My sheep cheese that I made at Valley Shepherd finally arrived! We all (at, wt, ms, na, a?) thought it was very good. It was not as firm as some of the other wheels, and a bit more earthy than the others.
Fairway’s Pub & Grill at KPTW
If you are passing through the Philidalphia area and need food, don’t hesitate to stop in at Pottstown Limerick, KPTW. The Fairway’s Pub & Grill (610-495-7626) is a few hundred yards up the road from the FBO, but don’t let the name fool you. Yes, it is a ‘pub & grill’, but Marty, the chef, makes up daily specials depending on what he was able to buy at the farmer’s market that morning.
We had crab cakes, which is one of Marty’s own special recipies. They were great! In fact, we had a nice conversation with him. He gave us his cell phone number, and said to call the next time we were flying in and he would prepare something special for us.
This guy owns a bar & grill, is the chef at the place, which is across the street from an airport (outside of the SFRA). What a dream job!.
Sheep & Wool 2009
The Maryland Sheep & Wool festival this year was again very good. We went on Saturday, and there were a zillion people there. It didn’t rain, and thus was very nice. We found out that the cheesemonger that used to show up (Menhennet) has been replaced by Everona. We go there at 1pm on Saturday, and they had already old out of most of what they had brought, so we didn’t get any of their blues.
Smokey Piedmont
We’ve had their Piedmont before, so this was our chance to check out their smoked version. It was very good. (10/27/2010 update: I bought some Smoked Piedmont again at the Crystal City Farmer’s Market but over til next season. Once again, we liked it – went will with some fresh pears; easy to eat in your hand.)
Shenandoah
A milder sheep milk cheese, which was also very good.
Understanding the living foods we eat
The evening at the Science Museum was very interesting. The speaker, Dr. Catherine Donnelly, is a Professor of Cheese (well, actually ‘Professor of Nutrition and Food Science’) at the U. of Vermont. Her talk was quite technical. There is a law that you can’t sell cheese made from raw milk unless it has been aged for at least 60 days. Her talk was mostly about this law, and the papers and experiments that have been done on it: where bacteria in cheese comes from, what kind of pathogens survive past 60 days, how to detect Listeria in food, and a lot of other stuff about microbiological safety of raw-milk cheese. There were some pictures, and a few charts and graphs. But really, it was very interesting.
She is also a founder of the Vermont Institute for Artisan Cheese.
And then we ate cheese: Mt Tam (Calif.), Montgomery’s Cheddar (England), Cabot Clothbound Cheddar (Vt.), Comte Reserve (France; we had a Comte at one of the Burlington tastings), Parmigiano-Reggiano (Italy), and Baley Hazen Blue (Vt). All of it cow.
cheese from feast!
We finally got a chance to stop by feast!, a cheese shop in Charlottesville, VA, and what a shop it was! The proprieter, Kate, was very knowledgeable and helpful on choosing the right cheese. We wanted local cheeses, and had the usual criteria: one brie/triple-cream, some sheep, and not much goat. Well, Kate certainly supplied us with what we wanted, and we ended up with this:
Delice de Bourgogne
milk: French cow
a very nice triple-creme cheese
Everona Piedmont
milk: Virginia cow
Grayson
Meadow Creek Dairy
milk: Virginia sheep
Very smelly. Did not get better with age. Creamy texture.
McClure
milk: Virginia cow
type: similar to Tallegio
Yes, very much like Tallegio (very smelly). NA liked this a lot.
Roaring 40’s blue
milk: Austrailian cow
Angela & Ken’s B-day
We drove to Burlington for the January birthdays (Angela and Ken). We stopped by Harris-Teeter, which has a good selection of cheese (for a grocery store), and got Manchego (of course), and a blue that we hadn’t seen before.
Butter
Angela gave me a “cookbook” for Christmas, The Home Creamery, by Kathy Farrell-Kingsley. It describes how to make butter from whole cream, which we did, and it was delicious!
Goat Brie
Angela got this at Brookville in Cleveland Park. It was a hit, and everyone (but me) liked it. Well, I thought it was very good for goat cheese(!).
Manchego
Always a favorite.
Amish Blue
Actually it was from Wisconsin, but was a good blue.
The Cheese Quiz
One time we were at a restaurant talking to someone, and they said “I like cheese”, but we doubted them. Well, as you can tell from this blog that we really like cheese, so we decided to develop a quiz to see just how much someone really likes the stuff:
- How many implements in your kitchen (plates, knives, serving trays, forks, etc.) are solely devoted to cheese? (about 15)
- How many pounds of blue cheese have you purchased at one time? (3 lbs)
- Have you ever smuggled cheese into the country? (yes)
- How far have you driven just to purchase cheese? (maybe 15 miles)
- Does your cheesemonger know you by name? (well, not by name, but they recognize us)
- Do you have rennet in your refrigerator? (yes)
- How many cheese books do you have? (3)
Christmas Eve, ’08
I was in Silver Spring, so I went to Whole Foods. It’s not the best (they don’t cut the cheese off of the wheel like they do a real cheese shops, but it was the best I could do at the time). We also had Coffee Egg-nog with it.
Bel Paese
milk: Lombardy, Italy cows
Semi-soft, mild cheese. Nice.
Manchego
milk: Spanish sheep
As they say on Splendid Table, when you want to try out different cheeses, there’s more than just Manchego. But as I said, I was at Whole Foods, so I had to do my best.
Stilton
milk: English cows
A very good blue; we’ve had this before. I lost the label, so I don’t know what creamery this one came from.
Thanksgiving at Burlington
Was in Bethesda the other day & went by Ibo’s shop, Cornicopia. As it is an Italian shop, I got 3 kinds of cheese to take to N.C. for our Thanksgiving trip.
Piave messano
Italian cows
very good, was hard & was fine for grating on soup
Sardo
Italian sheep
very good, soft
Pientino
Italian sheep
very good, soft
New Jersey Cheese
Amram
Bobolink
milk: cow
We went to visit NJ and went to this dairy in Warwick, NJ. They make several kinds of cheese, and we were able to taste a very tiny portion of them. Amram was closest to brie; we got several others.
Shepherds Logue (0.55 lbs, $24 per pound, $13.20 total) Cave aged 4+ months. Brick shaped with an external rub of herbs de Provence.
Oldwick Shepherd (0.53 lbs, $22 per pound, $11.66 total) Cave aged 3-6 months. Mold ripened. Earthy aroma, nutty smooth finish. Pyrenees style sheep’s milk cheese.
Crema de blue (0.48 lbs, $20 per pound, $9.60 total) Raw mixed blue cheese. Aged 60 days. Creamy, with a smooth rich flavor.
Shepherds Cushions (1.00 lbs, $2.50 a pound, $2.5o total) Brie style cushions; Aged to perfection; creamy and runny. Not shown in photo.
Valley Shepherd
all raw sheep
Three from the dairy where we made cheese. I think the difference in Shepherds Logue and Oldick Shepherd was the kind of rennet used. All very nice.
They gave very detailed receipts — weights and descriptions of cheese.