Day One Forty One - Cheese Spy Stories Dispatch Number # 3 - Amsterdam

Cheese Spy Stories Dispatch coming at you all early this week, hot off the presses, the newest European city to hit the cheese spy radar -- Amsterdam. This capital city of the Netherlands is known for its canals, the red light district, Anne Frank's house and many many more fantastic sites...

Interestingly enough the Netherlands had really fantastic artisanal cheesemaking traditions instilled in their society in the "olden days," but with the onset of modernization, a lot of their old food production procedures were lost. But fret not, this week our reliable spy found one of the best native cheeses at the height of the new artisanal cheesemaking revolution in the Netherlands.

This week, our spy went shopping at Caulils located at Haarlemmestraat 115 to buy a wonderful assortment of cheeses for a boating trip on the canals, what could be better to bring than cheese and snacks?

What did the spy find? Well the first discovery was an excellent local cheese known as olde remeker, a truly special award-winning Dutch style cow's milk cheese also aged for eighteen months. Unlike a lot of cheeses coming out of the Netherlands nowadays, this cheese is produced by a small farm, not a big industrial plant and trust me you can tell it is artisanal from the moment you lay eyes on it -- it a deep mustardy yellow hue. On the tongue, this is a chalky, nutty, butterscotchy mouthful of goodness - piquant, pungent, biting and fantastic -- it harkens back to the old school cheesemaking traditions of the region.

The next cheese our spy discovered is also aged eighteen months, except this time around, it hails from a little further away -- Spain. It is a Spanish Manchego -- crumbly, hard, caramelly, and all around delish! The flavors of this cheese have fully developed in its aging process making it a really dynamic and truly unique cheese.

But the best thing that our faithful cheese spy found was what is known as the "Dylan" mix -- the ultimate combo of nuts, dried cranberries, and wasabi dots... named after the Amsterdam hotel The Dylan -- one of the city's nicest boutique hotels, overlooking the fifth canal, the Keizersgracht. The building was certainly not always a hotel -- from 1773 till 1998, it was utilized by the Regents of the Roman Catholic Church Authorities as the Old and Poor People's Office.  However, in 1999, the building reopened as the hotel it is to date, fantastically new yet imbued with the city's historical memory -- a must visit on your next trip to Amsterdam.

Check back next week for another Cheese Spy Story dispatch from a totally new locale.

Day One Forty - Rose Results

Couldn't you go for a nice glass of rose after today's work day? I know I could!

So let's get to the results of yesterday's Marriage Mondays so that you all can go out and have a glass of rose to celebrate!

Just a little change up in today's result post -- instead of proposing a recipe with the winning cheese and our rose, I will suggest a pairing concept and will also provide you with examples of what beverages the other two cheeses might work with most successfully.

Who's ready?!!?

Let's first discuss the two contestants that did not win out this week and why:

Contestant Number # 2: Old Chatham Sheepherding Company's Ewe's Blue - Our lovely New Yorker just simply didn't make the cut, she has too much of a fantastic presence and commandeers the relationship so it becomes all about her, not that that is bad, it just doesn't form an equal relationship. I think if you were to toss the cheese in a nice simple summery spinach salad with roasted almonds, diced strawberries, basil and dill and a nice vinaigrette, you would see that the wine could work with contestant number two. However, should you not feel like making a salad to pair the wine with Ewe's Blue, I would recommend a light red wine or even a Belgian style beer with this cheese -- the wine in this case will play off the spicy piquant notes of the cheese and bring them into another light.

Contestant Number # 3 : Uplands Pleasant Ridge Reserve  -- This big guy just isn't on the same planet as our rose -- they clash unfortunately. Roses need lighter more delicate cheeses and Uplands certainly isn't the most delicate cheese of the bunch. A fantastic mouthful of buttery, nutty, caramelly, butterschotchy goodness, this cheese should be paired with a nice medium bodied red wine in winter months or even a pilsner style beer in summer months. Should you want to pair this with a lighter beverage, certain white wines, like a medium bodied Tocai might work. However, if I were you, I'd stick to the red wine or beer route. 

Contestant Number # 1 :  Therefore by process of elimination, we can see that Ploughgate's Hartwell is the winner of this week's Marriage Mondays. The lusciousness yet lightness of the cheese finds its complement in the juiciness yet similar lightness of the wine. This is a great example of opposites attracting, the wine will dial down the creaminess of the cheese and exemplify the grassy, hay-like notes while still giving the wine's watermelon, strawberry, spice moments the opportunity to shine as well. So what would you pair this with? Well, I would suggest just some nice ciabatta bread. You can try out a dried fig or even some raw honey for a little pizazz, but I think you really want to allow each of these two elements to sparkle on their own.

What are your thoughts? Do you agree? Give it a go and let me know your feedback! Enjoy your evening folks!

Day One Hundred and Thirty Nine : Rose and the Americans Marriage Mondays

For me, the quintessential summer wine is Rose. Rose wines come in all colors from really really pale pink through to dark magenta-purple and are made in three distinct processes. For today's Marriage Mondays I thought I would utilize rose and discuss the three techniques of rose production before getting to this week's contestants, all of which promise to be delish on their own, but will they work with our lovely rose is the question.

Rose wine is made in three distinct ways:

1. Skin contact - Red wine grapes are crushed and the juice remains in contact with the grapes' skin for two to three days, imparting the lovely pink color we are all familiar with. Obviously, the longer the wine is in contact with the skin, the darker the color of the rose.

2. Blending - Not a very commonly utilized technique, this is a pretty obvious technique - white wine grapes are blended with red wine grapes to make rose.

3. Saignee (Bleeding the vats) - During the production of red wines, sometimes a winemaker wants to increase the tannins or deepen the color of their wine and therefore some of the pink-ish hued juice must be removed and thus the remaining wine in the vats is intensified and you now have a fantastic byproduct that can be utilized to create a rose.

So those are the three techniques of making my favorite summer drinking wine! I'm sure part of you is wondering, does she drink rose wines year round? And the answer to that question is no, I drink them from about May till September, why you may ask? Well, I think it really is just personal preference and I think that they are much more well suited to warmer temperatures and longer days.

A few of my favorite roses:

1. Channing Daughters, Rosati di Merlot
2. McCall Vineyard's Marjorie Rose
3. A to Z's Rose
4. Cotes de Provence MiP, Domaine Sainte Lucie

And of course I love Bubbly Roses as well, but that's a whole different topic!

Imagine utilizing Channing Daughters Rosati di Merlot here -- light in color and in taste, this wine almost has a bounce in its step! Full of strawberry, watermelon, mineraly, and spicy notes, this rose is made from one hundred percent Merlot grapes and sure is juicy in all the right ways. It packs a lovely mouth feel and a nice lingering finish, trust me you won't be disappointed!


So let's get going with our three cheesy contestants:

Contestant Number #1: Ploughgate Creamery's Hartwell - Hailing from the great cheesemaking state of Vermont, this contestant is a soft-rippened cow's milk creamy cheese -- vaguely reminiscent of a Camembert, this cheese is lighter on the cream and heaviness than most cow's milk cheeses and is full of grassy, hay like notes. It's a fantastic picnic cheese as it is creamy and luscious, but not too creamy that it won't hold up in the heat. It's almost slinky and velvety in consistency..

Contestant Number # 2: Old Chatham Sheepherding Company's Ewe's Blue - Landing a little closer to home here, this blue-veined baby is quite the piquant mouthful, spicy, peppery, pungent, and utterly fantastic. Made from one hundred percent sheep's milk and inoculated with Penicilium Roqueforti, this blue gives its European cousins a run for its money.

Contestant Number # 3 : Uplands Pleasant Ridge Reserve - Moving a little farther away from home, our last and final contestant hails from another great cheesemaking state, Wisconsin and is an aged washed rind unpasteurized cow's milk cheese made in the style of the great old school French cheese, Beaufort. Nutty, buttery, herbacious, grassy, full of caramel and butterscotch notes with a nice heft, this sure is a memorable cheese. Great for every occasion, this is a cheese that proves to you how successful American Artisanal cheesemaking is!!

So who do you think will win out for a chance to be paired with our lovely rose wines? Will it be the Vermonter? The New Yorker? Or the Wisconsonian? And is there one specific answer? 

Check back tomorrow for your results...

Day One Thirty Eight - Cheese Spy Stories Dispatch Number Two

It's that time again, time for dispatch number two of our cheese spy stories and this is Part Two from Paris -- our cheese spy returned to Androuet to pick out some cheeses this week and sure enough, our spy picked up some fantastic goat's milk cheeses just at peak at the end of June! Of course our spy kept local and only bought the best French cheeses that Androuet had to offer, cheeses that even if you can find here in the US, they taste completely different, in France, they reach that aha flavor moment!

What cheeses were procured?

1. Picodon de l'Ardèche - A hockey puck sized goat cheese from the French region surrounding the Rhone river in the southern part of the country. Acidic, tangy, creamy, and perfectly puckering -- something is lost in this cheese when it travels accross the ocean to our plates here in the US.

2. Selles-sur-Cher - One of the classic Loire Valley goat's milk cheeses aged with a grey-ish blue mold in cheese caves, this was one of the first cheeses to receive AOC status, isn't that crazy? On the mouth, this is a multi-layered cheese -- the bluish mold flavors arrive first, followed by the subtlety of the goat's milk creaminess that constitutes the cheese.

3. Vache Divers - A soft rippened cow's milk cheese unlike any cow's milk cheese you would find here in the US, truly Artisanal cheese making at its best!

Check back next week for our cheese spy stories on our shores...I guarantee you won't be disappointed! And seeing as this post was for yesterday, don't fret, coming at you later today is our next dosage of Marriage Mondays!

Day One Thirty Seven - An Intergenerational lunch

I hope everyone is enjoying their weekends, it is too bad about the USA loss in the World Cup, however on the other hand, there is something to be said for Ghana continuing on, the lone African hope. They deserve a shot at soccer glory and now they are one step closer.

Moving away from the World Cup as I wasn't able to watch the game because I went to visit my grandmother and bring her lunch. At 93 she is still going strong, working on causes she is passionate about that keeps her young! She certainly is an inspiration to anyone and everyone who is around her. So for today's post, I thought I would share with you briefly what I made for her for our summertime lunch. A simple, easily transportable lunch was my goal and according to her, I certainly succeeded.

For lunch we had an arugula, crunchy sprouts, asparagus, edamame salad with, sauteed mushrooms and whole grain bread as our croutons topped with little morsels of fresh goat's cheese with a homemade balsamic vinaigrette. Simple yet flavorful and delish! No cooking needed to be done at her apartment which was nice and I think when it is a summertime lunch you definitely want a cold dish, something not overly filling. To accompany the salad we had some Bouchon Bakery Rye Currant bread, moist and flavorful and a cheese selected in honor of my grandmother's particular cheese tastes. Her favorites are aged goat's milk cheeses. Good thing this was a summer lunch, as goat's milk cheeses are  at their peak right now. So, I selected a Chabichou de Poitou, a French cheese made in the Poitou region between Paris and Bordeaux. A classic aged French goat cheese with style -- this semi-soft cheese has a crinkly wrinkly skin (that yes is edible) with a white chalky interior, not as creamy and soft as other goat cheeses, this is a cheese that travels well and has a fantastic flavor profile -- full of grassy, fresh, citrusy, tangy notes, I knew I couldn't go wrong with this cheese for today's lunch. Sure enough I was right, she adored it!  We finished the meal with some tea and two of Bouchon Bakery's fantastic macaroons - one strawberry and one caramel.

However  the best part of the meal was seeing the enjoyment on my grandmother's face.
So I say to you all, make sometime for your families, it means so much to them.

Have a good evening folks, check back tomorrow for Cheese Spy stories and more adventures around town.

Day One Thirty Six : A Summery GCF

I thought for this week's GCF, I'd suggest a simple sandwich utilizing our fourth cheese from last night's class -- Daryl which is an eighteen month aged Gloucester style cheese available for two weeks of the year made by Tonjes Farm in Callicoon, NY. Of the four cheeses we tried, I think that this cheese will be the most successful when combined with other delectables and melted.

You really don't want to add too much to this sandwich though because the cheese is so fantastic on its own that too many toppings will mask its delicate and unique flavors. I think the best bread is something crusty like Gourmet Garage has a bread that is baked with beer, slightly darker in color than white flour breads. I believe it is called their Ale Bread, however I am blanking, but if you go to a Gourmet Garage location and inquire as to this bread, I am sure you won't have an issue finding it. This bread is nutty, crusty, flavorful but not too overpowering for the cheese, a perfect base for our sandwich. After placing some nice chunks of your Daryl on the bread, grab a nice golden delicious apple and slice it really thinly, top your cheese with a few slices. Next up, to add a savory note to the sandwich, saute half a shallot with some extra virgin olive oil and salt and pepper. Add this to the top of the apple. Then drizzle a few drops of walnut oil on top which will dial up the nuttiness of the sandwich and bring out the creamy, cheddary, barnyardy flavors of the cheese.

Go ahead and melt the sandwich and enjoy with a nice glass of chilled Coney Island Brewing Company's Albino Python. I guarantee you will enjoy it!

Have a good Friday folks!

Day One hundred and thirty -five : An Educational Recap

Last night I taught a cheese class called Summer in the City: Warm Weather Cheeses and Cooling Wines and since not all of my loyal Fromagical readers were  able to make it to last night's class, I thought I'd fill those of you in who couldn't make it.

The first  pairing we sampled was Wolffer Estate's Big Apple Wine from Bridgehampton, NY paired with Beltane Farm's Fresh Chevre from Lebanon, CT. Apple wines are hard to come by, however when you do, definitely scoop up this fantastic homage to the state fruit of NY. I am sure you are wondering what makes an apple wine different from an apple cider. The answer to that my friends is simple, apple wines are composed of apple juice made from a nice blend of different apple types. The juice is then cold settled for one week and then is inoculated with Cote de Blanc yeasts allowing a fermentation process to begin. And what you get is a light, fruity, and delish summery wine. Great for serving on hot days like today! This wine was paired  with a fresh chevre from Beltane Farms. The summertime is all about having fresh cheese that was made within the previous month, fresh, delish, grassy, young, and creamy. A perfect pairing for a rooftop cocktail party.

The second pairing we sampled was Millbrook Winery's Tocai Friulano from Millbrook, NY and Ardith Mae's Doolan from PA. Tocai Friulano is a quintessential Italian white wine grape but when transplanted to American soil, this grape gets more lively, if you ask me! Clean, medium bodied, full of citrus notes, a great example of the "New World" doing the "Old World" right! We sampled this with Ardith Mae's Doolan, a soft ripened goat cheese from the fantastic husband and wife team who run this creamery. This   cheese has been aged and hand taken care of for at least a month in their cheese caves and trust me, what you get is something fantastic. Tangy, creamy, yet more developed flavors than the fresh chevre, this is a cheese that is the full monty. The nice thing about this pairing is that the minerality of the cheese plays perfectly into the minerality of the wine and I guarantee that this is a pair that can easily go hand in hand.

The third pairing we did was McCall Winery's Marjorie Rose from Cuchoague, NY and Woodcook Farm's Summer Snow from Weston, VT. McCall winery is definitely a winery to keep on your radar, it is the only purely wind powered winery on the North Fork of Long Island and is really just beginning to grow, it currently produces five different wines, four reds and this rose. This rose is made from one hundred percent Pinot Noir grapes and is an excellent example of a perfect summer wine. It's made in the saignee or bleeding the vats style of making rose. By that, I mean that this rose is a by-product of the red wine production. When a winemaker wants to impart more tannins or color to their wine, some of juice from the must is removed and therefore the red wine that remains is intensified because there is some juice removed. That juice that is removed can be made into rose wines like this lovely one we had tonight. It is paired with Woodcook Farms' Summer snow -- a bloomy rind sheep's milk cheese only produced in the summer months when the milk utilized for the cheese is totally perfect. You will see that the crisp juiciness of the wine complements the creaminess of the cheese perfectly and creates an aha moment!

The fourth pairing we did was Coney Island Brewing Company's Albino Python brewed in Saratoga Springs, NY and Tonjes Farm's Daryl from Callicoon, NY. Albino Python is a wit beer in lager form with some added spices -- ginger, crushed fennel, and sweet orange peel. When you smell this beer it is a symphony of aromas  on your palate, certainly not straightforward beer choice. Delish on the nose and on the tongue, this is a hard to find beer that tops my beer lists! It is paired with an eighteen month aged cheese by the name of Daryl from Tonjes Farm. This cheese is only released for two weeks out of the year and is intense for all the right reasons. Daryl is Tonjes' aged Rambler, a gloucester style cheese, by that I mean Rambler is originally made utilizing a cheddaring method where after the whey is heated and drained, the cheese curds are cut into cubes and then stacked and turned over and over for a few hours. This drains excess whey and also acidifies the cheese for the right reasons!

Please go out and buy some of these cheeses for your sampling pleasures! Thank you to everyone who attended and who helped make the class possible.

Check back later today for our weekly GCF!