I hope everyone is having a lovely Sunday and enjoying the somewhat chilly yet certainly Spring-y weather. It sure is the perfect day for a stroll through Central Park.
I thought we'd keep things simple today and discuss an exciting development coming up in May! I will be leading a cheese tasting course, entitled Think Local. Are you interested in the whole locavore thing? Attempt to follow the "100 mile diet?" Or just curious how New York State cheeses compare to their Vermont counterparts? Or what about the varieties you find across the pond? Well then this is definitely the course for you, it will be an indepth look at the Empire State's finest offerings of wines, cheeses, and one beer. In terms of wines, we will taste wines from the two primary wine making regions of New York -- Long Island and the Finger Lakes. The beer hails from a much closer locale, one of the five boroughs! And although the four cheeses are meant to be a surprise for the evening of the course, I will reveal that not only do these four take us to the far reaches of our state, they also each typify a different style of cheese:
1. Fresh - Think young cheeses with very white milky coloring, never a rind in site here. These cheeses tend be soft because of the high percentage of water in the paste. Should be consumed within one to two months of production. Full of tart, tangy, lemony, moist, grassy, and light tastes.
2. Bloomy - Think fluffy, almost cloudlike, white colored rinds with cheese-y creamyness oozing out when you cut into one of these babies. The pillowy cloud-like bloomy rinds are created by inoculating the milk or even coating the cheese rind with a yeast that will consequently develop a thin fur covering of mold during their aging process. These cheeses tend to be quite decadent, the edible rind becoming an interesting counterpart to creamy interior paste.
3. Firm - Think natural rinds with an eggy, sometimes sharp, grassy, farmsteady, barnyardy interior paste. In this family of cheeses, the curds are broken into smaller grains and then either cooked such as with Comtes or Gruyeres or uncooked such as Cantalets. These babies get harder and deeper in color and more intense and unique in flavor as they age. The special thing about firm cheeses is that they have less than a 15% humidity content.
4. Blue - Think Mold and Veins!!!!! Spicy, piquant, stinky, and complex, these cheeses pack a nice punch! In case you didn't know, blue cheeses are thought to have been invented by accident, how you must be wondering? Well, the story goes a cheesemaker left some rye bread in his cheese caves and came back a few weeks later to see the rye covered in what we all know as mold. To this day, the classic Roquefort blues that you know and love are inoculated with spores of moldy rye bread, funny right? The majority of the mold that goes into blue cheeses is either mixed in with the curds with blues such as Gorgonzolas or injected like in the case of Roqueforts. There are of course variations on the mold utilized in making the bluish - greenish veiny paste, but the most well known of those is: pencillium roqueforti. This is the sort of mold that requires oxygen to thrive and therefore blue cheeses are punctured with needles to aid in the aging process and yes, you guessed it, those punctures create the blue's veins.
Those are the types of cheese my course will cover, if I had more time, I would definitely include the other three classic categorizations of cheese:
1. Washed Rind - Think stinky and typically orange-y/reddish rinds! These cheeses are bathed and washed either in brine, wine, spirits, or beers. The washing/bathing process breaks down the cheese curds from the exterior working its way in and therefore the rind becomes a part of the cheese when the aging process is completed. The washing process allows aged cheeses to retain a large percentage of moisture which is definitely somewhat uncommon with other aged cheeses. Washed rind cheeses are not for the faint of heart, if you do not like pungent, aromatic, and earthy sort of cheeses, you might have a hard time getting your mouth around cheeses in this category.
2. Semi soft cheeses - Great melting candidates, these cheeses have a high percentage of moisture, the next step up in the aging process from fresh cheeses. They tend to be somewhat pliable with definite earthy, leaf-y, light yet dense flavors.
3. Hard - Think of the big guys here like Parmesan, their aging process is measured in years, not in weeks or months. The cool thing about these sorts of cheeses is that as a cheese matures, its proteins and amino acids naturally break down. When this break down happens in a highly salted and low moisture space, there is a crystallization that occurs due to the denatured proteins providing these sorts of cheeses with a lovely crunch. These cheeses tend to be full of butterscotchy and caramelly flavors, best when paired with a beverage because they are very dry as the moisture as been primarily aged out of them.
That about wraps up the major categories of cheeses, sometimes you will find overlap of the categories that's for sure, they do not necessarily stand alone. Of course, there are exceptions to these seven categories like leaf wrapped cheeses, a practice that has been going on for centuries. The leaves not only protect their cheeses but also infuse a unique flavor within the paste. If there's a cheese you're not sure about what category it might fit in or you want to know more about its aging process, do not hesitate to ask me.
And last but not least, if you're interested in signing up for my class May 16th from 6 till 8pm, please visit www.raandeskwomen.com.
Have a lovely evening folks!
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