Cheese in Literature

I was recently reading Tristan Jones’ Saga of a Wayward Sailor detailing his adventure after coming free of the arctic ice. There’s an outstanding tale of making passage through the dutch canals and meeting Dirk Van Scheltema, a warehouse security guard. They hit it off and Dirk offers to return to the boat with cheese for Tristan. True to his word he returns with 200 Edam cheeses (stolen). When he attempts to depart for France the extra weight of all the cheeses has sunk his ship into the mud. Instead of jettisoning the cheese, he chooses to heave his non-functioning engine overboard, removing enough weight to free him. In the next chapter, he reaches France and ends up trading much of the cheese for a brand new engine.

And actually I just found an excerpt on Google books: http://tinyurl.com/ypjsqj It’s a quick and entertaining read.

Anyone know of other cheese references in literature??

Wild about Parrano

I know it may be unorthodox to comment on a cheese without having everyone partake, but hopefully Fromage du Mois-heads will forgive me as a new member. I had the most fabulous cheese the other night and I just had to share.

At first I thought it was called Uniekaas, because that's the name that was on the label. But actually that is the name of a the Dutch cheese company that makes it.

Parrano was "created" 12 years ago by Uniekaas, which tries to market the cheese like it's Italian, even though it is actually made in Holland.

It's a type of gouda - creamy in taste, combining the right salty flavor and a pungent almost blue cheese-style strength. But it's the consistency - hard and crumbly, almost like parmesean - that's perfect.

As you can tell from my name, I'm partial to Greek cheeses, but I may have a new favorite.

We tried it with a simple panne bello loaf of bread and some light pepper-flavored table crackers. Delicious!

And just for fun, check out this cheese-loving dude I found.

Stay tuned: 'Taking back the Curd'...

As F.D.M. readers have guessed by lack of entries, there has been a hiatus in the world of amateur cheese-blogging. As lives tend to go, so do blogs, it seems; they ebb and flow with the normal tides of everyday emotions and motivations. Alas. I think I speak for all of our contributors and readers when I say,"It is all Ok."

The reality is that there is a natural order of things in this world. And it is on this trajectory that our feelings and desires evolved and gave birth to Fromage-du-Mois. It was organic and beautiful. And the spirit is still alive and strong!

The sensorium that is 'cheese' has but one choice in continuing to breath life into this project. So, on we go....There will likely be an upcoming F.D.M. resurgence. This post-hiatus era of the the FDM project may prospectively be referred to as 'Taking back [of] the Curd'...

Curious observation:
I imagine many Fromage-du-Mois contributors and readers alike have experienced what I have in the past 3 months, away from active cheese blogging. And that is this: the eating of cheese in our contemporary American life does not always happen as some 'planned event' or collective cheese tasting. We run across cheddars, swiss, muensters, fetas, ricottas, and the likes in our everyday, culinary lives. Does appreciation of the extraordinary beget awareness of the ordinary? Hmmm....

Post-hoc:
With unquenchable collective innovation, I have taken the liberty to display an artisitc rendition of our Fromage-du-Mois letters on this post. (c)2007.

cheddar - right back to the farm

In the fromage world, cheddar commands one of the heftiest purviews and may well be the most popular cheese. It spans the Kraft slices that end up on your burger to exotic English variants in snooty parlors. To understand fromage, we must begin to understand cheddar.
From a technical vantage point, cheddar is easy to summarize. A cow's milk cheese, cheddar is not named for the region of origin, but for an additional processing called "cheddaring". After the whey is drained from the curds, the blocks of cheese are turned and stacked to give cheddar is unique texture. The flavor of a cheddar should improve with age - so the older the better. You can make a good guess of a cheddar's origin based on the color. English cheddars are always their natural beige, Wisconsin cheddars have a distinctive orange color, and Vermont's are often very white.
From a gustatory vantage point, cheddar is an entirely different story. With such a long history and popularity, one cannot make blanket statements about this cheese. In particular, the availability of small production American cheddars and English Farm House cheddars provide an opportunity to experience the range of this venerable cheese.
In order to tame cheddar, the fromage du mois tasting plan was simply: pick a few cheddars and compare contrast. See the comments for details!

From Jenkins: "Cheese Precept 8 - The harder the cheese, the longer it will stay fresh."

Caerphilly

Our latest cheese selection comes from our ex-pat correspondent and British Isle cheese expert: Fontina Turner. This cheese hales from Wales, near the mouth of the Severn river. Caerphilly is a raw cow's milk fromage that matures extremely quickly (just three weeks or less). During the 19th century it was hugely popular with Welsh miners. It has a high salt content and is rumored to absorb inhaled toxins from the mines. A common miner lunch was Caerphilly wrapped up in cabbage leaves. Beige on the inside, gray on the outside, it also features a natural rind. You should always purchase Caerphilly directly from a wheel, not pre-sliced, so as to prevent excessive dryness. It will also dry up quickly on you, so never keep it on hand for more than a week.

Caerphilly is great example of the global struggle against processed cheeses. Although considered a pedestrian cheese, after a brief stint of mass production and bastardization of the name, it is now possible to get authentic Caerphilly from many smaller producers in Wales. This fromage should be available at finer cheese shops.

A Jenkin's cheese-storage footnote: "Cheese is best stored in the refrigerator as close to the bottom of the appliance as possible - the vegetable compartment is ideal." You should wrap up the cheese to allow it to breath and continue to age. Also it is OK to store many cheeses together. They will not contaminate each other...