Sampling four tasty VT cheeses!

On my most recent trip to Vermont, Shawna saved me a few morsels of cheese in her refrigerator. I was kind enough to take them off her hands, and get an idea of what they're like. The Middlebury Co-op is actually very good for cheese sampling, because it has a sort of rummage-bin of small cheese morsels, each less than a dollar in price, for sampling. Here's this week's haul:

Spring Brook Farm Tarentaise
Fruity and intriguing, this cheese draws me in with a bouquet and nose reminiscent of wine. It starts like a classic French Comté fruité, nutty, then evolves n the tongue to fruity notes, with no bitterness, but a whole bouquet of flavor from the aging process. I am in love with this one.

Stowe sage cheddar
Overpoweringly sage-flavored, but in this case it's a good thing! This cheese reminds me of raclette in the broiler, straight from the fridge.

Blue Ledge Farm "La Luna"
This cheese is light and airy, despite its fat content and age. It's an aged goat cheese, but it doesn't evolve the complex flavor profile of most aged goat cheeses, because it's aged in wax rather than with a natural rind. It ends up having a rather strong, unilateral chèvre jeune flavor. Pleasant, but unremarkable.

Champlain Valley Triple Crème
A bit of an interesting cross between Chaource and Brie. More uniform than Chaource, but not quite creamy all the way through the pâte. The flavor is very milky, almost chalky, with a hint of bitter acidity at the finish. A cheese which evolves in the mouth. Baking and melting this cheese accentuated the sour acidity and caused it to be unpalatable, but it's a great table cheese, and I would be inclined to take it over imported brie any day. The acidic finish seems to be common among soft Vermont cheeses with natural rind, and I'm happy to see it come to the fore when it does.

Review: Meadowstone Farm's chèvre

 

In the past few weeks, I’ve mentioned more than a few times to Izzy and Shawna that I live next to an organic farm that makes goat cheese. It is time I write something about it!

The Meadowstone Farm is located on the outskirts of Littleton, NH, up in the White Mountains, only a half-hour drive from Mt. Washington trailheads. It should NOT be confused with the goat cheese farm of the same name located in Connecticut, but that just goes to show you, terroir is everywhere. The farm’s owner, Tim, makes some amazing cheese. As Izzy says, young chèvres are the backbone of the American artisanal cheese revolution. This farm is no exception. In any season, they will have at least three varieties of their chèvre. Always slightly salty, always with a full flavor profile, these cheeses also exhibit a wonderful texture, somewhere between crumbly and melty velvet. I most recently tasted the one with chives, but garlic, mixed-herb, and plain are also available. The garlic, herbs, and chives, are all grown on-location, with the same care and attention afforded to the goats. This New Hampshire cheese, one of a blessed few, does have a different sort of profile (again I may mention its saltiness) when compared with comparable Vermont cheeses.


Being slightly salty, these cheeses pair well with a sweeter or slightly oaked white wine, which brings out an earthy or even fruity flavor, albeit ephemeral. I have experimented with figs as well, to good success.


Go visit them! On the web at http://meadowstonenh.com/


MEADOWSTONE CHÈVRE

Flavor: 8/10, perfect for a goat cheese but a bit on the salty side.

Texture: 8.5/10, Nice and fluffy velvet.

Character Review: Honeymaker Lavender Mead, Willow Hill Farm's Alderbrook Sheep Cheese, Bread & Butter Farm 3 Seed Bread

As Autumn hits Vermont and the last traces of summer linger, hanging through the air, residents are streaming through the farmers' markets and co-ops to gather up the last of the season's loot. Likewise, we're all gathering our friends and tapping out the last few late-summer-evening dinner parties remaining before all meals are spent in front of the wood stove. To celebrate the season, and the ultimate in feminine dreamery and friendly, romantic nights enveloped underneath the still warm starlight: Honeymaker Lavender Mead, Willow Hill Farm alderbrook sheep milk cheese, Bread & Butter Farm 3 seed bread, and a dinner dish entangling sauteed radishes, leeks, McIntosh apples and eggs over a bed of wilted rainbow swiss chard.

First, I had high, high expectations for the handcrafted lavender mead, made in small batches in Portland, ME. I so wanted it to taste like a misty, ethereal dream that I was almost afraid to taste it and instead spent a good three minutes inhaling its scent (to be fair, it's highly aromatic, with heavy bottom notes and top notes tinged with citrus). Bearing that introduction, I was slightly disappointed with the first sip. But come on! I wanted it to taste like romance, and it's just mead. It tastes exactly the way it should: deep, thick honey with a slightly green, mineralic slice of perfumey florals as it washes over the tongue; sweet in a rich caramelized fashion, not sickly like candy. It tastes just the way Burberry's perfumes smell: like humid, damp nights spent striding down slick Western European cobblestones in the rain and your best heels; more high fashion than the tumbling sweetness of frolicking through open lavender fields at dusk.

The Alderbrook, made in Milton, VT, however, was far more impressive than I expected. At first taste the pungency is similar to salt water up the nose, and then blossoms into a rich, subtle roundness. Earthy and gentle, it simply tastes warm and friendly. The subtlety is almost devoured by the moist, dense chewiness of Bread & Butter's German style, wood-fired bread, but not quite, and the healthy, lusty taste and texture of the sesame, flax, and sunflower seeds pairs wonderfully with the eccentric-yet-shy cheese. It's fun to note that Bread & Butter holds "Silo Sessions" concerts through the fall and winter on their Shelburne (Vermont, of course) farm. They're good, they're in a bakery, go to one.

All the robust flavors of the dinner party appetizers call for a lighter, crisper main course. If you slowly saute thinly sliced radishes and rings of leeks, adding in slices of fresh, crisp McIntosh, cracking an egg over the top and mixing a few sploshes of balsamic vinegar and a small spoon of wildflower honey (balsamic excluded, all local, all organic, honestly not intentional) when all is cooked and simmering, you'll be pleased. Served over rainbow swiss chard, it's colorful, bright, and green enough to round out the nutty, chewy, oddly cheesy taste of the sauteed egg mix. All in all, it's an incredibly pastoral, kind, endearing meal. Enchanting and incredibly delicate and effeminate (sheep! honey! hens! rainbows! lavender! sunflowers!), it's best paired with the ambiance of a cluster of close, chatty, vibrant friends; sunset turning to starlight; Mice Parade. If enjoying alone, I'd advise a pairing of Vogue, Hemingway, or Wilde, Madeleine Peyroux, and Steinbeck's simple quote, "I am happy to report that in the war between reality and romance, reality is not the stronger".

Flavor: 9/10, will want to recreate, will remember on every night spent choosing a granola bar on the go for dinner.

Economic Reality: Totally doable. $36 all in all, with enough food for 4 people (or 4 nights), and enough bread and eggs left over for a week's worth of breakfast. Added plus, all scraps are completely compostable.

Review: Landeria Farms Fresh Chevres

I was starting to get worried about being able to find locally made cheeses in Kansas, after looking place, after place, after place, and only having found Alma cheese curds. Cheese curds.....can be good, but aren't exactly what I'm looking for! It's been an endless source of frustration for me, the cheeses available for me to order. I want local! I want more artisanal! But sometimes, the prices are ridiculous, and local cheeses are non existent in my order guide-which leaves me at square one. So, when in doubt, head to the farmers market!
I have always had this strong feeling that the artisan cheese revolution in the states is almost completely based around goat cheeses. Cypress Grove is all goat. Vermont Creamery's best are goats (Bonne Bouche? That cheese is GOOD- and almost doesn't doesn't taste like goat cheese, but is!). Sam has talked about a neighboring farm that makes goat cheeses. And yep, you guessed it- Landeria farms produces goat cheeses! I realize that this probably is starting to sound like I have something against goat cheese; I don't! I never used to think that I liked it, but I really do love fresh chevres. Like I mentioned before, one of my current favorites is Purple Haze- goat, lavender and fennel seeds.
Anyway, Landeria farms confirmed my suspicions- that there are not very many local cheeses producers in my area. But there's them! A half hour drive away, they breed, raise, and milk their own goats- and then produce goat cheeses! She told me that she had suggested to another goat-raiser that he start making flavored chevres- and he said no! So, she decided to make some! She had a multitude of goat cheeses available- three pressed, cave aged cheeses, a variety of flavored fresh chevres, and a couple with bloomy rinds!
Flavored chevre wise, there are harissa, garlic, plain, honey rosemary, cajun, dill and sundried tomato basil. For the aged ones, she had a gouda, swiss, and jack available. Anyway, we tried pretty much all of them, and picked up the garlic, harissa and sundried tomato basil ones!
At the Merc, the local co-op, these sell for $5.99. From her directly, each 4 oz container was $5. Not bad! The aged cheeses were, of course, a bit pricier. But we'll cover those ones next time!
So, these flavored chevres are basically like a spread. I suppose that the closest comparison would be to the premade spreads that you can buy at supermarkets- Allouette, that sort of thing. But, as it is fresh chevre, it still has that tang, that bite that fresh goat cheeses do. It is crumbly, and yet very easily spread on a good crusty bread. Unlike a lot of fresh chevres, the flavoring runs throughout. It's not just on the outside rind (there is none), or just in the center. Mixed throughout = an extremely flavorful spread!
(it almost looks like a homemade playdough, doesn't it? )
We'll start with what was the simplest (to me, at least): the garlic. I am a garlic fiend through and through. I love garlic. I don't think that such a thing as "too much garlic" exists. My only quip with this one was that it's the only one to have only one flavor. I love the mixing of flavor found in all of Landeria farm's other chevres. We made some burgers and spread this on top, and it was gooooooood.
(I only caught a picture of it once it had been partially demolished by hungry boys)

The favorite amongst the boyfriend and his roommates, was the harissa. I had never heard of harissa before, but a little quick googling tells me that it's a Tunisian spice. The woman at Landeria farms said that he son does something within the realm of culinary arts, and he has passed on the knowledge that harissa is going to be the up and coming spice of the year. And, yep, it was good. I'm a wussy when it comes to spicey things, and the boyfriend loves it as hot as he can get it-so this was great! Not too much for me, enough for him. It smells absolutely HEAVENLY too. We ate this one with a Kansas City made sourdough, and it disappeared SO fast. A hit!
(doesn't it look AWESOME!?)
Last, but absolutely not least, was the sundried tomato basil chevre. A restaurant that I love back home does a sundried tomato pesto, that I love, so it's really no surprise that this one was my favorite. In fact, even after having it for breakfast and a snack yesterday, I just polished off the last of it as a pre-dinner snack. It's tomato-ey. It's garlickey. It's basil-ey. It's just all around good. I'm almost wishing that I had tossed it in some pasta with some chicken too!


Like I said, these all kind of remind me of store bought spreads-but better. Nothing is lost in the fact that they are flavored. Smooth, creamy (and yet crumbly?), and delicious! Even though their flavors are all very distinct, they are all still so delicious and obviously, fresh chevres.


Stop by again soon for a review of Landeria farm's aged gouda, and the ONLY GOAT SWISS made in the States!

Review: Jasper Hill Farm's Constant Bliss

In response to Izzy's favorite cheese question, I have to say I'm quite infatuated with Jasper Hill Farm's Constant Bliss at the moment! The trouble is, I've only got a very small sample size of one cheese, so it's difficult to call it a favorite just yet.
I tried Constant Bliss, on her urging, on a trip to Vermont two weeks ago. I had to go to three organic foods markets to find it, but by the end I felt like Captain Ahab in search of the white whale.
I originally thought it a bit pompous to name a cheese Constant Bliss, but research turned up its real namesake, a soldier in the revolutionary war (back when they named non-pornstars things like Constant Bliss) who died near where the Jasper Hill Farm is now located.
Outwardly, the cheese resembles a Chaource. Rind velvety and tender with vague odor of Penicillium, pâte fading from runny near the rind to crumbly but fine-grained in the center. The flavor is straight from Vermont terroir, never very salty on the edges and edging on sweet toward the center of the cheese. Vaguely nutty and just a touch of acidity. I ate on honey-wheat bread, and paired with Lincoln Peak Frontenac Gris, a lightly oaked Vermont white wine, made from cold-weather grape varietals.
As for living up to its name, I'd say it's the best thing I've had in a very very long while. Nice and subtle, and at only $5 for a cheese, rates very high on the bang-for-buck scale. With or without a good wine, it certainly makes for an ephemeral moment of bliss.

Bought at the City Market in Burlington. I got it for $5, but I hear it normally sells for a good deal more than that, possibly double.

Flavor: 8/10, maybe a touch on the acidic side for some.
Texture: 10/10, my favorite thing about this cheese.

Food here is about ease. It's about quickness. It's about simplicity. True, it's also about flavor- but so much of the flavor from things that aren't good for us. And really, this country does not appreciate food the way that the French do. I am, and have been for as long as I can remember, a Francophile. I come from a family of foodies, too. So the way that most people approach food...well, let's just say that I yearn for France. I recently returned from a trip to France entirely surrounding cheese. I ate the best food that I have ever eaten in my life. I had the most cheese that I have ever had, saw more cheese than I will probably ever see in one go again. One of the things that I loved the most, was the reverence towards food. Cooking is truly an art in France. Everything is meant to be savored. And the same goes for their 650(!) different types of cheeses produced in the country. The sheer number of cheeses found in France is ridiculous- and heavenly for a cheesemonger like me.
Anyway, enough about my obsession with food, France, and cheese. Well, maybe not cheese- but let's talk a little bit about here. Right here. Right where you are. Chances are, there's more than one farm near you that produces some sort of cheese. In Lincoln, Nebraska, my dad is a big fan of a seasonally and locally made nettle cheese. I know multiple girls who are on track to becoming cheesemakers. Getting my hands on the locally made cheeses is sometimes harder for me-Farmer's markets can be a good place to find them, and my days off are never guaranteed, and work is such that Saturdays and Sundays are our busiest times- bad timing for Farmer's Markets. But! I will find cheeses. I will eat them. And I will tell you about them- flavor, texture, awesomeness on a scale from one to ten, price, where you can find it- the good, the bad, and the ugly. Some, you might have to search out more than others. If nothing else, I hope to inspire you to check out locally/artisanally made cheeses around you!
Just keep in mind- the United States is not only the world's largest producer of cheese, but it is also the largest importer. We eat lots of cheese! It used to be that a lot of the made-in-country cheeses we could find were huge companies, mass produced, factory made, facsimiles of what a cheese should be. But this is changing. Specialty cheese has been and still is a massively growing market in the US. I look forward to searching out, finding, reveling in (and probably sometimes not liking quite so much) and loving cheese!

I want to finish this with one of the hardest questions that I am ever asked- what is your favorite kind of cheese? Maybe as you read this, you'll try more, your tastes will change, and you'll discover a new favorite!
As for me, if I have to pick JUST one right now? I'm going with Cypress Grove's Purple Haze. Lavender and Fennel goat cheese is way too darned good!

First Post

Well, it seems this is another foodie blog. A group of friends and I are starting this because it seems the interest in local, artisinal food in the USA is decentralized. Sure, you can find online reviews of nearly any obscure farm cheese you'd like. But even with the local food movement in full swing, regional identity based on food is in its infancy. Our aim is to foster a sense of terroir, that elusive relationship between food and geography that is found all over Europe, and that we can see beginning to grow in the USA as well.

We will keep you posted.