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...

Nor-cal Creaminess: From the Goats of Humboldt Bay...

This Tasting...
When: Wednesday, 28 February 2007
Where: San Diego, San Francisco, Washington, DC, London
What: Northern California-produced ripened goat's milk cheeses (e.g. from Cypress Grove Chevre, Aracata, CA)
Who: Fromagedumois members, and the rest of illustrious cheese enthusiast world...

Did you know that, according to the American Dairy Goat Association (http://adga.org), more people drink goat's milk around the world than any other type of milk? That's easy for you to say ADGA.... :)

This bi-weekly tasting is the first of an American cheese that we have questrd for. It is an important part in our journey for amateur cheese excellence because the North America contributes its fair share to the market of the world's great cheeses. This journey begins about 200 miles north of San Francisco....

Humboldt County, California, is known for a bunch of things in the U.S., including an absoultely gorgeous surrounding outdoor playground and, of course, Chinese exploration in the late 1880s. But, lately, it has gained prominence for its growing number of dairy farmers who have earned some national reputations for making outstanding cheeses.

One standout producer in this region, Cypress Grove Chevre, has expanded in the past decade to encompass a number of farms and dozens of different goat's milk products. Despire it's growth, it still maintains its 'artisinal' cheese making process from its humble beginnings. All of the steps in the process of meticulously carried out by hand. (more details to come....)

Begin the tasting dialogue below!

Charles White: Artisan of the Ages

This very special post concerns not only amateur cheese tasting, but amateur cheese production as well. Charles White, a long time friend of Fromage du Mois and true polymath, recently sent an advanced shipment of his latest artisan Parmigiano-Reggiano. White Farms does more than just cheese. Charlie also specializes in beer / wine production, and can grow anything that you hand him. When Charlie heard we were doing a Parmesan tasting, he immediately jumped at the chance...


First some background on the fromage under scrutiny. Parmesan is a cow's milk cheese from Reggio, Italy, with strict rules concerning production. In particular:

• Parmesan can only be made in four provinces of Italy
  
• Parmesan can only be made between 15April and 11November
• Wheels of Parmesan must weigh between 66lbs and 88lbs
• Parmesan must be aged at least 14 months and can be consumed up to three years
  
• Each pressing combines two separate milkings
  

Parmesan is relatively low in fat content and should be yellowish white in color. According to Jenkins, there are few American producers worth tasting, but it's safe to say that Jenkins has not tasted Charlie White's recent entry. The 2% milk for Charlie's cheese comes from the finest, grass-fed cattle in Ohio and was pasteurized just prior to cheesemaking. Once pressed, the cheese is salted in brine solution for 24 hours before aging 10 months.

Read on for the tasting comments!

le penicillium roqueforti

Roquefort (Carles, France). Unpasteurized sheep's milk,
aged 3 months, semi-hard.

Perhaps it’s best that we keep the penicillium roqueforti on the back burner until we get some basics down, no? We’re dealing with the second most popular cheese in France, a raw sheep’s milk, stinky, salty, green mess of goodness. With such money on the line the “appellation d’orgine contrôlée" is of course in full swing, though lest you think that Roquefort is an invention of shrewd late 20th century marketing, Charles VI accorded the inhabitants of Roquefort a monopoly on the unique production process in 1411, and Pliny the Elder seems to have had some kind words for a cheese bearing a striking resemblance to our current stinky subject.

The trick is to drop some specially made rye bread into a cave in the south of France, leave it there for six to eight weeks, and then harvest the mold. Fresh white cheese is brought into the “cave,” the aforementioned penicillium spores are released into the air (rather than directly into the cheese, so that the fermentation happens evenly), and the tell-tale green ashy flakes start showing up in a few weeks. Three months in, the color is most evident, and then as the cheese ages, some of the green mold flakes start to disappear.

For my tasting I had to choose between a Roquefort Carles and a Roquefort Societé Bée, and I went with the former because it seemed a bit less dry, more sloppy, and, for better or worse, a dollar more. I like the ammonia aftertaste that makes your eyes squint, but I have to admit that I think that I prefer my blues a bit less salty. The pungency is, however, down right glorious, and I think that armed with the right baguette (crackers don’t seem to carry the mold, perhaps), Roquerfort would be a good way to end a cheese platter, a place to work up to through some more mild or subtle options.

Feta Kuti, 30 Januray 2007