cheese bits

you might remember that at one point in time, i was a highly trained cheese person.  i guess i still am, although not on the cusp of cheese trends or anything like that, but DAMN i still love cheese.  fancy cheese, not fancy cheese, any everything in between.  which is why i always put together the cheese tray at family holidays.  of course, i tend to pick out too many cheeses, and some of them aren't as well-received as others (for whatever reason, i am the only person in my family who likes an aged goat gouda), so what do you do with all those leftover bits? especially if you are a dork and forget to put them away before they start to get hard and weird around the edges?  why, you make the delicious fromage fort.  i like to call it "cheese in a pot," because it most closely resembles those "potted" cheeses you sometimes get in holiday baskets; flavored like port or pimento. want to make some of your own? here's what you do;

• gather all your leftover cheese bits.  ALL of them.  got weird things with herbs? blues? soft, runny cheeses? some tillamook?  it will all be delicious in this, i promise. if you think that sounds weird, it's because it does, but trust me.  in the last batch i made, i put in feta, herbed goat cheese, aged gouda, smoked cheese, sharp cheddars, and some mystery "sheep" cheese that i'm not really sure was sheep.  guess what? it rocked.  cheeses you think would taste terrible together taste great in this.  
• some wine, broth, water or milk/cream.  i prefer to make mine with white wine, that's classic.  not a sweet white either; a house white, a chardonnay, something dry and delicious.  if you don't like wine, use some sort of brothy goodness to give it some more flavor.  if you don't have broth, add some water, maybe mixed with some milk or cream.  use what you have.  have some nice sherry? that would be good too.  
• garlic.  one or two cloves, depending on how much you like garlic or how much cheese you have.  today i used two cloves, and had a whole food processor full of cheese.  remember: you won't be able to taste the garlic at first, and it will get stronger.  so if you think you didn't add enough, wait a day, and taste it again.  
• pepper. you can grind it, or you can sprinkle it out of the shaker, i'm not going to judge you.  
• you may need some salt, but personally, i never use it, and haven't needed it.  cheese is pretty salty.  

cut your cheeses into pieces about the same size.  roughly, you're going to blend the hell out of them, so don't fuss over it too much.  put your garlic in the food processor, then pulse it a bit to start chopping it.  add the cheese, in batches if you have a lot (adding softer cheeses nearer to the end), pulsing and mushing and mixing.  add the wine (or broth, or whatever) a bit at a time, getting the cheese mix damp, but not swimming.  you will probably have some chunks, and that is okay.  you can blend it smoother or rougher depending on how you like it, but i enjoy some fat bits of cheese mixed in there.  add as much liquid as will make it smooth-ish without being creamy (because if you mix it too much, it will start to separate and be weird).  when it's done, pack it into jars or pot!  you can eat it right away, but it gets better the longer it sits.  spread it on crackers, toast, or pipe bits into endive spears to be all fancy. dip crudite in it, use it on a sandwich, or eat it on a spoon.  feed it to your friends, make sure you say "fromage" like you mean it, and watch them swoon. 

delicious!

sickly

ugh. i have a little cold. it's nothing serious, just enough to be annoying. a hacking cough, medium snot production, sleepy head. i took a nap this afternoon instead of a bike ride, and tonight i'm going to take some nyquil so i can sleep through the coughing. that's the most irritating part of this; it's a dry and hurty cough, an insistent tickle that won't quit.

i have my cheese training graduation this week, which means four whole days out of the store. i have a dinner one night, a long day of final tests and a curd stretching class (we're making mozzarella!), and the cherry part is i get to spend the night in a hotel. spending four days out of the store, even though two of them are work-related, and like an awesome little vacation. getting ready to be gone that long is a task, but worth it. do you know how much cheese i have to order? a lot. at any given point in time, i carry $20,000 dollars worth of cheese on a table six feet long by three feet wide and three feet tall. i go through about $3 to $4 thousand of that stock weekly and have to keep my holes filled. there are over 200 varieties, all of which i've tasted and can tell you at least something about. truth be told, i'm fairly nerdy about it and can tell you more than a little, although i am the first admit i don't know it all. i like being the ruler of my cheese island, now if only i can get that raise! they are saying after the graduation and i'm certified* they'll talk with me seriously. cross your fingers.

*there is no real cheese training school; to be a cheese maker you have to make cheese, and everything else is sort of nebulous and vague. we aren't like sommeliers or butchers or bakers, we don't have schools we can go, and we have no fancy name. a professional who works in cheese can be trained by a company like i was, but aside from putting in time and learning as much as you can on your own it's not like i'll be able to go to any grocery store and get a job like this. this way of working with cheese in standard grocery stores is a really new concept and only three or four other chains in america have a program like this. it's part of the reason they're getting me for such a low, low price. i imagine at some point in the not-too-distant future getting a job like this will be a lot more complicated, and there won't be a lot of on the job training. our wine specialist doesn't have to go through all this because they're expected to have either spent time in culinary school, in restaurants, or in distribution or production. what i'm doing now is either going to pay off big time, and allow me to run my own little section of this store or some other store, or the cheese trend as we know it won't last. i think there's longevity here, after all, the american artisan cheese movement started in the 70's and is still growing. in the pacific northwest alone, oregon and washington, there are dozens of small creameries and dairies producing cheeses. cheese itself has been around for thousands of years! it's not like i'm hitching my wagon to low-rider jeans or investments in atari.

i think the nyquil kicked in and that's why i got all rambly. the point is, i know that this job choice seems weird and counter-productive, and that it makes my mother crazy. she's always saying, "you went to college! now you sell cheese." in a way i think this might be the perfect job for me, though. i loved teaching, i love cheese, i love food and cooking and as much as it pains me to say it, i like having customers, and this lets me do all of the above. the schedule is flexible, and while i'm still in my dues-paying mode and not making scratch, if i do stick with this the payoffs will be good. i have medical and dental insurance, access to chicken wings that have gone past the two-hour mark, and a slew of ridiculous characters to watch and interact with. things could be worse. my job, like all jobs, has its shit moments, but it still makes me smile to tell some onethat yes, all i do is work with cheese all day. plus, getting to say, "i can't help you, i have to cut the cheese" never fails to crack me up.

i wish i were in l.a. this weekend

did you know they have a grilled cheese invitational?! i ask this rhetorically because, duh, now you do. oh man, i wish i were going this weekend. i have the awesome-est idea for a dessert grilled cheese you have ever heard of (that falls into the honeypot category). how much fun would it be to get all sauced up and make and eat grilled cheese sandwiches? that practically describes my perfect night out after hitting the bar. being here instead of there is lousy! i want some sun and grilled sandwiches!

had a cheese class today. it was a make-up for the one i missed while pop was in the hospital. it was awesome; mainly because there are two ladies in my class that annoy the hell out of me and they weren't there. one of them won't shut her piehole for more than fifteen consecutive seconds, and the other one won't shut the hell up about taleggio. yes, taleggio is good. yes, it's nice and soft. yes, i am a big fan of washed rind cheeses. this lady makes me want to smother her fat face with limburger, though. i have no love for her, and it makes me cringe to listen to her. having just my teacher and one of the other fun cheese mongers there was way more fun. i got to try a new cheese from satrtori, called bellavitano. i liked it enough i brought a little chunk of it home. we ate a bit of swiss as well, and my suspicions about how awesome cave-aged gruyere would be were confirmed. i've been working sort of haphazardly on a cheese blog, figuring out recipes and stuff, mainly for my own edification since there are a million internet sources about cheese. ooh, and i got to taste sbrinz. aw, shit. like i needed another cheese to love. boy howdy is it good. it has this gorgeous, fresh, green smell like young swiss and salty crystals like parmigiano reggiano. for a cheese as old as it is, it really doesn't taste it. the flavors are pronounced and yet subtle at the same time. it's a lot less salty than regular parm, and impossibly silky. if i could, i would totally eat a pound of it right now.

ah, cheese. i do love it. although the last time i went to see my doctor he wanted to talk about my cholesterol. evidently i don't have a tumor causing my buffalo hump, and my cortisol levels are either making me fat or the fat is raising my cortisol levels. chicken and egg! in short, he thinks my numbers are too high, both in cholesterol and weight. he wants me to lose twenty pounds and call him in the morning. as part of this plan, i am eating oatmeal for breakfast and trying to cut down on the cheesey goodness. and by "cut down" i mean less crackers and more veggies. although you can't blame a girl in my situation for loving the cheese sandwiches. this is the sort of home life that sends a chub scout right to comfort foods. it's okay, really. i am indulging in small ways and trying to watch what i eat while riding my bike more, but i'm not going all annie anorexic on you. promise.

mimolette!

isn't that a totally fun word to say? mimolette! it's adorable. it's also a cheese, if you didn't already guess. after spending the morning being stabbed with needles and worrying, the fisherman and i did a little afternoon driving and found a cute little grocery store in the middle of nowhere that i had read about. i'd been wanting to go there for a while, after hearing that they were tiny but carried a pretty varied selection of gourmet foods. i was after cheese, and cheese i found! along with some salted anchovies that i should have bought, in retrospect.

mimolette is a french, cow's milk cheese. they age it anywhere from a year to two; this particular wedge is about 18 months old. the older it gets, the darker in color it gets. you might notice it has an unusual crust, sort of speckled and pockmarked (a bit like cantaloupe skin), due to an equally unusual aging process. what's mimolette's secret? cheese mites! yes, little buggies eat at the rind and this leaves it marred like the surface of the moon, tiny craters everywhere. how does it taste? delicious. like most cheeses aged for over a year, the paste (that's the fancy word for the cheese itself) is hard and a bit crumbly. it's nutty and slightly sweet, with a bit of a cheddar-y tang. it's not very strong, like you might think a cheese aged with bugs would be. you can grate it, it would be good on pasta or potatoes (then again, not much isn't good on either of those thing), but it's nice just sliced and eaten. i would pair it with an ale of some sort; nothing too dark or heavy. pretzels, mimolette and beer, maybe a nice crisp apple, a smidge of salami, would make an awesome snack or light dinner. this afternoon i ate it with some pretzels and some aged goat cheese.
and here's my awful haircut. i'm smiling on the outside but a sad little clown on the inside, trust me. i mean, look at how ridiculous my pinned back bangs are. i can only really do one side, they weren't really long enough to start pinning them back, so the other side is all puffy and defiant like "bitch! this is what you get for going to hairmasters!" i just suddenly have so much fucking face, you know? nothing to hide behind. bleh. in a few weeks i might like it better, but right now i'm not loving it. plus, i think i found the spot the doctor said is thinning. i can't see the back or top of my head, obviously, so i used my camera to take some photos and checked those out. it's not a huge spot, and if he had never uttered the word "thinning" i would have just thought it was a combination of my hair part and cowlick. as it is now, i wish i were a faithful jewish man so i could use a yarmulke to cover that shit up. grrr.

i gave them tons of blood this morning, so in a week or so i should know what's wrong with me, if anything. i might just be a fat girl with a hunchback and unfortunate female pattern baldness. in which case, i should change the name of my blog to "rogaine and liposuction."