Cheese, so much cheese

I'm back from the 25th annual American Cheese Society conference and I'm a more than a little cheesed out. I figure I must have tasted at least 200 different cheeses while I was at the conference. I can only assume my cholesterol is somewhere in the 800 range. It didn't matter that I walked a couple of miles each day, I put on probably 5 pounds in cheese weight. It also didn't help that I consumed deep dish pizza and Chicago dogs on top of all the cheesy goodness.

Enough about my eating habits. Let's talk about the cheese conference. The conference is really a finely orchestrated mixture of cheese propaganda, cheese tasting, learning about cheese, and networking with other cheese people. I guess any professional conference is like that, but this is my first conference of any kind.

If I had to pick a subject to spend 4 days obsessing about, I'd have to say that cheese is a pretty darn good one. I did a coffee and cheese tasting, I learned about different butter flavors, I learned about raw milk, microfiltering, and on and on and on. I was most sorry that I missed out on "7 Habits of Highly Successful Cheesemongers". I heard that they learned cheese Reiki in that workshop (to help calm the cheese).

Most importantly I found some new cheeses that I would like to have in the shop. So I'm working on that and hopefully by fall I will have established a few new relationships with cheesemakers. The number of folks making cheese in the USA is staggering. There were literally over one thousand cheeses at the Festival of Cheese. The quality of some of them was stunning.

One of our favorites in the shop is the Meadow Creek Grayson and it won first place in the Farmstead catergory and second place in the overall competition. We're so pleased for them and maybe next year they'll win the whole thing.

Many thanks to David from Great Ciao for introducing me to some great folks and to my long last pal Mike from Chelmsford, MA who is now managing the dairy for a little company called Zingerman's. Who could believe that two guys from the same small town in Massachusetts are both managing cheese shops?

Conferring About Cheese

I'm off to Chicago today for the American Cheese Society's 25th annual cheese conference. Most of you, I'm sure, are like me and didn't even know that there was an American Cheese Society let alone an annual conference. This is my first time attending a conference really of any sort. I have no idea what to expect. Will there be a cheese society secret hand shake? I certainly hope so (but I won't be able to tell you if there is). Are there going to be lots and lots of cheese themed trinkets and marketing items? Oh probably and it scares me a little bit.

My hope in attending is that I will meet some of the cheesemakers I have only spoken with on the phone or via e-mail. Also perhaps I will try some new and delicious cheeses that I need to have in the shop. Lastly I am attending some cool seminars which seem like they could really help me run the cheese shop better. I think I am most looking forward to the seminar on Cheese and Coffee. It's like my close friend from high school and close friend from college finally meeting each other.

Hopefully I'll have some internet access while I'm in the big city and I can update the blog with some updates from my cheese pilgrimage.

What's my favorite cheese?

Well, thanks for asking. This seems to be a recurring question here in our south Minneapolis cheese shop. First, a brief review of how this questions comes about. There are 3 general kinds of customers that walk up to the cheese counter:

1) On a mission! These folks have a party, a fiesta, a suaree, a hootenanny, or some other event to get to and they need some cheese. Oh, and fast. Usually they don't know what they want and they just want you to put something nice together. Great, we're good at that.
2) I know what I like. "Could you please give me 1.3 ounce of the yak's milk cheese from the northeast corner of tibet? No, not that one. The other one made by the monk's son, not the monk himself." They're pretty easy too unless I am out of yak's milk cheese and then I have to convince them to try something new. That can be quite difficult.
3) Tabula rasa. They sort of know what they like but they've actually come here to be helped. Believe it or not the backup candidate for this job was a trained seal. I swear it's true. But in the end they decided I would help the customers select cheese better than the seal (the seal would go for all those fishy tasting cheese, yuck!).

It's usually customer type #3 that asks me "What's your favorite cheese?" What a tough question, though haven't we all asked someone in retail or in a restaurant that question before. It's like asking someone to name their favorite bottle of wine, or favorite child. The real problem is that my favorites are variable from day to day. It really depends what mood I'm in.

I thought I should at least come up with a top 5 list of cheeses that I think are awesome. benjamin reserves the right to change this list at any time for any reason and to publicly disavow this list and say that he never liked the cheese in the first place and doesn't recall writing about it in his blog.

Here they are in no particular order:

1. Cato Corner (CT) Bloomsday. Anyone who has been in the shop knows that Mark of Cato Corner is one of my favorite cheese makers. Everything he makes is delicious. The Bloomsday is an amazing cheese. Rich, creamy and packed full of flavor. The latest wheel we received has subtle tropical fruit notes and is especially mouth melty.
2. Coach Farm (NY) Triple Cream Goat. This little guy is that perfect blend of taste and texture. Rich triple creaminess with a zippy goat cheese tang. A great cheese for the summer heat.
3. Twig Farm Goat Tomme (VT). Just got this guy back in stock. Made by a young couple in Vermont, this is a earthy, rustic cheese that's beautiful on a cheese plate and it has an incredible lingering flavor.
4. Carles Roquefort aka Old Man Cheese (France). There are 12 producers of Roquefort in France and this is the smallest cheesemaker (a 94 year old man, hence Old Man cheese) which exports to the USA. Accept no substitutes when it comes to Roquefort. We've tried a couple others and they cannot compete with the Carles brand. Salty, tangy, creamy. This is the king of the cheese case.
5. Hook's 7 year Cheddar (WI). Okay this was a tough one to put in the top 5 but I kept going back to this one. A hunk of the Hook's on a hunk of baguette with a little bit of Jocelyn's pepper-onion relish. Man oh man is that good.

That's 5 for this week. I'll sit on it a little bit and see if I can't come up with another 5.

Garden update: So far so good

I'm not going to get ahead of myself and declare the roof top garden a success. Mostly because I've really never grown too many successful plants. Did I mention that I do not have much of a green thumb? I'm going to let the pictures speak for themselves and I'll also say that none of the plants are dead and they look pretty healthy to me.

This garden is fun for me. Ask anyone who knows me well and they'll tell you that I often like the idea of things better than the actual thing itself. For example, growing up I always like to make pancakes and I always thought making pancakes for breakfast was a good idea. The problem was that I never wanted to eat the pancakes once they were finished. I thought I would, but I really didn't.

So part of me was worried that I would like the idea of roof top gardening but then let the plants die because I grew bored with it. In fact my plants are still living and it really is a nice break from cheese shopperey to go up to the roof and tend to them. It's my inner earth crunchy speaking to me. All the plants seem to be getting enough water (but not too much), ample sunlight, and not too wind blown. Right now there is no evidence that there are any pests making their way to the roof. If it becomes evident that there are, then you can look forward to the first annual France 44 scarecrow making contest.

I am hoping this whole garden thing is a prelude to thoughts about a green roof. That will be a whole post unto itself when this little experiment is over. But I am ready for France 44's no-so-secret rooftop garden replete with vegetables, fruit, flowers and maybe even our own little apiary. And don't even get me started on the solar panels...

Okay, without further pontification, here is proof of life on our roof:

Make a cheese plate like the professionals do

Ever wonder how those talented chefs at all of the finest restaurants compose those amazing cheese plates? What is the secret to putting cheese on a plate? Here you thought it was so easy: just cut up some wedges of cheese and throw it on a plate. Well, I'm here to complicate things for you.

In all seriousness I've noticed that most folks seem to overlook the cheese course as an essential part of the meal. Which, as you might guess, I think is too bad. Cheese is not just for snacking or as an appetizer before you sit down for the main meal. It can and should be treated like a course of the meal. Maybe not for every meal, but if you're having a dinner party there is nothing more fun than composing a carefully selected cheese plate.

Usually I like to have cheese before or instead of dessert. Of course it can also be served at the beginning of the meal somewhere around the salad course. When I say cheese course I'm not talking about hunks of cheese splayed out on a cheese board surrounded by leaning towers of crackers. I mean small bites of cheese that are meant to be savored and not necessarily to fill your stomach up.

With this thought in mind I decided to put together a little piece of propaganda that might be helpful in cheese plate composition.

I'd like to draw particular attention to item #4 on the list and share a story. Some of you may know that most of what I know about food I learned in my time at applewood restaurant in Brooklyn, NY. The owners David and Laura are quite passionate about their cheese plate. And although I was banned from touching most anything in the kitchen, I was occasionally called into service to make a cheese plate. Laura's number one rule about the cheese plate was that the rind of the cheese should be facing inwards to the center of the plate.

So why am I drawing attention to this? Look around and you will see that most cheese plates do it the opposite way with the rind facing outwards. Again, who cares? As Laura explained it is infinitely easier to eat the cheese if the edible part is facing towards the outer edge of the plate. Simply put your knife into the cheese and spread it on your cracker or crostini. It really does make perfect sense. I've encouraged Laura to write her doctoral thesis on this matter but apparently she's too busy running a restaurant and raising two kids.

Oh and you will also notice that the suggested serving size is 1.5 oz per person. That's just a rough estimate depending on what else you are serving. And if you come into the cheese shop and ask me for six ounces of cheese I will probably look confused and ask you to do the conversion for me or wait while I go to my MacBook and look it up.