device.

I've traveled with cheese in my carry-on many times. Each time, my bag is searched. Each time I see the bemusement behind the askance looks the TSA agents give me. And I have to believe I've made their day a little brighter. I suppose a TSA agent's job is a lot of discarding shaving cream, reading the fluid ounces on obnoxiously-sized perfume bottles, re-scanning mouthwash. Pretty boring stuff. Imagine the joy of uncovering a sack of delicious winter cheese! Finding the most well-fed malodorous holiday traveler of them all! Maybe it's just my imagination, but I have to believe those winter cheeses performed a Christmas miracle: making a TSA agent smile.

Winter really is the most wonderful time of the year.

Shepherds of Cheese: A Journey

It's been a while. I know. Living the cheesy life in Del Rio has been getting progressively better. But as it is wont to do, Life got in the way a bit.

Shortly after I connected with the Kitchen in town where I could teach cheese classes, I also started working a nine-to-five day job because, well, my student loans keep reminding me that a graduate degree might be one of the worst investments around. I am fortunate to have found a great work environment and an opportunity to pay the bills during our Del Rio tenure. But at the end of the day it does what most day jobs do: leave me too tired to pursue life passions. In sum, I haven't really been making much cheese at home lately.

That's not to say I haven't had any cheesy stories to tell. I've just done a bad job of motivating myself as both cheese and writing go. I aim to fix that.

Let's talk cheese classes first. Since we last spoke, I started the second semester of classes. Last semester, I focused on home cheesemaking. This semester I decided to focus on, my favorite, cheese-eating. The difficulty of doing a series of tasting classes in Del Rio deserves the attention of its own post.

For the cheesemaking classes I could just order my supplies from the internet, prepare a demo batch the day before, and repeat in class. Doing a tasting class requires considerably more planning.

I've said it before, but as it pertains to cheese, Del Rio is, in a word, lame. You have to go to San Antonio if you want something other than Oaxaca cheese, or a block of Manchego that's been in plastic vacuum wrap for months and, though "imported," may well have been made from the milk of Del Rio's stray cat and dog population from the taste of it. So tack on a 2.5 hour trip the weekend before class. This also means I have to time the class according to a scheduled and independent need to leave town such that I'm not blowing $100 on gas just to get cheese.

To add insult to injury, there is no cheese shop in San Antonio. The options are Whole Foods or Central Market, both of which have acceptable selections. They're acceptable, that is, if you don't mind sifting through the pre-cuts, having zero personalized help from a cheesemonger, and paying a hefty mark-up.

Shopping in a specialty grocery store also means: 1) I have to be vigilant about re-wrapping the cheese in breathable cheese paper or wax paper so it can sit in my refrigerator for an entire week before class, and 2) I have to be extra vigilant about looking at the "pack date" on each pre-cut.

Both of those points are often overlooked, but crucially important. Sure if you're snagging a piece cheese from your local mega-center-supergiant-market that was packed and shipped in a vacuum seal, then it was either made to live that way or there's just nothing you can do about that faint taste of plastic. But a piece of Montgomery Cheddar or perfectly ripened Taleggio should never be suffocated by the succubus of shrink wrap for days on end. It should be left intact until shortly before it finds its forever belly, at which point it should be delicately caressed by a carefully folded wrap job in wax or cheese paper. If you see a piece of cheese with a pack date of more than a couple days, and there is any warm body behind the cheese counter, then you insist (nicely) that they cut you a fresh piece. And then you rush that piece(s) home and immediately transfer it from its plastic coffin to wax paper. The cheese and your tastebuds deserve no less.

The importance of who that warm body behind the cheese counter is also of importance. I've been a cheesemonger. I'd like to think a decent one, but at the very least, one who cared about and loved the product. But I also know from the consumer end how a good cheesemonger can turn an ordinary cheese purchase into an exceptional one. If there's nobody there to help you who really knows and cares about the cheeses, then you leave with a stack of forgettable snacks. Those snacks may be tasty, but you have no appreciation of how they fit together, how they were made, why they taste the way they do, and which taste better with your semi-sweet off-dry blush red table wine (the answer is none; get a better wine. What are you? In high school?). Worst of all, you likely won't even remember what you had even if you liked it because you never had a conversation about it.

If, like me, you have a working knowledge of what cheeses are what, what cheeses you need, or what cheeses you like, you STILL need a cheesemonger.

You need someone there to guide you to the cheese that has a few days to peak versus what needs to be eaten right away. This was especially important for me because I had a full week to kill before serving it for class. With soft-ripened cheeses, I had to use my best judgment from feeling and sniffing through the plastic.

You need someone there who knows the selection to help you come up with ideas for a specific crowd, purpose, or occassion. Because I didn't have the luxury of previewing the selection a few days in advance I had to pace around the cheese case for a solid twenty minutes, rolodexing the cheeses before me by style, country, milk variety in order to figure out the best pairings and variety. And if they're not going to let you try the cheeses (which any good cheese shop should), you need someone to tell you how cheeses compare in taste.

Admittedly, for the cheesemonger at Whole Foods, I was a tough audience -- like having a lawyer on your jury panel. But at least someone was there, watching over the cheeses on their journey to a good home. Sometimes you need to take the small victories. It feels good to be back.

Grains, Grains, Go Away

For my last class of the summer series, I saved the most popular cheese: Mozzarella. It was the most well-attended class of the three, as I had expected. It's trickier than ricotta. It's more hands-on than yogurt. And once you start stretching it, you realize it's also undeniably fun. You feel like you really accomplished something with that milk when you finish a batch and wrap up your little mozzarella ball baby to sleep in the fridge.

We cheated for the sake of time and used citric acid instead of starter cultures, but I was still able to tie together all the science nuggets about fermentation, pH, enzymes, and milk composition from previous classes. In that sense, my cheese curriculum was a success. Yet, for this last cheese, it became clear what you can and cannot get away with in the cheese vat. While it may not be consistent in flavor and quality, cheese is usually pretty forgiving of mistakes. You'll end up with something resembling a dairy solid, whether it's edible or not. With mozzarella your pratfalls aren't as easy to dust off when you can't even accomplish the final glorious step of stretching the cheese. The entire reason mozzarella is so much fun to make!

When one of my group's cheese stretched but the other group's didn't, I realized that teaching cheesemaking with half-assed ingredients is much different from making-do in your own kitchen with the same half-assed ingredients. With the latter, nobody is there to share in your embarrassment. It is impossible to teach someone perfection while equipping them with imperfect tools and REALLY imperfect milk.

I've had my fair share of mozzarella failures with storebought milk, both with citric acid and starter cultures. But after several attempts, I know how the milk will react and I have acquired the right equipment for it. I'm intimately familiar with the wholly imperfect process that leads to perfect mozzarella from unloved, roughly treated, questionably altered storebought milk. I've learned to work with a monster. My students, however, had inaccurate thermometers and no idea what level of graininess they could expect of their curds while still having a stretchable mozzarella in the end.

Before I even drained the raw milk batch

I had to teach my students the impossible task of figuring out when their curds looked just the right amount of crappy to still be a cheese. I found myself saying this bit a lot: "When it starts to get kind of grainy, don't worry, that's kind of what it should look like; it will smooth out in the stretch." What kind of way is that to teach? What if we had med students learning that if it starts to loose a lot of blood, don't worry, it's probably not going to die yet. It'll work itself out with some sutures. That's not the kind of instruction that elicits a lot of confidence.

So I took my lesson back home and opened my eyes to how incredibly amazing life can be if you have a fresh source of milk. In Texas, raw milk sales are legal if you are licensed for it and sell directly from your farm store. I got my hands on a gallon of raw cow's milk from the closest licensed milk source and began my experiment. For the sake of just seeing what would happen with a different milk, I used the citric acid shortcut.

NO graininess?!

Stretching in hot water! My
storebought
batches fall apart & dissolve
 in hot water or whey,
forcing me to always heat
the curd in the microwave

As soon as the rennet had done its work and I was ready to cut the curd, I realized screwing up a batch of citric acid mozzarella with raw milk was virtually impossible. The curd was so thick and smooth that it wanted to stretch almost immediately. I didn't even have to drain the whey and salvage the grainy curd orphans to come out of there with a luscious, meltable stretch. In fact, there was absolutely no graininess to speak off. It had a unique piquant taste that mellowed out after a few days to creamy, saltiness. The flavor was far from the boring plasticine mouthfeel of storebought milk that I have to mask with olive oil and lots of basil.

I'm on my tippy toes

And the stretch! My god, the stretch! That mozzarella had a stretch that won't quit! I was in love. In love with a forbidden fruit, as raw milk mozzarella will never ever be legal. I can traffic as much of it as I want to my own belly at home. But by its very nature it can never be aged for more than 60 days. I take solace in knowing that I've had amazing mozzarella that's pasteurized. I could even re-create that amazing stretch with pasteurized milk as long as the milk itself was fresh and of superior quality. If you have good milk that is delicately pasteurized, that luscious mozzarella minx with seductive stretch can forever be your muse.

Temet Nosce: What I learned from Law & Cheese

Technically, I learned that nugget of latin from the The Matrix first, but it makes for a less vapid lesson to ignore that fact. In any event, I meant to post this early last month in honor of exactly 3 years since I left law for cheese. This was originally an article I wrote in 2011 for my law school alma mater's student-run digital newspaper, and their published version can be found here. My frustration with BigLaw has tempered incrementally over time. There's still no way in hell that the professional legal world is for me, but my feelings for the firm have softened even in the 2 years since I wrote this. I admire the fortitude of wonderful people who have made BigLaw their lives and who, more importantly, don't suck -- and can bring a little bit of not-sucking into the law firm environment -- fighting the establishment norm from within, if you will. And I genuinely appreciate the firm for making me a stronger person and a person better able to seek what I need in a vocation. Knowing that both what we do and how we do it must fit with who we are as individuals is a lesson that rings as true as ever. Oh, and I appreciate that it led me to lifelong friends and the "generous boyfriend" mentioned below who is now bound to me for eternity...

At Happy Hour on September 15, 2008, I joined Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. in pouring out a little liquor on the ground for our fallen selves — figuratively, of course. That morning I had begun my first day at work in Washington, D.C.’s BigLaw scene, guiding myself into a career that I would grow to hate with the fire of a thousand suns. Meanwhile, only four hours up I-95, Lehman Brothers was filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and cutting the ribbons on one of the country’s most grave recessions. Big day. Big day.

I didn't know what a Lehman Brothers collapse meant as I walked to work that first day, nor did I care.  I could only focus on the sinking feeling I had in my stomach that I was entering a world in which I didn't belong.

On paper, my resume signaled the makings of a good lawyer. But that morning, when I passed construction workers jack hammering away at the street, I pictured the scene at the end of Office Space and wondered if I would prefer their job to the 11th floor office I would soon be filling. Was this career the right choice for my passions, desires, and personality?

Almost two years later, I knew the answer to that question was a resounding “Helllll naw.”  In the summer of 2010, I ditched the financial safety of a legal career for what sounded like a joke.  I swapped the smell of a fetid office that reeked of desperation and rage with that of sweet rural Connecticut air perfumed with cow manure, so that I could become: a Cheese Apprentice.

I always knew cheese was my first love. When I was five years old, I would take my mother’s short naps as an opportunity to fix myself cheddar and ice cream sandwiches — two slices of cheddar and two spoonfuls of slightly warmed vanilla ice cream spread on toast. Everything was a vehicle for cheese. There was no shame as to how much or how often cheese came into play. Sometimes, even now, when I want a quick salty snack, I will stand over the sink and shove a fistful of shredded Parmesan into my mouth. Still no shame.

In college, the idea of running my own cheese shop sounded glorious. At the time, it also seemed like a pipe dream that would accompany “movie star” and “professional break dancer” on the embarrassing list titled “JOBS” that I kept on wrinkled notebook paper as a child. At the firm, I had time to reflect on the path I had chosen and “cheese shop owner” seemed less like a career born of naive hope. It became a reasonable alternative that would, at the very least, salve the wounds of complete demoralization left by the law.

So, I set-out to learn as much as possible about artisanal cheese from farm to table. I worked with two cheesemakers on opposite coasts making cheese, aging cheese, packaging cheese, selling cheese, and eating cheese for as long as my savings account and boyfriend’s generosity could bear. If I wanted to give my dream a chance, I needed to do it right. That meant learning as much as I could about the industry and the craft in order to find the right place for myself within it.

The argument that everyone who fails at surviving BigLaw does so because they don’t like working long hours, paying their dues, and humbling themselves to the experience is absurd. I started working long, grueling, physical hours making cheese, just to gain experience from the bottom up. I obviously wasn't doing it for the pay or some quarter-life crisis joyride. I would leave cheesemaking work soaked in sweat, aching in parts of my body I didn't know contained muscles, and happy for the minimum wage.

I like to move around, talk to people, work with my hands, create. I also like a little joy in the workplace. Law just wasn't meeting those needs. As a cheese intern, I was nurturing a hand-made product I loved while working for someone who appreciated my efforts.  I value the people I befriend on any journey, but cheese people are some of the warmest people I've ever met.

Never once did I consider myself a legal burnout.  It takes many more years in practice and a lot more office-place torture than what I received to truly burn out.  In fact, looking around BigLaw that first god-awful year of the recession, I realized, comparatively, I was treated fairly well.  Yet, regardless of the firm, the blame fell on the shoulders of those with the least distance to fall.  It was the associates’ fault for not having the killer instinct to grovel for work that just didn't exist.  Even the nicer firms were treating associates like the grunts we were.  To say I was “lucky” in my job is like saying one STD is better than the other.

The recession brought out abundant free time and the worst qualities in people, allowing me to learn what I genuinely wanted and needed quickly.  In fact, the national impact of that day in mid-September 2008 was immediate.  As soon as we completed associate orientation, we received our first assignment.  The next day, nothing.  We pestered partners for assignments.  We groveled.  We took on pro bono and would later be delicately chastised for taking on too much pro bono, leaving little room on our dockets for real billable hours.  What billable hours?  In my first full month, I billed as much as I should have billed in two days, and not for a lack of pestering and begging.

The realities of the cheesy life also carry moments of sheer panic.  I worry about student loans, paychecks that barely cover expenses, when I can take my belongings out of storage, and what the end-game will look like.  As I write this, life and my cheese dream have temporarily led me to a desolate town on the Texas-Mexico border making homemade mozzarella and commuting 11 hours each week to a part-time cheesemaking job in Waco. The entire transition continues to be a nomadic one with plenty of challenging variables.  Yet, I’m much happier now than I was before.

A feeble anonymous jab I received on my associate review, which I kept, always reminds me that I made the right choice in leaving BigLaw for a better fit.  (Constructive criticism does not exist in BigLaw.  Don’t expect that people who wear suits are grown-ups.)  It didn't take much to deduce the identity of the reviewer and realize that his passive aggressiveness was regarding a case in which I had no interest for a group of lawyers who quite literally made my skin crawl.

“Samia often gives off the air that she’d rather be somewhere else.”

Yes!  In fact, I would!  I would prefer not to be around tools like you and douchebaggery like this, making a deeper butt groove in my horribly uncomfortable desk chair.  That was the first time I agreed with that associate. 

The bottom line remains that I just was not built for professional office-work.  When I scoured online job banks for legal careers, my eye always wandered to more physical vocations and crafts with concrete aims.  Museum curator at the Smithsonian.  Federal Air Marshal.  Construction.  Cleaning crew?—Cleaning turds off the toilets would simply be the literal version of the intellectual exercise I was already performing anyway.  I wasn't asking for anything glamorous or lucrative.  I just wanted to feel less like a belligerent waste of space and more like I was physically able to bring some tangible joy or value to someone, anyone.  Be it judged a success or failure, whatever it is I actually end up doing at the end of this whole adventure, discovering the job qualities that I value most is the gift I never have to return.

Believe it or not, you couldn't contain my joy when I originally got the offer to become a media law associate.  As a former journalism major and First Amendment fiend, media law was exactly the field I wanted to practice.  I did everything I could during recruitment period to find the right career fit for me and naively thought I had succeeded.

There are issues in the legal field that still interest me.  I enjoyed trying to help the pro bono clients I had the chance to work with.  First Amendment cases always catch my eye.  Now that I’m working with cheese, I've taken a shine to food safety, USDA, and FDA issues, and won't foreclose some involvement in that legal frontier.  I applaud any intelligent lawyer or law professor I meet.  Some of my best friends, including my boyfriend, are fantastic lawyers.  I want people to be good lawyers.  Worthwhile causes in this world need those of you who have the aptitude, skills, and fortitude to practice law.  Simply put, I did not.

The unlikely lesson of this story is that I never once regretted going to law school.  I enjoyed learning the law and I made lifelong friends through our shared experience.  Plus, law school led me to this path I love, even if I have no idea where it will spit me out.

If you often wonder whether law school was the right decision, I can’t say anything to answer that quandary.  I’m a cheesemaker paying off enormous student loans spent on a legal career that never was; my platitudes would get you nowhere.  Truthfully, I believe being able to “think like a lawyer” is a virtue about as impressive as saying you can count like a banker.  Still, I do believe some elusive quality about law school gave me the ability to better assess how an impractical possibility can become a reality.  That, my friends, is invaluable.  So too are the friendships and bonds you create from a few extra years of dabbling in the university of what-am-I-going-to-do-with-my-life.  I wouldn't be where I am today without the support of friends, many of whom I met in law school and at the law firm.  So, while you are a poorer person for it, you’re at least a smarter person for it, and hopefully richer in the relationships you've made.

Just don’t be an idiot when it’s all over.  It may take you time to find the right opportunity, but don’t throw decades of life away on a job that doesn't fit you.  Partners I respected and admired at the firm often wondered why they spent so long doing what they did.  Your livelihood and vocation is not something you have the luxury of forcing yourself into for status like a pair of skinny jeans you bought for a Vampire Weekend show.  If you find yourself in your BigLaw or even LittleLaw office with a nagging suspicion that you should have tried something different, get out quickly and regret nothing.  For almost two years, my framed diplomas sat on my office floor.  Colleagues thought I was making some veiled critique about my legal education.  In reality, like me, the diplomas didn't belong as a fixture in that office.  But I was always proud I had them.

Curd's the Word

Prior to my last cheese class I had made poutine-style (or Wisconsin-style) squeaky cheese curds only once in my life. A little over two years ago, I turned a gallon of perfectly fine milk into a flavorless, rubbery mound of crumbles. I chronicled my horror at its complete inability to melt like a good, well-behaved cheese. Yet, I ate every last piece, chewing each bite several dozen times, as though I were a ruminant rechewing the cud from its first stomach to slowly break down and digest the monstrous snack. Each mouthful was self-inflicted, mandible-degenerating punishment for a job poorly done.

Since then, I hadn't messed with a true cultured and rennet set cheese in the kitchen. At home I was playing T-ball with only vinegar and citric acid to ripen the milk. So it was either extremely ballsy or extremely foolish when I decided to demonstrate making cheese curds to a class full of people seeking my wisdom. Alongside yogurt and kefir, the curds would serve as a primer on either bacteria cultures or my abject failure.

Before class, I would need to make an instructional finished batch. The recipes for cheese curds and for yogurt take several hours to reach a final product. Most of the steps are best described as waiting around for the cultures or temperature to work their magic. I would only be able to instruct the class with a truncated version of all the steps and the science behind each one. The finished product would need to be pulled out of a magic time-lapsed compartment (the fridge) as a food wizard would do on a cooking show.

I was confident about the yogurt, but the cheese curds made my eyeballs sweaty. Despite my fear tears, this latest foray in cheese curds was a success right away. Sometime between 2010 and now, I was given the gift of patience to let each step run its course, allowing the cheese curds to reach the appropriate pH for the perfect texture, meltability, and squeak. Actually I was given the gift of Netflix streaming to keep me distracted for 90 minutes while the cultures properly ripened the milk, but I like to think of it as carefully refined tradecraft.

I'm deducing an explanation (or fabricating a delusion) for my initial failure as follows: I never let the cheese curds acidify long enough to reach the appropriate pH of 5.4ish, leaving the resulting protein matrix too hard and rubbery, squeaking like a tire in my mouth instead of a delightful cheese curd. In addition, I was stirring and heating too quickly out of impatience, which can lead to the graininess especially in the weak coagulum formed by store-bought milk. After cutting the coagulum, it seemed to help to let the cut curds just sit at the bottom of the heated pot for intermittent chunks of time while the temperature did its work in releasing whey, stirring only occasionally.

"Poutine" without the gravy.
Maybe I'll start a local food revolution,
add some salsa verde or chipotle
and call it TexMex Poutine. 

A proper cheesemaker always uses a pH meter to ensure consistency and accuracy in each recipe's flavor profile and texture. Even a home cheesemaker would benefit from having a pH meter to troubleshoot more complex cheeses that require ripening from starter cultures. But I'm unemployed, so I allocated that Benjamin to Netflix, allowing me continuous streaming of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia to pass the time between each step. Right now, I know roughly 3-4 episodes will get me to the appropriate pH before renneting, and another 2.5 episodes after cutting the curd will get me to a pH of 5.4-5.3 where the curds are perfect. Ideally though, I would be able gauge exactly when the curd was reaching each pH point so that I would never again end up with the horrible inaugural batch from which my jaw still suffers.

The cheese curds have been a success the last three times I've made them and an awesome snack alternative to the dismal grocery store finds here. I even marinated a batch in olive oil, garlic and fresh rosemary from my garden. That flavor punch impressed the hell out of people.

The class itself was also a success...I think. It was difficult to demonstrate the steps for yogurt and cheese curds simultaneously without the time to concentrate on one at a time or to fully finish each step. Plus, things got real with the science of lactic acid bacteria, probiotics, and casein polarity. I can only hope each student was able to pick up the bones for troubleshooting and experimenting on their own. And I hope that they either acquire a pH meter or a media streaming subscription. Whatever works for them.

Curd Nerd Boot Camp

I remember the first time I really started completely unsupervised home-cheesemaking. I'd been making cheese with real cheesemakers for several months, but doing it on my own without real equipment or trusted recipes was the darkest of comedies. I remember going through gallons of failed batches at a time, terrifying the little old ladies at the grocery store with my unreasonably sized milk purchases. Is she making poisonous milk meth or dairy drank to sell to school children?

Because of all those failures, experiments, and uncertainty as to whether I would have cheese or swill at the end of the day, I have had an irrational fear of teaching cheesemaking classes. I finally had to face that fear a couple of weeks ago at my first cheesemaking class at the Philip Mahl Memorial Kitchen in Del Rio.

The PMMK is housed in what's known as the Firehouse, an old, uh, firehouse, which has been converted into an art gallery with a demo kitchen in the back. It's like a piece of Brooklyn took a crap right in downtown Del Rio. In a good way. The Firehouse and PMMK offer amazing classes, including pottery, photography, ballet, sushi-making, and wine tastings. They'd never had a true home-cheesemaking class before, which is where I inserted myself in an effort to be a productive citizen. For the Spring and Summer classes I was scheduled to teach a cheesemaking series: three classes that I could structure however I wanted. My plan was to gradually increase in difficulty from class to class, while leaving myself some options to teach in a future series...if I was any good at this type of thing.

With only two weeks of limited advertising in a small town, I fully expected maybe two students at most to enroll. So, I was completely terrified when I found out that 9 people were taking the class. Would the cheese turn out in front of all those people. Of course it would. My first class was fresh acid-set cheeses (ricotta and paneer) and butter, which are the easiest dairy products to make at home and nearly impossible to screw up. But my mind wouldn't let me forget all that wasted milk from the days of yore.

If cooking is art and baking is science, then cheese is baking's fraternal twin. I learned early in my cheesemaking training that cheese is deeply rooted in science.

Well, my very initial cheese training would be best be classified as binge eating dairy. From there, I became more nuanced by actually reading the labels and names of what I was eating. Fast forward to formal vocational training, which I received in the cheesemaking room and behind the cheese counter. Somewhere in between gorging and working, I took classes to learn where cheese came from at the University of Vermont's cheese program (VIAC). That curriculum was created by a doctor of food and dairy science.  Everyone there knew oodles about making and eating cheese, but most of the instructors were first and foremost, scientists.

So, from the very beginning I knew the various components of a casein micelle and I knew the gospel of the pH reading. Some of it was completely lost on me until I faced an actual cheese vat, but I started off intrigued by the details of why milk does what it does on its journey to cheese.

Most home cheesemaking classes will give you the basic information: what is a culture, what is rennet, here is a basic recipe and here's how you stretch pre-made mozzarella curds. For the basic hobbyist cheesemaker who isn't geeked out on science that's probably just fine. But I'm of the opinion that on a bad cheesemaking day, even the hobbyist wants to (and needs to) know why their curd never formed and they just poured several gallons of failed batches down the drain. The only way to know that is the science behind why your milk is screwing with you.

I divided the science into three main categories, milk composition, basic cheesemaking steps, and basic
cheesemaking ingredients. While I was lecturing I had them pass around and shake a jar full of heavy cream that would eventually (after enough shaking) turn into butter. It offered a distraction from my voice and our first lesson for the day. Then we made butter the easy way (with a hand mixer), leading to our true cheesemaking.

Cutting paneer samples

I divided the class into two groups: one made ricotta with vinegar and the other made ricotta with lemon juice. While they were working over their pots, I talked about making ricotta with buttermilk and with the microwave shortcut, both of which I think are unreliable and open up a world of wasted milk. After we strained the two batches of ricotta and compared the differences, we made one more batch with vinegar to press into paneer.

I tried to keep all science information quarantined to nuggets specifically related to the category of fresh acid-coagulated cheeses we were making. For instance, after the broad overview, we skipped entirely over starter cultures and rennet in favor of more detail on proteins and fat, the main players in heat and acid-precipitated cheeses like whole milk ricotta.

The students were wonderful and very interested in the science, or at the very least indulged my belief that the science was important. All the cheeses turned out. Best of all, I had fun. I really enjoyed teaching the variations on each recipe and constantly reminding them that cheesemaking is a big science experiment that allows them to figure out for themselves which modifications and techniques will actually work for them.

As the series continues, we'll build on the science and I'll indoctrinate my students with all the necessary curd nerdiness, thereby totally validating my need to know exactly how everything works.

Spring Renewal

In dreaded anticipation of the dawn of my personal hell -- summer in Del Rio's 100+ degree heat -- I'm sucking the life out of one of our last few temperate days. (I know those of you still covered in snow and ice hate me right now.). I'll be spending the next hour on my stoop eating some homemade ricotta, honey, and berries, swatting bees away like a madwoman.

After a month of intense yardwork at the new house, recovering from a recklessly bad case of poison ivy, traveling for friends' special occasions, and the futile search for a day-job in the sad state of affairs Del Rio calls a local "economy," this little homemade ricotta snack is my detox. I'm wiping the slate clean and renewing my goals and objectives in time for spring.

This ricotta is from a test batch, and only the second batch of cheese since moving into the new house. Yes, I'm ashamed.  I made it in anticipation of my first cheesemaking class at the local arts center in a week. I made a couple varieties with different acid coagulants (lemon juice, vinegar, buttermilk) and with different ratios of added cream (from one cup to zero), to find the consistency appropriate for a given culinary purpose. Berries and honey, in case you were wondering, demand a 4:1cup milk to cream ratio with either a vinegar or citric coagulant. Okay, okay, it's less of a test batch and more of a proving-to-myself-that-I-still-enjoy-it batch.

Boy WILL I ever enjoy it....Tad's still at work, so this batch and this bottle is all for me. Boom! Happy Friday!

Straight Outta Comte

On Valentine's Day last year, I was earning my bones working one of the busiest days I had seen at any retail store much less a cheese shop. I recounted in last year's post how an unyielding 6 hours of cheeses sales was my sink-or-swim introduction to real cheesemongering. Since leaving the retail cheese world, there have been a lot of weird tasks and rituals that my muscle memory misses.

Pulling the cling wrap tightly around an oddly shaped wedge to create a perfect wrinkle-and-bubble-free display for the case (I imagine the cheese thinking it's getting tightly tucked into bed). Creating the perfect crisp folds in the butcher paper to neatly wrap a purchased slice like a Christmas present. Wielding a giant knife cleanly and straightly down a firm aged wheel with the weight of your whole body to cut a (nearly) perfect quarter-pound. Tasting the first nibble from a freshly cut wheel, the insides of which haven't seen the light of day in months or years, yet which nature intended to go directly into the darkness of my belly after their first seconds of freedom. Processing the first waft of controlled dairy spoilage that hits you when opening a refrigerator filled to the brim with cheese.

Even then I knew this year would be much...quieter, but equally exciting. While I might not have many delicious cheeses to spend my evening with, I'd have my real life human forever-Valentine. I was wrong. I got to have both.

Thanks to...
THIS:

And THIS: 

I had ALL this cheese in my fridge because of some very special friends I'm lucky to have made over the last three cheese-filled years. An entire shelf stuffed with cheese from Cato Corner, Black Sheep Creamery, and Bedford Cheese Shop. A package at my doorstep with whole wheels set aside from larger batches especially for me. Another shipment containing a curated-with-love selection of four delicious slices of domestic and European cheeses I could never find within 1,000 miles of here. A whole loaf that someone (maybe everyone) remembered was my most favorite bread ever (Amy's Bakery Potato Onion Rye), which I would always poach to take home at the end of the night's wastage.

That's love.

Once again, I could wield giant knives to cut open wheels and taste the first slice. I could trace back the creases a friend had used to meticulously fold a wedge of cheese. I could pull that saran wrap tightly around the remaining portion of bread. I could let my tastebuds have their very own Valentine's day, romancing an amazing piece of three-year-old raw milk Comte that I'd be hard pressed to find again for a long while. Best of all, my fridge smells like cheese -- and love -- when I open it.

The Dream Crusher

For those who know the comfort and profitability of an office job, who fantasize about how following your unconventional dreams would be a world replete with gumdrops, unicorns and self-satisfaction, this is the post that will kill those dreams. Sorry.

You might have noticed (if you still check this page) a significant period of radio silence from me since I left New York, got married, and moved back long-term to the borderlands of desert and brush. That's because I seriously have nothing to tell you.

Del Rio was an adventure when I first came here in 2010 after a year of cheesemaking and on the tail-end of an epic road trip. That was before I left for a year of cheesemongering in New York. On my return, the Rio Grande desert has lost a substantial amount of luster. I won't pretend like the sentiment contained in the preceding two sentences is anything but completely pretentious and fully cliched: Itinerant Midwestern girl moves to the big city with bright lights and everything else seems a little more dull and far less cosmopolitan on her return. Yeah I sound like a jackass. I know.

I guess you could call it the
 best most awful thing 

But it's the truth. After all, isn't ambition as much pretension as it is courage? Doesn't it contain an equal part of narcissism as it does creativity? If you wanted something really bad and find yourself in a dead end, doesn't all that selfishness sour into a fermented pot of self-pity and existential questioning? I had a life in New York. I had friends, new and old. I had a job with money for rent and fun. I had activities and exploration at my fingertips. I had a gym and amazing surroundings when things got stressful. I had food options when things got hungry. I was learning and bettering myself. I had a sense of purpose. I had cheese! Now I find myself without any of those things.

I've seen some places in my day and knew how Del Rio compared to most other big cities and small towns long before I moved to New York. So perhaps my cheerier outlook during my 2010 stint here was due to other factors. Maybe my two-day cheesemaking gig in Waco distracted me (an 11-hour commute I refuse to do again for safety, monetary and sanity reasons). Or maybe it was because I knew my stay would be much more temporary that time. Maybe I will feel better now if we had a house with a real kitchen for home cheesemaking and teaching cheesemaking classes, or a yard for some goats.

This image, my friends, is what the literati like to call
Juxtaposition

In any event, the transition of going from a whole lot of something to a whole lot of nothing has been, in a word, lame. I find myself rage-eating an entire tub of wine-infused cheese spread (glorified Easy Cheese) from a Holiday basket. Or standing over the sink while I devour a tub of pre-crumbled blue cheese that tastes like plastic. Just to get a fix.

But the worst part is the self-doubt. The wondering if my original plan was really such a genius idea. I've already realized in the last year that opening a retail store-front would force me back into the office doing administrative nonsense. And have I told you how much I freaking hate paperwork? But is cheesemaking much better for me? Sure it's more hands-on work, but I'm also a social creature. Would I really enjoy working completely alone over a pot or vat of cheese all day? Or did I love it so much ONLY because of the people I was able to work with and befriend?  I have met with a few goat breeders in the area, but do I really know how to handle an animal? My only pet in life has been a goldfish.

I have no idea what 2013 will have in store for me life-wise or cheese-wise. All I know, is that Jay-Z is full of crap. It is wholly false that making it in New York means you can make it anywhere. I'd like to see him try to start his career here. Jerk.