The Best Part of Spring

Ahhhhhhh dfa;lkdfjasl;kdfjklj!!!

I have a love-hate relationship with Spring. I love breezy patio weather, but I hate cold wet drizzle. I love the return of foliage, but I hate my allergies. I love the smell of the air when the seasons change, but at least for the two years I lived in DC and NYC, I hated the returning stench of public urination in the subway and metro stations. After having worked with cheese and on farms, there's only one thing about Spring I love unconditionally: baby animals.

On small farms, dairy or otherwise, kidding and lambing season is either starting or already in full swing, depending on the particular climate. In addition to birthing the cutest creatures on earth, those new mamas will be producing milk aplenty for their youngsters, the excess of which turns into delicious spring-time cheese. It's true that some breeds of goats and sheep can breed year-round. Additionally, some larger farms engineer ways to trigger a year-round breeding cycle for their animals (opinions differ on the merit of this practice). Some farms may even freeze excess milk to carry them through winter cheese making. The majority of fresh goat cheese, however, is coming into season right now.

To celebrate the season I partook of a gooey, young goat's milk robiola wrapped in fig leaves. Hello Spring! I was instantly drawn to this cheese in the store because 1) The pretty colors of orange twine against the dark green fig leaves caught my eye (I also shop for wine purely by the level of whimsy in the labels); and 2) When I sniffed it, I could taste the figs, which immediately intoxicated the pleasure synapses in my brain. It was a fig-tastic high.

Robiolas are from Northern Italy and can generally be made with varying combinations of goat, cow, or sheep's milk. This one in particular is made purely from goat's milk when it comes into season in the region (February-ish). The rich buttery texture is infused with a sweet fruity and vegetal taste from the leaves. Often when I take a gamble on a cheese I've never at least sampled, I'm mildly disappointed. This cheese, though, exceeded my expectations as soon as it hit the lips. I purchased a bottle of sparkling wine and a mild red wine with a fig on the label (it seemed appropriate, though not as whimsical as I'd like) to pair with the cheese. Both went well, but the crisp, dry sparkling wine was ideal. I also enjoyed taking a bite of cheese and shoving a couple figs in my mouth, chubby-bunny style. Two hours later, my roommate and I had finished all several hundred calories of butterfatty goodness and both bottles of wine. Okay Spring, you're pretty swell.

Barely Legal: Is it Worth the Risk?

There are a lot of directions in which this post could go...

Raw milk regulations, import taxes and tariffs, politics, the FDA, the USDA, affinage. Obviously these were all buzzword that came to mind when you saw this post, right? ...Riiight?

Well, my sleazy and chaste-minded friends, in case you didn't know, if an unpasteurized cheese has not had at least 60-days to age, it is off limits. Too young. 

The 60-day rule applies to both domestically made and imported cheeses. The given rationale being something something bacteria blah blah danger something something I'm an expert with no practical background in dairy science and/or a lobbyist with competing interests in the dairy industry blah blah yay nay blah blah dumb bill containing dumber regulation passed. (A nutshell of a potential direction this post will not be going.). 

Alas, the rule means many cheeses that the Old World has traditionally made, and made exceptionally well for centuries, as raw milk cheeses are next to impossible to find here in their authentic and historically-delicious form. These are soft, young, raw cheese luminaries that cheesemasters in Europe will age for a few weeks at most until the cheese reaches its full-flavored gooey prime. Brie, for instance, has a short life in the world of affinage. The place I worked in Waco made a rare and delightful raw milk brie. An uncommon treat that they had to carefully control by aging in temperatures that are far below normal for several weeks in order to slow down the aging process, allowing the cheese enough time to reach 60 days and not become a foul rock-hard disc of milk mess. 

So it's not impossible to find a raw milk version of these cheeses here, but it's very difficult and often prohibitively so. It's no joke to get scrutinized by a federal health inspector for making a "taboo" cheese, nor is it a slap on the wrist to get flagged by the FDA for importing a cheese that's too close to the 60-day limit.  (A restaurateur is allowed to make cheese out of his wife's breast milk and that's not taboo but apparently raw milk Reblechon is.). I've heard stories about inspectors giving importers the stink eye just because the label on a soft cheese coming off the ship says raw (au lait cru in French). Over 60 days? Yes. But just barely legal. 

But it does get here sometimes. Is it all worth the risk in making or importing dangerously young versions of raw milk cheeses? 

Cheese connoisseurs will complain about the difficulty in finding a true Camembert, for example, or the tasteless, sub-par pasteurized counterparts Europe is forced to send over (I imagine the continent collectively guffawing over all the superior cheese they get to keep for themselves). Their complaints are justified. To a degree. 

I work in a city that's crazy about cheese; therefore, it's not hard to find the bolder cheese proprietors willing to weazle and claw their way to a young imported cheese. The cheeses I've discovered in the last few months have opened up a new world of deliciously naughty young cheeses.  Pecorino Gregoriano, an extremely young and soft pecorino from the Abruzzo region of Italy, rocked my cheese paradigm. Imagine wrapping all the delicious yeasty, sweet profiles of a bread and carb binge into a compact (and totally carb-free!), fudgy cheese bite. I'd never tasted a cheese profile like that before, and couldn't begin to figure out how you could even get sheep's milk to acquire that taste. It was young, raw and legal...but dangerously so.  

So yeah, when even the average cheese-joe goes to his local grocery store in a lukewarm cheese city to find a bunch of pasteurized Old World knock offs, it does feel a little generic and underwhelming after knowing that the real deal is out there somewhere. It's true that most of those mass produced imports are boring, bland and just lame as hell. So is it worth the risk to go raw and young? Definitely. If you do it right. Keep a clean shop if you're making the stuff (inspectors don't like meth-lab bathtub style raw milk cheese cooks), and source your imports as closely to reputable European farms and producers as possible if you're selling the stuff (you can't complain about "business" trips to Europe to eat cheese). 

But we shouldn't rule out the beauty of pasteurized cheese entirely. Don't let any cheese snob, French, New Yorker, Houstonian, or otherwise, tell you that there is no such thing as a good pasteurized cheese. Because I'm here to tell you there most definitely is! Grocery store brie is disgusting, yes. Pasteurization and production can be done carefully and gently, however, such that you're not totally destroying the flavor profile of the milk and forthcoming cheese. Several of my new favorite cheeses that I've discovered at the shop are in fact pasteurized, as are many domestic cheeses I've enjoyed in the past. Tome Chabrin a tart and sweet goat's milk wheel from France actually tastes like figs, another flavor profile I hadn't experienced. Cheesemakers can control the quality and flavor of pasteurized cheese through effective use of starter cultures.

We all want a little danger in our lives. So if that means I'll have to come back to New York several times a year to find mine in raw, young, spoiled-milk, then so be it. Otherwise, wherever I end up, I'll enjoy the worthwhile pasteurized options available to me via more risk-averse cheese curators. I'm sure I can find something delicious. 

My First Cheese Plate

Last weekend I built my first cheese plate.

Yes, I've been eating cheese for a long time. Indeed, I've been a legit member of the cheese industry for more than a year. True, sometimes I've had an impromptu cheese party or tasting with friends and loved ones at home. But until now, everything has been a casual affair, often involving randomly selected cheeses from the sale bin. At best, my cheese consumption has involved cramming a bunch of cheeses onto a round dinner plate next to a box of water crackers. At worst, it's feasting on chunks and slices over the sink. The beautiful black cheese slate I bought for plating cheeses has been seeing great use as an oversized coaster for my coffee mugs.

I've never had to put together an honest to god cheese plate for a bonafide social gathering -- for which the cheeses needed to be curated and selected with a purpose, paired with thoughtful accompaniments, and plated in an aesthetically pleasing manner. My roommate and buddy, Ambyr, gave me that chance when she hosted a baby shower for our friend at our apartment last Friday night. My attempt to be helpful involved putting together a pre-dinner cheese partay.

Curating cheeses involves several variables: size of party, format, venue, and taste sensibilities of your crowd.

First and foremost, being that the guest of honor was with child, I selected three pasteurized milk cheeses. Whether to eat raw milk cheese during pregnancy is a matter of personal choice and cultural influence -- and in some circles a controversial matter at that. Opinions vary on whether raw milk cheeses pose a risk to the fetus by harboring certain harmful bacteria. Even soft pasteurized cheeses like blue cheeses and feta may be discouraged because of the fear that said bacteria are more likely to thrive in a high moisture environment. Given that (in our health system) the medical advice commonly given to pregnant women is, at the very least, to stay away from raw milk cheeses, I suggest erring on the side of caution when selecting and/or labeling cheeses for such an occasion. If you do select raw milk cheeses and you know some people in the crowd may be pregnant, always clearly label or announce which cheeses are raw. I eliminated any uncertainty by avoiding raw milk cheeses altogether for the shower. Besides, there are PLENTY of delicious pasteurized cheeses to choose from.

Pregnancy can also cause sensitivity to smells. So I also didn't select any super strong or stinky cheeses for fear of assaulting the guest of honor's gag reflex. I love me a good mnemonic, and someone once gave me this great adage for picking cheese varieties for a party: "Something old, something new, something stinky, something blue."  If you're only going with three cheeses, you can pick between the stinky and the blue. For quantities, it's best to go with three or four cheeses. Any more would be sensory overload. And as an appetizer course, one ounce of each cheese per person is usually more than enough.

Knowing that I was dealing with ten to fifteen laid back, fun people, who wouldn't taunt me with cheese snobbery or comment on the pedestrian nature of this or that cheese, I picked three fairly well-known (at least in the artisanal cheese/foodie set), crowd-pleasing 3/4- to 1-pound pieces.

My something old (i.e. hard) was Cabot Clothbound Cheddar. My something new (i.e. soft) was Cypress Grove Humboldt Fog. And my tamer version of "stinky or blue" was Beecher's Marco Polo Reserve (actually an aged hard cheese with peppercorns).

I paired the cheeses with some dried fig bread, a fruit and nut crostini, caramelized pecans, and honey hazelnut crackers -- all phenomenal with the sweet, fruity, sharpness of the Cabot, and also good to tame the mild kick from the Marco Polo's peppercorns. If I had a little more room on the plate I would have added a dried tart fruit to give the Humboldt Fog's acidity a better friend. I did some fancy cubing, slicing and design work with the hard cheeses and SHAZAM! Cheese plate. Even my new cheese slate was given a chance to dress up and make an appearance.

Save for a few chunks of rind and leftover fig bread, the cheese plate was pretty much devoured by the end of the night. I heard phrases such as "this cheddar is amazing" or "this soft cheese is really something special" or "these candied pecans are like crack" bandied about. So I can only assume people were genuinely pleased with my first attempt at a bonafide classy cheese plate. And not a single person had to eat it over the sink. I count that as a success.

In my excitement, I forgot to take pictures.
I stole this from a friend, but I should have gotten an aerial shot. 

Cutting Crust from the Equation

Have you ever wondered if there was a way to wad up all the toppings on a pizza into a ball, pile it onto the tiniest of crackers, and shove that all in your mouth? No, that's disgusting and weird, you say. Mmmm delicious food ball, I say. Welcome, my friends, to my lifelong neurotic phobia of crusts. (And yes, if the Tracy Jordan Meat Machine was ever a real thing, I would be the first to buy ten.)

If I were to write a Crust Manifesto, my definition of crust would go something like this.
Crust /krust/
noun
1. The least delicious part of a food item
2. That portion of a food item which serves as a vehicle to transport more delicious parts into your mouth
3. Ingredients in any dish that take up belly space, which could be filled by more delicious parts of the dish
4. Appropriator of chewing effort
syn: culinary chicanery

As a rule, I will eat only as much crust as I need to transport and enhance the part of the food I find to be most delicious, leaving the rest as a disastrous canvas of mutilated crust carnage on my plate.

This isn't just a starch issue. This is an efficiency issue. I have a limited amount of space in my belly and I want to make sure I use as many hours as I have on this earth to fill it with what I love most. So piles of steamed rice with just a dollop of stir-fry on top is an assault on my face-stuffing sensibilities. Crust can also be counter-intuitive. The crunchy outside of the pancake, to me, is more delicious than the soggy inside. If I have limited time and space, I will eat the outer ring and leave the inside "crust" of pancake.

Imagine my delight when I rediscovered a cheese that, for me, serves the purpose of eliminating the bread from a grilled cheese sandwich.

Not only is it delicious, but it also
looks like bacon. 

If I were to name favorite cuisines, Greek/Mediterranean would definitely make the top three. In college, when my roommates and I would dine at our favorite Greek restaurant, everyone would order sensible meals. Salads. Gyros. Seafood. I, however, would feast on one thing and one thing only. A slab of cheese set ablaze by flambe before my eyes.

At the time Saganaki, as the dish is called, was awesome for two simple reasons. One, cheese. Two, fireball. Not until recently when I brought home a piece of Idaho Golden Greek Grillin Cheese by Ballard Family Farms -- a tribute to Greek Halloumi cheese -- did I realize the true beauty of this style of cheese. Halloumi and other Greek grilling cheeses are designed for pan-searing until a thin browned crispy film forms a shell around it. On the interior, the cheese is heated to a gooey, stretchy perfection. It's a perfect recreation of the flavor profile in a grilled cheese sandwich, but with all cheese.

I look down at my crust-less dairy dinner, which I have supplemented with broccoli and hummus (I've learned a lot since college: You need vegetables. Pop-Tarts are not a fruit), and I realize how much I've missed this cheese.

Setting aside my delight that the role of bread has been outsourced to the cheese itself, there is a lot for the general ("normal") population to like about grilling cheeses. You don't get the perfect outer layer of salty crunch from pan-searing just any cheese. Try that with a block of cheddar. You'll have a melty, charred grease fire on your hands. If you need a firm, salty cheese to add to a warm dish without causing a runny mess, here's Halloumi to the rescue. It's like the paneer of the Mediterranean. It stays true to its form, and can even bring a little crunch to the party.

Enjoy Halloumi in all the normal and socially acceptable culinary modes you desire. As for me, I have rediscovered that cheese is the new bread.

One Ticket on the Wabash Cannonball

In a word, today was lame. It was the first day I've wanted to cry at work since my days at the law firm. I held it in until the subway station, when I could easily pretend as if I had gotten trash debris in my eye.

So what did I do to make myself feel better? I tried to re-kindle some cheese fun. I made a few pit stops on the way home and sat down in front of a feast of: doughnuts, summer ale, and cheese. It's what I like to call the Homer Simpson cheese plate. And let me tell you, I'm sitting fat and happy at my computer right now. 

The Homer Simpson cheese plate.
Complete with robot beer cup. Because
cartoons make me happy.
Wait a minute. Who put that
doughnut in my hand and forced
me to start eating it before I got home...

It was an accumulation of confounding frustrations building throughout the week. Big things, little things, and expected things. Box after box of shipments arriving with glass bottles packed in freaking styrofoam peanuts (why do we still manufacture these things?! why can't I get them off me?!). Little things. A few days of negative energy and smattering of passive aggression (maybe it's the low pressure system). Big things. The stress of learning how to navigate new responsibilities. Expected things. 

I began to miss the simpler days of farmers markets, when rude customers didn't phase me; when everyone was happy to be outside in the fresh air; when all I had to worry about was what vegetables to barter my cheese for. It had me sitting at my lunch break, angrily shoving a panini in my mouth and reading the latest issue of Culture cheese magazine. I flipped through page after page of grinning cheesemongers posing next to elaborate displays of fromage-tastic mountains of cheese wheels. "What's that moron so damn happy about," I would grumble to myself. 

What. Is. That. 

Therapy would be appearing on my horizon. I went home with a piece of cheese I newly discovered a couple months ago. When it arrived in the store, I was ready to send it back to the distributor, unsure how we could sell such a god awful monstrosity. Those who knew better assured me that it was in its proper state and did in fact taste wonderful. Today I say, Wabash Cannonball, you my only friend. 

In all honesty the piece I ate was, in fact, a bit on the ugly side and too old to sell, but I'm not too good for old cheese. Instead of going into the trash at work, it might as well go into my belly. I sat down with this little monster, which I now find unquestionably beautiful, listened to the Townes Van Zandt rendition of "Wabash Cannonball" (I'm all about themes), and ate away my sorrows.  The Cannonball is a small goat's milk ball from my hood, the Midwest...though I hate to claim Indiana. On its journey from Capriole Farms, it looks like it's lived a hard life. Wrinkled from the work of the mold forming the rind and aging the cheese from the outside in, and covered in a layer of ash, at first it reminded me a little of what an old wad of gum would look like under various public handrails. But this thing tastes amazing!

It's a little chalky on the inside, but buttery and oozy on the outside where the mold is doing its work. The ash, which helps the mold do its thing and peaks out from the white fuzzies might look a little scary, but it all works together in a wonderful lactose synergy. The flavors are lemony and dense at its youngest and oozy with a bit of tongue tickling pungency as it gets along in age. I love this cheese all the time, any time. 

Wabash fit the mood for what I needed in a cheese pick me up. It reminded me that even ugly things can surprise you with some nugget of awesome. Be it a delicious food or a lesson learned -- the hope is that even the tough days have a reason for being.