I apologize this is coming to you after Mother's Day but as I am sure you all have gathered, weekends tend to get a little busy and sometimes my musings get slightly delayed...but better late than never right!
As we all know, yesterday was Mother's Day - a day devoted to celebrating the mothers and grandmothers that brought us into this world and bring our world to life on a daily basis. We did not take the route of going for a sit down brunch at a restaurant surrounded by other families, a home cooked brunch was a much better option for us. Not that there was anything wrong with the former, just a different sort of celebration.
Before telling you about the cheeses, I will tell you about the fantastic meal we had prepared by my mother:
To start off, homemade popovers. Followed by a homemade chilled pea soup garnished with an egg, some parsley and other greens, homemade croutons and a light pea sauce. Delish and light, it was even thickened with tofu as opposed to cream! I'll admit a little something you all, I tend not to be the biggest soup fan, I don't exactly know why, but soups are not my food of choice typically. However this chilled soup was fantastic. The soup was followed by a green salad, homemade rice bread, cheese, homemade strawberry confiture, and Pain Quotidien's Oat, raisin and walnut bread, perfect for the cheeses. Lastly, the meal was capped off with homemade decaf espresso panna cotta.
Now, I am sure you are all curious about the cheeses I chose to bring! Well the selection was based on people's preferences and unusual cheeses of note, I thought nicer to go for a random selection this time around than my typical themed plate.
We started with Ardith Mae's Bigelo, the ash coated aged Goat's cheese from Pennsylvania. I knew that the crowd loved goat's milk cheeses and that this was one of the best ones I had had recently. Moving along, we had Jean Louis, a raw cow's milk cheese from Bobolink Dairy based in Vernon, New Jersey. Jean Louis is a crumbly, sweet, bright and somewhat grassy and barnyardy cheese. Different than most cheeses and definitely worth a taste! Bobolink is great because not only can you buy cheese from them at your local greenmarket, you can also buy their homemade bread. Lastly, we had Saint Agur, a stinky, heavily veined pasteurized cow's milk blue cheese. It's semi soft and if you ask me the perfect mix between approachable and not approachable -- enough stink to satisfy a developed cheese palate but not too much stink to scare away new comers to cheese and those who are blue-ambivalent.
I hope you too celebrated the mothers and grandmothers in your life!
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