CurdNerds

This post isn't about cheese specifically, but does cover important issues facing the dairy industry. Please forgive a slightly off-topic rant for an increasingly urgent message.

News broke on Sunday that 11 people, the youngest being a one year-old infant, had caught the E. coli bug from eating at Taco Bell restaurants in three different counties in New Jersey. Today, reports are revising that number to as many as 50 cases, spread over three states.  read more »

Just about a year ago, we mentioned a calendar being released by Fromages de Terroirs, a French non-profit devoted to regional cheese, that would feature every month a different scantily-clad woman posing with an equally scantily-clad block of cheese. Well, the 2007 edition has been released, with some fresh, umm, faces in the mix.

From the press release:

Misses Estelle Livarot, Adeline Camembert, Adèle Pont l’Évêque, Bérénice Brie de Meaux, Barbara Munster, Apolline du Crottin de Chavignol, Emma de la Tomme de Savoie, Éléonore de Mont d’Or, Eva Morbier are joined by three new young faces making their first appearance in the 2007 calendar: Clara Chaource, Solène de Selles-sur-Cher and Elsa de la Fourme d’Ambert.

The calendar is available for purchase now on the the Fromages de Terroirs website. The cost is 15€ and all profits will go to help promote awareness of the organization.

Recycling.

This is something that we, as people trapped in a culture that is treading water creatively speaking, are all too familiar with.

The coolest cars on the road look like heavily Photoshopped versions of cars from decades ago when people had style. The best movie I saw this year was a dark re-tread of a cheesy cop-drama I loved as a pre-pubescent kid. My current favorite bands all sound like the distilled essence of bands from the last 30 I already loved. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the End of the American Century.

As depressing as recycling can be when used as a metaphor for the death of western civilization as a viable narrative it can be really fucking useful around the house when you need to do something with left over supplies from a truly Roman-vomitorium-style feed.  read more »

Maybe it's the bright colors, or the lofty ceilings, or perhaps it's the baroque selection of fantastic cheeses. Whatever it is, there's something about the Murray's store on Bleecker Street that evokes for me all the excitement and grandeur of the opera. And like any good opera house, Murray's even has a President's Box, ensconced in a small loft in the rear of the store. I refer of course to the cozy, low-ceilinged room where Murray's holds their Cheese Course Classes, seminars on all things cheese from basic tasting techniques, to beverage pairings, to explorations of geography and terroir. Where else would one want to be to savor some poignant arias sung by the world's greatest cheeses?  read more »

All this talk of turkeys makes me think of...cheese! Nothing says fall like Vacherin Mont d'Or, a small washed rind round made in the Alps on both sides of the French/Swiss border. Also known as Vacherin du Haut-Doubs (but not to be confused with Vacherin Fribourgeois), it is traditionally made with late-season cow's milk that is too high in fat and protein content to make Comté or Gruyère. Because of this the cheese is aged for a much shorter period of time than Comté and Gruyère, and so peak ripeness is usually seen in the fall and winter months (October through March). At peak ripeness, the cheese is soft and runny, and is therefore wrapped in a spruce band and shipped in a circular wooden box. Since the cheese spends a fair amount of time in this environment, the wood lends a subtle flavor to the finished cheese. The golden rind, which still shows imprints from the cheesecloth used during production, hides a pale yellow, unctuous yet mild paste. The cow's milk used to make Vacherin Mont d'Or is typically raw, but since the cheese is only aged for three weeks, specimens found in the US are necessarily pasteurized. Enjoy with a Beaujolais Nouveau, another autumnal delight!

The time commitment demanded by a 2-month old baby drives the hobbyist cheese maker to cut some serious corners. Gone (for now) are the 8 hour days molding and flipping Camembert rounds. As are the 24-hour pressing times required of the Swiss-style alpine cheeses. My cheese making appetite would need to be satiated in other ways...

Enter Syrian cheese, also known as Jiben, a fresh, friable cheese--one of the easiest cheeses to make. Syrian cheese actually comes in many different varieties, one of which is sort of like a braided mozzarella, but the one I made is more like a salty Paneer, or Queso Fresco. It's got a very fresh, milky taste, with a firm but elastic texture. It's traditionally used in pilafs and pasta dishes, as well as omelets (edgehs), but it's probably also good with sweet dried fruit like dates, raisins or figs.

It couldn't be easier to make*. Bring 1 gallon of good-quality milk to 88° F. Gently stir in 1 tsp. of double strength liquid rennet, and let sit for  read more »

Dave Evan’s Creamery doesn’t look like ground zero for a revolution. With its hundreds of feet of snaking stainless steel pipe and hot tub-sized vats it looks more like a large moonshining operation than the locus of hope for a crippled and depressed small farm dairy industry. Dave himself, a stout, bearded man with a serious twinkle in his eye, might even look a little like a bootlegger - until you start talking to him.

When asked how long he has been working his farm in Norwich, NY he replies with a simple, “Well, forever.” Dave grew up on the farm and was a young man when dairies around the Northeast started to disappear. Between 1980 and 2000 the number of New York dairy farms shrank from 19,000 to 7900 farms. At last count, that number is down to 7000.

Evans wasn’t the only small dairy farmer to notice. In 1996 the Northeast Dairy Compact signed into law to help regulate the wholesale price of milk. The intent was to  read more »

In an effort to encourage more commenting from you, our faithful readers, we have made anonymous commenting possible once again. We'd originally removed this feature because the comment spam was getting out of control, but now we use a system that can better identify the real curd nerds from the spammers (no doubt vegans). So now that you no longer need to register to post comments, let's hear from you!

Crisp like the new autumn breeze, sweet like the joys of family gatherings, and tart like the season’s change from warm to cold, the apple is the expression of fall. And though they can last all winter long, there is no substitute for a specimen in season, when the apple’s flowery juice tends to explode brilliantly from beneath that red-green covering.

Apples also make for an almost-perfect companion to cheese, as the balance of tartness and sweetness is a phenomenon common to both. These days, the Union Square Greenmarket is teeming with apples of every kind, New York State being a particularly great area for growing them. Seeing the surfeit, I decided to do an informal apple and cheese tasting event with my wife and her brother and sisters, who happened to be coming over for a visit. I picked out ten, yes ten, varieties of apples as well as five cheeses to try with them.

Picking the apples was fairly straightforward—I went with some of my old favorites (Stayman Winesap, Honeycrisp, Suncrisp, Mutsu), as well as some that I keep hearing about but have never tried (Cameo, Jonathan, Macoun). Rounding out the list were  read more »

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Just added to the "Miscellaneous" section of our links page is a link to the Cheese Reporter, a Wisconsin-based dairy industry periodical. The 130-year-old periodical, available by paid subscription, is circulated weekly to cheese and dairy industry insiders from around the world, and provides weekly coverage of important industry developments, ranging from new FDA regulations pertaining to bioterrorism to winners of state, regional, national and international cheese competitions. In addition, the website offers a  read more »