Don’t Mess with Texas Cheese

Texas cheeses have come a long way. From Paula Lambert’s Italian inspired cheese to the country feel and flavors of the farmstead Veldhuizen cheeses. Now I bring you to River Whey Creamery located just outside of San Antonio in Schertz, TX. If you are looking for European inspiration for your cheese plate; Look no further.

You can travel around the cheeseboard globe with River Whey cheeses. The first example is the Spanish inspired Caldera España, a pecan smoked wheel that marries well with your charcuterie favorites. Next is The Welshman, born from the historic Wales now Somerset made cheese, Caerphilly. The Welshman is earthy but bright, musty yet savory. I could go on but I’m here to talk about Indigo Ridge.

Gouda style with alpine flavors? I mean come on! Sign me up all day for this journey. Indigo Ridge is one of the most unique cheeses I have had in the last decade and from my home state. It’s creamy and mild with depth but delicate. While perfect for a cheese novice, it will stand up to the most seasoned cheese professional. Move over cheddar your grilled cheese and tomato soup supper are over. Or if you are feeling fancy make a Croque Monsieur sandwich and French onion soup. Yea, it’s not Swiss cheese, it’s Indigo Ridge…Don’t Mess with Texas, cheese.

¡SALUD!

¡PROVECHO!

From British Royalty to Oregon Blue Cheese

The Holidays have come and gone, as they do and usually with some reflection. I sit on my couch doing just that after weeks of guest service and building cheese platters, not charcuterie boards (that’s another story). When I remember I picked up the new Enraptured blue cheese from Rogue Creamery, Cherries Jubilee.

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The short and stubby 1 pound cylinder is tattooed by the cherry wine soak. Deep rich tones I’ve only seen in sunsets pulsing a plum glowing blanket across the horizon. Will the cheese be just as magical?

I’m here to tell you, if there was one blue cheese created with dessert in mind this is the one. It has the texture of a New York cheesecake, smooth and delicate. It’s salty and sweet like a spring day at the beach. While my taste buds dance with joy I can’t help but think would Auguste Escoffie approve of a new rendition of his culinary creation?

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Of course the answer is yes.

To you David Gremmels and Auguste Escoffie,

¡SALUD!

¡PROVECHO!

Scotch. A Second Chance

Lets see, where do I begin? I first tried my Mother’s favorite drink, scotch and water. Chivas Regal was her brand. I remember this beautiful caramel and honey color being poured over ice and water. Watching the liquids swirl together was the start to a night of conversations and laughs during family gatherings. The drink looked so sophisticated and jolly. I asked if I could try a sip. She slid the glass over and said, “Just one.” Yep, that was all I needed to ask my inner self, “Why do people drink this?” She asked if I liked it, I promptly said, “No”. I’m sure she knew that answer by the look of disgust on my face. It tasted like dirty water. I mean this is my younger self and things were different in the late 70’s and I was after all, a connoisseur of garden hose water. The blast of rubber tasting hot water coming out of your neighbor’s water hose tasted much better than cold scotch and water.

Now, fast forward about 40 years and my palate has changed quite a bit. I started dabbling in American Whiskey and Bourbons over the last, give or take, 10 years and I feel the excitement like I did some 20 years ago when I started working in the cheese industry. I can’t get enough information or tastings. I thought, I really need to give scotch another shot. (no pun intended).

So I picked up a bottle of Glenlivet 12 year single malt, double oak after hearing about it at work. Some of our stores were picking it up as a featured item and as we went through the tasting points, it sounded like something I wanted to try.

At first, on the nose it is bright almost tropical even sweet, like pineapple upside down cake. Then comes the vanilla. My first sip was definitely not what I remembered. Warm, grassy and musty like the first breeze of fall that floats into your lungs, refreshing but knowing there is a secret being kept.

So, what is the secret? Have I just been ignoring the signals of this libation because of my preteen palate? Or is it because I thought Scotch was for “old” people?

The secret continues to develop and evolve, much like our palates. Although, I can’t help but think the garden hose water had something to do with it…

¡SALUD!

¡PROVECHO!

Mexico City Memories and Cheese

What I remember when we would visit Mexico City in the late 1970’s is food, music and a different way of living.

Being a second generation kid from Texas, my mother took me and my two older sisters to Mexico City to visit our cousins. I was the youngest and shy, so I was glued to my mother’s hip. My cousins were much older than me and my sisters but that didn’t stop the connection between us. We would sit and listen to music, mostly Chicago, Cat Stevens and some Bee Gees thrown in for ya know culture; it was the late 70’s remember. We played a lot of Backgammon then and I learned Canasta when I visited with my mother as a 20 something. I got really good which upset my Aunt Bertha. I didn’t understand a ton of Spanish which I think was probably a good thing. But I did understand her punching out her cigarette butt in an ashtray, lighting another and changing from drinking coffee to a tequila while the next hand was being dealt.

But I remember the foods and all flavors as a preteen to this day. My favorite breakfast was a toasted bolillo, a wonderful bread like a French baguette, topped with the most incredible sweet cream butter I have ever had to this day. Now this is not your average butter, no skimming of the cream and grass fed (before this was a marketing term). I would not drink milk in Mexico because of the cream that plugged the bottle and as an 8-10 year old, I was not having any part of that weirdness. Had I only known.

But the next food adventure took me and my family to a restaurant know for their tacos and specifically Tacos al Carbon. As a kid growing up we had tacos……. but not like these. Two small corn tortillas stacked on top of each other, topped with perfectly grilled beef, cilantro and raw onions. But the one dish that I will forever remember and I rarely if ever order in the States is Queso Flameado. Its exactly as the name says, hot melted cheese under a flame. To eat this cheese, you use a knife to scrape the sides to get the crispy bits of cheese and work your way toward the center to pull the melted strings of cheese and put in a corn tortilla as enjoy before your tacos come to the table. The cheeses are mainly Queso Oaxaca and Panela.

I will always be in awe of these two woman, my Aunt Bertha and my Mother.

¡SALUD!

¡PROVECHO!

Blue Cheese at its Finest, Bayley Hazen Blue

Most know blue cheese as a salad topper, crumbles and added to a creamy substance to slather over your “house” salad, aka…some iceberg and tomatoes fancied up with croutons. If you do venture to purchase a piece of blue cheese from you local market it’s because you love cheese. The rind glows almost pure white. Don’t get me wrong, I love blue cheese, be it crumbled, in a dressing, hell I’d take a shot out of the plastic cup at my local wings establishment (if there are any left).

If you want something special, Something made with love by hand; Look for that beautiful natural rind that protects the award winning Bayley Hazen Blue from Jasper Hill.

Roasted hazelnuts, with a vegetal almost like asparagus finish. Amazingly sweet and salty at the same time. The texture is like fudge that is just out of being at room temperature. Silky and smooth! The perfect blue cheese to finish your dinner as a dessert as is or a drizzle of an aged balsamic vinegar.

Please visit their website, you can order this staple blue out of their line up year round.

¡SALUD!

¡PROVECHO!

Sippin’ on Ginnemere

During what I like to call Texas Fall, or May, when its only in the low 90’s with low humidity, a cool gin and tonic makes “real” summer seem far away. So ordering a Ginnemere from Jasper Hill Farms was the logical option. This nugget is washed in a local Vermont Gin, Barr-HIll Gin from caledoniaspirits.com. Let me tell you, this is one cheese I will never forget!

The texture was spot on, custard smoothness but the flavors….ooohhhh the taste of roast poultry and wild fowl was bursting at the seams! Leaving my lips glistening after every bite. ( I seriously ate this with a spoon ) The gin wash really enhanced the spruce bark that incases the cheese into the show stopper. A refreshing and herbaceous cleanse fell over my tongue with all the previous luxurious flavors coating my mouth, I took a sip of my Cucumber Thyme Gin and Tonic and that’s when it happened, the room stopped and all the flavors my mouth had just witnessed had mellowed and meshed together. It was like listening to snow fall in large, plump flakes. Quiet and loud but calm, breathtaking and majestic. Everything came together in my most rich cheese life yet.

¡SALUD!

¡PROVECHO!

Cheese in Quarantine

Ok, so I know its been a long time but I’m back! It was a crazy year and the amount of crazy doesn’t seem to be letting up.  That being said, I hope everyone is in good spirits and remembering to have respect for people around you and those working in a retail environment like myself.  Let’s be kind to one another.

Winnimere, from Jasper Hill Farm, is a cheese wrapped in Spruce Bark and hand washed in a salt water brine, this cheese is a true work of art and was created with the Vacherin Mont D’Or in mind.  Its a raw milk cheese aged for 60 days.  The texture is heavy and custard like.  The paste of the cheese coats your mouth with the wonderful flavors that range from boiled peanuts and baked ham. On this tasting I used raw oyster mushrooms as the vehicle topped with fresh leaves of lemon thyme became the perfect balance of umami.

The Riesling I had from Chateau Ste. Michelle really helped to balance the savoriness and saltiness of the cheese cleaning the palate with the crisp and clean taste of green apple making this pleasant partner on this cheese journey.

I will be talking about Jasper Hill Farms during the next few blogs. Besides being amazing cheese makers, they are like every farmer and American cheese maker, they need the help of the community to stay up and running.  They had to make a hard decision to sell one of their herds to local dairy farmers to keep staff paid. It came from the closing of restaurants, cheese shops and specialty cheese distributors. This domino affect had Jasper Hill with a surplus of milk. Covid-19 is changing our food source and will look different moving forward.

Cottage Cheese, I Never Knew!

So like every kid, or at least me, I hated cottage cheese.  The wet, small curd liquid goo from a plastic container at breakfast covered in canned peaches was a living nightmare.  This is not how I wanted to spend my Saturday morning cartoon time.  I wanted a Pop Tart and milk!  (hey it was the like 1980-ish).  I mean the only way I would eat cottage cheese was smothered in marinara meat sauce in my mother’s lasagna.  Now fast forward to 2019.

Cowgirl Creamery was going to release their cottage cheese outside of California, I was excited to try it.  Intrigued, how was this different from the childhood goo my mother always wanted me to eat or at least try, every time she opened a container.  When the cases showed up at work, I took one home.  I already was thinking of how soupy it was going to be.  But, it was thick, small curds and full of the most beautiful flavors I have ever experienced in a fresh cheese.  There was the smell of fresh warm milk.  One you would smell in a cheese making room.  Then came the most delicate tartness of lemon.  The thickness of the cheese coated your mouth and the next thing the container was empty.  Oh Clabbered Cottage Cheese, thank you for making a childhood food nightmare into an new Saturday morning tradition.

English Cheese and American Bourbon Whiskey

One evening I was relaxing having a nice glass of whiskey and I thought, this would be interesting with a hearty English cheese.  The next day at work I picked up a piece of Lincolnshire Poacher, which is one of my all time favorite English cheeses, came home and poured myself a whiskey, neat.  Then something unexpected happened.

First the cheese, Lincolnshire Poacher is made in Lincolnshire Wolds which is located toward the eastern coast north of London by Simon Jones who is the 4th generation to be running the family farm.  The flavors notes of this cheese range from extreme sharpness to tropical notes, big on grass and fresh hay then a quick spike of savory herbs.

The whiskey I poured is one of my favorites, Blanton’s.  Why its one of my favorites, the flavor profile is the best of both worlds.  You get a little heat with a creamy mouth feel.  There’s hints of wood, sweet tabacco and a finish of creamy vanilla.  On the rocks it really sweetens up and becomes rich and easy to drink.  With this pairing I recommend it Neat, no ice, maybe a drop or two of chilled water.

When I finally merged these two together it was mind blowing.  The flavors that came out were unexpected.  Huge notes of almond, marzipan and cherry.  It almost reminded me of my Uncle’s sweet pipe tobacco.

Before the colder seasons are over give these two a try.  It will definitely brighten a grey chilly evening.

 

 

Cheese Parcels

I would say some 15+ years ago is when I started to really become fascinated with cheese, French cheeses especially.  During the time I was the buyer for a cheese counter in Seattle I came across Capriole’s O’Banon and Sofia.  Two very French looking cheeses from Indiana that also tasted very French.  And today I am taking a stroll down memory lane with both of these great American cheeses.

Let us start with the O’Banon.  So this cheese is a close cousin to the French cheese Banon, AOC.  Both are wrapped in chestnuts leaves and left to age.  However,  O’Banon’s chestnuts leaves are soaked in bourbon which gives an ever so gentle nudge to the sweet  American spirit.  The texture is one of the most dense goat cheeses I have ever had.  It coats your mouth with a thick yet subtle heaviness that slowly melts away making you wanting more.  

Next is the Sofia.  Ah Sofia…such beautiful wrinkles and the perfect paste at any age.  We are talking  2 months old at its peak, roughly.   Molded in the shape of a small brick, its slight grey wrinkly rind hides a clean white paste with two lines of vegetable ash.  At first glance I thought it was going to crumble the second I cut it.  I couldn’t have been more wrong.  The texture was light but held together.  I took the small slice off my Laguiole knife and I felt it melt on my tongue like a giant snowflake.  Then the earthy flavors of the quality, fresh goat milk made me smile from ear to ear.

It was everything I remembered from 15 years ago when I tried it for the 1st time.  Thank you Judy Shad for bringing an amazing American twist on those generations old French style cheeses.

¡SALUD!

¡PROVECHO!