Boerenkaas from Willamette Valley Cheese Co, a 2009 favorite

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FUCheese started off the year with a revelatory cheese and beer tasting put on by Saraveza and Steve’s Cheese. It kicked off a true obsession with pairing these two fine items and I spent most of the year trying new combinations and doing my best to spread the beer/cheese love.

In March, we packed up the car and stayed in a yurt in the Rogue River Valley to attend the 5th Annual Oregon Cheese Guild Cheese Festival in Central Point. We had so much fun at the festival and met some awesome people. We also visited Vern and Gianaclis at Pholia Farm which kicked off a love of goats. I still haven’t been brave enough to milk one yet. New Year’s resolution?

Linnea feeds a baby goat at Pholia Farm

In April, we made mascarpone, more yogurt and had some iffy cottage cheese. I also attended a hard cheese class at Kookoolan Farms which convinced me that we needed to get back on that horse and give hard cheeses another try. Did we? No. Another resolution, perhaps.

Nicole and I hit the road again, this time north to Seattle for the cheese festival at Pike’s Place Market. We went as volunteers and worked at the Peterson tent taking in money and handling out samples. It was a total blast and we may do it again this year. This time we’ll have to walk out of there with more cheese. We were just so overwhelmed after finishing our shift that it was all we could do to visit some of the smaller cheesemakers for samples and then go collapse in the park.

Nico attacks the mimolette @ Seattle Cheese Festival

In the summer, I was too busy camping, BBQ-ing and drinking beer to spend too much time in the kitchen. I got my first paid gig doing a pairing of cheeses and beers. Profits, admittedly, were a bit low because I bought waaay too much really awesome fancy cheese and paired it with incredible (and expensive) beers. It was a total blast, though, and everyone had a great time and – bonus! – we had enough cheese left over to put together a handsome platter for a dinner party of 6 the following weekend. I have done a couple more pairings for groups since then and my portioning is getting more under control.

I also spent a fair bit of my summertime involved in putting together the Portland Cheese Festival. I somehow wrangled my way onto the planning board and met some great people in the process. The festival went off really, really well. Feedback was – and continues to be – incredible. The cheesemakers brought amazing stuff and the location turned out to work pretty good. Hopefully when it comes around again, I’ll be able to get involved and build on what I learned with the last one. You’ll be there, too, right?

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Sadly, this is where an already bumpy year for personal reasons got downright depressing. My father passed away at the end of October after a fierce, year-long battle with cancer. He was a good military man and, really, still too young to go. He loved hearing about the cheese festival and all our adventures with cheese. He was a big cheese fan (also smoked anchovies, hot mustard, oysters and other Scandinavian treats and terrors) and it was really tough to lose him. However, his death opened my eyes to what it means to have people in your life who truly care about you and for that I am so very thankful.

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The end of the year rounded out with more goats, excellent cheese plates and a beer/cheese pairing challenge! My friend Bruce, a die-hard beer nerd and curator of fine brews decided it was time to pull up some beers from his cellar and do a tasting. He asked if I could pair some cheeses with his eclectic collection. Since I couldn’t pre-sample these beers due to their rarity and age, I went off of tasting notes from the brewers and other beer writers and his own recollection of what these tasted like or should taste like.

A 3-decade vertical of Sierra Nevada Celebration – 2009, 1999, 1989! – paired with a pungent and footy Canadian cheese called Charleudix.

The pairings turned out really well and everyone had their favorites. The one pictured above was a huge hit. That cheese was incredibly stinky and I made everyone take a good sniff before I portioned it out. They were scared, for sure. However, it was a wonderful and creamy cheese with a lot of flavor and balanced with the hops notes of the ‘99 and ‘09 quite well. Poor, old ‘89 tasted like it had almost no hops left at all. I couldn’t have asked for a better cap to the year, surrounded by some of my favorite things in life: good beer, great cheese and fantastic friends.

So, to more of that in 2010!

We got up bright and early and stumbled over to Cafe Besalu for some excellent coffee and fantastic pastries, I had the pear galette and Nicole had the strawberry, fresh from the oven. I love Seattle!! Then we made our way down to Pike’s Place Market. I had not realized when we volunteered that it would be at the Market and when that dawned on me I realized that this was going to be whole different beast.

We arrived at the Market, already bustling with activity, got our t-shirts (very cute) and got ourselves introduced to Kim over at the Peterson tent. Kim was basically Julie, The Cruise Director. She was amazing and a flurry of activity and kept things running smoothly at Peterson. She informed us that we’d be responsible for taking the money, making change and fetching cheese. I told Kim that I thought there would be no math on this test!

There were five or six pay stations and the volunteers needed to mark on a price sheet which cheeses were being sold from that station and make sure that the cheese stores in the coolers at our feet didn’t get too low. It was just after 9 am and people were already milling around the tent, hunting for samples. Peterson is a Washington food distributor specializing in cheeses and other fine foods. They had invited the makers of their various excellent cheeses to come out and hand out samples, answer questions and do some quick business. I think all their cheeses were being sold at wholesale so the prices were amazing and cheese was flying out of the coolers.

I had a bit of a bumpy start, working with these mischievous French guys and I was kicking myself for not getting a second cup of coffee before we got started. After a couple hours selling camembert (2 for 6 bucks!), mimolette, ossau-iraty and boucheron — being serenaded continuously by the Ossau-iraty guy (If you were there, you heard him) and attempting to keep on top of the fast-paced camembert sales — Kim came around and switched people up. At first, I didn’t want to move as I felt like I’d finally got into a groove but the move turned out to be a good one.

Nico attacks the mimolette!

I got set up next to Wendy, a previous year’s volunteer and she was happily sampling cheeses and chatting with the cheesemakers. I hadn’t sampled anything yet so she helped me loosen up and start to really get involved. I started sampling and relaxing a little bit. At one point, I ran down to Nicole and told her to make sure she sampled the cheese!

I worked alongside Laura, a delightful woman selling blue cheeses, the creamy and delectable Fourme D’Ambert and the more assertive Bleu d’Auvergne, both from the Auvergne region of France. The Fourme D’Ambert was a big seller at $4 for a half-round but nothing like the Honey Chevre that the next guy was selling for $3! He had creamy chevre from Montchevre creamery out of Wisconsin. The look on people’s faces when they got a sample was great. I ended up filling in on the sample table for the chevre and amusing myself at trying to figure out when was the right moment to tell them that the chevre was only $3 — usually they would raise their eyebrows at their partner or friend and I knew the deal was done.

Laura, top left, selling her blues and the Montchevre guy behind her doing brisk business.

Eventually, I got into a groove and sampled a ton of Peterson cheese (all top-of-the-line cheese) and also had so much fun answering people’s questions. There were hundreds of thousands of people coming through and tasting cheese. But, I found I had enough knowledge for the novice as well as aficionado that came through the line – I felt pretty good about that. It was a gorgeous and hot day and people could not get enough cheese. The Peterson tent was definitely a high-activity area but stepping out into the crowds and sampling other vendor’s cheeses was something else.

After we took a break for lunch (and had some sweet, sweet beer) we hopped in and out of the cheese lines sampling the independent vendors and soaking up the crowd and the gorgeous day. We collapsed at the nearby park with iced coffees and marvelled at how many people were out and how different this event was than the Oregon Cheese Fest at Rogue Creamery. That one was definitely more intimate and easy-going but this one had so much variety. It was a lot of fun and I would definitely volunteer again.

Since Nicole was off at the other end of the Peterson tent, I’ll have her explain what her experience was like….

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I stuck with the same cheese vendors for my whole shift.  In my case, I let the fear of change keep me rooted, but since I was surrounded by really friendly people with lots of fun cheese stories and had finally mastered the math/tally system I’m pretty content with my choice.  I was on the other end of the booth from Amanda with quite a variety of cheeses.  Our selection ran the gamut from a selection of soft chevre cheeses to a selection of Italian aged cheeses.  It was amusing to me that the two most popular cheeses sold at my end were an herbed chevre and a crystal-filled nutty Parmesan.  Talk about different ends of the aging spectrum!

Nicole got to oversee the cracking open of a HUGE wheel of aged parm.

I spent much of my time coming to realize just how small the cheese world really is.  In chatting with the reps around me and hearing them trade stories it was apparent that while these guys are often competitors it is a friendly competition that comes from years of working in the same intimate circle.  I spend a lot of time focused on small-batch artisanal cheese and this was a really great opportunity to think beyond that close, often local market, to the larger network of high-end quality cheese companies out there.

And even these companies often end up being connected to your own backyard.  The Arla Cheese rep – who was not only super helpful in getting me acclimated to my volunteer job but was also really friendly and full of all kinds of cheese knowledge and stories – grew up in Tillamook, Oregon!

All told this was a great weekend.  The food, the people, the accommodations, the cheese and the weather all combined to make for yet another great cheese experience.

You can see a few more photos in my Flickr set.

We decided to give mascarpone a go along with another batch of yogurt – who knew they were so closely related?  We did two batches of mascarpone, both from Ricki Carroll’s book.  One used a packet of direct-set creme fraiche starter and the other with tartaric acid.  Each of these recipes was very easy and something that could be tackled in your home kitchen in a few hours.  The mascarpone made with culture required you to heat the milk to 86 degrees and then let sit for 12 hours.  It can be drained in the refrigerator for a few more hours if a thicker consistency is wanted.  The mascarpone with tartaric acid required a 185 degree initial temperature before adding a 1/8-1/4 teaspoon of tartaric acid (I added a little over 1/8 of a teaspoon).  Once the tartaric acid has been mixed in thoroughly it is set to drain in a colander for 1 hour.  I actually let it drain for about 4 hours.

The results, while successful in both recipes, were clearly vastly different from each other.  The mascarpone with culture came out looking and tasting like mascarpone cheese that I’ve bought at the store.  It had a thicker, cream cheese consistency with that delicious tart yogurty like tang.  A much richer taste overall then the mascarpone with tartaric acid.   The tartaric acid mascarpone came out much more liquidy – although this might have been remedied if I’d let it drain even longer than I did.  While the flavor was fresh and pleasant it was fairly bland and still tasted very much like heavy fresh cream.

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Mascarpone Meets Spring!

Take one chocolate panini from Portland Pearl Bakery sliced, slice fresh strawberries and sprinkle with a little sugar, spread mascarpone onto chocolate panini and layer with sliced strawberries.  Easy and supremely delicious.

For those interested in making it a bit more complicated might I suggest sprinkling the strawberries with a little high quality balsamic vinegar or stirring in a little vanilla with the mascarpone – or both if you are feeling fancy.

Even just the basic recipe made a delicious treat after a long day of work and had the benefit of feeling like a splurge without all the effort that that usually requires.

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Making Tiramisu

Amanda here — with my share of mascarpone, I had in mind to make the tiramisu recipe from The Cheese Lover’s Kitchen Handbook by Juliet Harbutt. However, I could not resist the lure of the gorgeous strawberries showing up at the grocery store even though I know they are not in season. So, I omitted the lady fingers and brandy and used strawberries in place — a sort of summer tiramisu.

I used up all of my mascarpone. The one made with creme fraiche starter was firmer, more textured and had the underlying flavor of cream cheese. The one made with simple tartaric acid stayed soupy and very bland. Nonetheless, I mixed them together and the flavor, with the eggs and sugar and berries and grated chocolate was divine. I shared it with the neighbors across the street and we sat on their deck, under the stars and gobbled it up in a matter of minutes.

You can see all of the steps and a better explanation of the recipe in my Flickr set. I would totally make this again. With the starter, the mascarpone was very easy to do and had a really fresh and light flavor which gave the tiramisu a real liveliness. Tiramisu requires chilling for at least an hour or as long as 24 hours so this would be a great dessert to make ahead of time. The mascarpone can sit refrigerated for at least a week.

There were a number of minor setbacks, even prior to the actual cheese making, mostly due to my ill planning and failure to read the recipe all the way through.  (All things I made resolutions to correct this year.)  Since we didn’t have the starter needed for Ricki Carroll’s recipe, we used one from The Home Creamery by Kathy Farrel-Kingsley.  While a good time was had by all, the cottage cheese could have benefited from closer attention.  Cheese making, I’m coming to realize, is really all about attention to detail and attentive monitoring.  Not necessarily skills that I’ve honed in the kitchen as I’m more of a throw it all in a pot and see what happens kind of cook.

The milk got a LITTLE hotter than it should have right from the outset, so it carried a scalded aroma and flavor all the way through to the end product.   I think we also rinsed and drained it a bit too much as well as it was very dry.  Even after adding some milk as suggested by the recipe to make it more resemble store bought cottage cheese it just tasted kind of crumbly.  While certainly not our best attempt at cheese, it was nice to get back into the kitchen and start talking about potential solutions and ideas for monitoring the cheese process in the future.  You can check out the day’s events here.

You’ll note some pictures of the cheese plate I served up which was a collection of Iowa cheese (+ one from Wisconsin) that I’d purchased while visiting my family over the holidays.  I was just somewhat interested to see what was available from my home state, like for instance, Maytag Blue Cheese, made in Newton, IA.  Iowa certainly held its own in the tasting, but I must say, that this was my first exposure to Carr Valley Cheese Company, and their aged goat cheese, was amazing.

Vern and Gianaclis Caldwell, along with their daughters, have created a truly wonderful farm and make some fantastically delicious cheese (Wimer Winter being my personal favorite). They are so obviously excited by what they do and so willing to share their joy and knowledge that I found myself getting more and more excited and motivated to get back into the kitchen and try my hand at some more home cheese making.

The whole morning was filled with goats.  Their herd of Nigerian Dwarf goats filled the barn, there were newborn and preganant goats to look at, little baby goats to feed, milking and aging rooms to see, and always Vern, Gianaclis or one of their creamery family members was there to answer questions.  They so easily opened up their farm and discussed their philosophies on goat rearing and cheese making that it was very hard to even think about leaving.

Another highlight for me was the tour that Vern gave us of the solar and hydro-electric systems they use to power their farm.  The conscious choice they’ve made to live off-the-grid is truly inspiring and has proven to be a complete success for them.  The time and energy that went into the planning and construction of their farm is evident in every aspect of the operation.  Their website does a much better job than I in documenting the planning and construction so I strongly recommend you visit their website and take the time to look through the construction photo album.

I’d just like to take this opportunity to thank Vern and Gianaclis for opening up the farm and to encourage you to stop in and check it out for yourself if you are in the Rogue River area.  The cheeses are worth the stop, in and of themselves, but I promise you’ll come away with a warm spot in your heart for goats and Pholia Farms.

When Sarah decided to host a farmhouse cheddar cheese making day at her house, we started talking about something to accompany the cheddar and provide more instant gratification. Amanda found this wonderfully graphic recipe on Pacific Northwest Cheese Project for making butter.  As an aside: if you like cheese, particularly if you live in the PNW you should be reading Pacific Northwest Cheese Project.  So FUCheese Hard Cheese Day #1 became FUCheese Cheddar and Butter Day. 

So, here is the thing about butter … IT IS SUPER EASY. I mean, ridiculously easy. And equipment has come a long way since the butter churn. This is all you need for two batches of butter:

These two items and about an hour of your time (30-minutes spent chatting and eating delicious cheese with your friends) is all you need.

We did two batches so there would be enough for everyone to take some home. We also tried it with two different types of milk in an attempt to see if it made any difference in taste. Our first batch was with a quart of Strauss Family Creamery heavy cream. The second batch we did was with a quart of heavy cream from Sunshine Dairy.

Following the recipe, one quart of heavy cream was put into the kitchen-aid mixer. The recipe said to whip at high-speed, which we did do, but I found that I had to start the kitchen-aid at a lower speed to keep the cream inside the bowl. After it started to stiffen slightly I increased the speed. I was slightly concerned about the following note in the recipe, “after 25 to 30 minutes butter solids will separate completely,” and how exactly I would know when this had occurred. However it is very obvious when your butter gets to this stage and you will have no doubt when to stop your mixer.

We then drained the butter and rinsed it with tap water (I used my hands instead of a spatula as I found it easier) and then shaped the butter into blocks. Surprisingly, the Sunshine Dairy batch ended up with a slightly higher yield than the Strauss Family Creamery batch, although it didn’t win by much of a margin. Each batch made slightly over 1 pound of butter. Taste wise I didn’t think there was much of a difference. Although both were delicious and in my opinion richer and more creamy then the butter I purchase at the store.

We used some of the butter to mix with flavored salts and other herbs and spices which were really delicious and the rest we divvied out and placed in the refrigerator for people to take home. I went the simple route with my butter booty and spent a happy evening on my couch with some fresh made bread and my homemade butter.

Because we here at FUCheese like to do things for ourselves and because I got it into my head early on that we could build a cheese press on our own that was just as accurate and way cheaper than the fully assembled varieties some of us at FUCheese found ourselves one sunny summer day in the woodshop. We had purchased plans to make our own cheese press from New England Cheesemaking Supply Company and had purchased food grade lumber and were going to build our cheese press.

Now, I’m not going to discourage you from attempting to build your own if you want to, but if I had to do it all over again – I’d buy a cheese press. I had a great time making it and it was not a hard plan to follow, but there was some difficulty finding the right hardware, and while New England Cheesemaking Supply Company was very prompt with their reply with a solution to our hardware dilemma, there were a number of other alterations we had to make to get it to work.

We used it to press our farmhouse cheddar recently and it worked fine, but even after solving our hardware problems we are still running into issues. Largely due to the fact that the base – given its size – can’t be centered under the press point because the wall gets in the way. This makes for an uneven press and a somewhat lopsided wheel of cheese. Plus extra work for you to turn the cheese on the base in order to equalize the press.

So when it gets down to recommendations – buy your cheese press. It will save you time, hassle, and inaccuracies.

Early this spring my sister and her boyfriend came down for a visit from Seattle and we decided to check out Steve’s Cheese for the first time.  Don’t ask me why it took me so long to get over there, but it was years wasted in my opinion.  The cheese and cured meats selection was wide and diverse and the service was exceptionally helpful and knowledgeable.  The cheese platter we ended up with – largely made up of recommendations – was delightful.  I don’t know what other word to use.  We paired the cheese and meat with some bread and vegetables that we had picked up at the farmer’s market so we were truly fulfilling the northwest food geek stereotype.

We had three different cheeses all from the pacific northwest.  They are all well known cheese makers and I’ve run into these cheeses since then at cheese tastings and counters around town.  That said all three are really delicious representations of pacific northwest cheese.  The Willamette Valley Cheese’s Boerenkass (a raw cow milk cheese) was mild, but really full of flavor and went really well with the bread and Fra Mani Sopressata. 

This was the first time that I had tasted Rivers Edge Chevre’s Up in Smoke (goat milk).  This was unbelievably fantastic.  I love goat cheese and I’ve never tasted a goat cheese like this – rich, smoky, creamy.  I’ve had this over and over again since this first tasting.  I liked eating it wrapped in the Iowa applewood smoked durroc ham we got from Steve’s Cheese.

The final cheese was from Estrella Family Creamery.  I first had their cheese after visiting the Ballard farmer’s market so this was not a new cheese maker for us, but it was the first time I tasted their Guapier (cow milk).  This cheese has a layer of ash running through the center separating the morning and evening milking.  There really was a stark difference in taste between the two sides and it made for a fun tasting.  It was a really delicious cheese that was really best – in my opinion – eaten by itself.

This was one of those really great cheese experiences.  The company was fun and casual and into the cheese. And the cheese lived up to the moment with great flavors.

Goat day was actually more of a goat weekend. Check out Amanda’s chevre posting for the first part of the saga. On Sunday a big group of us got together to experience the final results of the chevre process and to try our hand at some more instantaneous cheese - fromage blanc. I have to admit, I was most excited about this. Not that I don’t like chevre, I do, I love it, but ever since Sarah made a comment a while back about a toasted bagel smothered in fromage blanc I’ve been very excited to make this cheese.

There were numerous road blocks to this process, the primary issue being that apparently all really good cheeses require at least 36 hours to make. Upon reviewing the fromage blanc recipe from my cheese book and a few others on various websites it became clear that we didn’t have enough time in our afternoon of cheese making to do fromage blanc from beginning to end. So I opted to try out a recipe from the foodnetwork.com website that promised more immediate gratification. It was actually a very simple recipe, and as far as ingredients were concerned, all could be bought from your local grocery store (the lemon juice and buttermilk acting as the starter for the cheese).

We decided to try both a goat and a cow version of the fromage blanc so we did two half batches of this recipe. In the beginning the two batches acted and looked almost identical. We heated the milk over the stove once we had added the lemon juice & buttermilk mixture to the two pans. As the milk heated to 175 degrees the cow batch (likely due to the large amounts of cream in it) started getting a little thicker and turned a butter yellow color. After reaching 175 degrees we let the pans sit for 10 minutes and then hung the two batches up to drain in cheesecloth.

The final result was … good. They were also however, bland. They lacked the tang and somewhat cream cheese consistency I associate with fromage blanc. I think if we had not let them drain as long as we did that the consistency would have been more on target. I wish now however that we had started the fromage blanc on Saturday like we did the chevre, as I think that the longer versions of the recipe would have more of the tang and richness of flavor that I was looking for. As a quick way to try cheese making at home I would say this recipe was a great find, but for anyone looking to recreate a more authentic fromage blanc I would recommend you try another recipe.

You can view the pictures of the whole day and the fromage blanc making here.