How to cut cheese! (giggle giggle)

So yesterday I was able to spend a ton of time with my main mentor at Artisanal, Max McCalman. Max has written several books on cheese, his most recent Mastering Cheese. He heads up the cheese education program at Artisanal and is officially the dean!! To top it all of- he is a really nice dude, down to earth and eager to talk cheese whenever he can with a lowly peon like myself.

So last night Max taught me how to cut cheese (Hee!!). It is kind of a big deal to learn from the master and I was very honored. The first thing you need is a scale. Take a wheel of cheese and weigh it and make a note of the weight. Then you want to divide that wheel into 4 parts as equally as possible. Then weigh each quarter- so that you know how many pieces you can get out of each.

The device they use to cut the cheese (hee!) looks like this:

You place the rind closest to you and use the wire attachment with the handlebar and pull evenly and down towards your shins. In general you must go at a pretty slow and constant speed unless it is a fresh cheese, like a goat cheese, then you should cut quickly.

Then he told me the rules to plating cheese! The general rule when putting together a plate of cheese is to start with goat milk cheese then move to sheep's milk cheese and then end with cow's milk cheese. If you are serving a mixed milk cheese then place it on the plate in order of it's strength. He also recommends that you always end with the blue cheese as it is so flavorful its always the show stopper and its hard to taste anything else once you have had a good blue cheese.

*One more thing do not plate in order of  the age of the cheese some young cheeses are very strong and vice versa.

Now that the cheese has been cut and plated here I will dive head first into last night's Cheese and Wine 101 with Max McCalman and Mario Bai of WineLite Imports.  You may notice there are a couple of cheeses we already tried last week but because they were my first official plating I still want to highlight them.

The wine was all very reasonably priced and so delicious:

White Wine
       Arneis Rodero Arneis, Marco Porello, Camestri, Italy, 2009 (11.99)

Red Wines
       90% Tempranillo and 10% Graciano, Calma, Rioja, Spain, 2007 (12.99)

        Cabernet Sauvignon, Matchbook Lake County, JL Giguiere, California, 2007 (15.99)


Let the cheese begin:

1. Sainte Maure, France, goat milk
 (this was a moldy log and a very soft cheese, when cutting go very fast so it doesn't mush into itself)

"Saint Maure is a classic raw milk Loire Valley chevre in the shape of a small log with a stick of straw running through it's middle. If you were to aim an arrow at the dead-center of the rough, hexagonal shape that defines France, it would land in the goat fields around the Loire River. Sainte Maure, Selles-sur-Cher, and the Valencay are all made from the goat's milk of the region, and all of them are shaped as if for a geometry lesson. These small pasteurized truncated logs, pyramids, cylinders and discs that we receive come into the caves young, fresh and wet. They emerge drier, denser and with a fine grey-blue coat of edible mold. Their flavors remain young and slightly acidic, but ate buttery and smooth. One piece weights about 10 oz."*

2. Fluer du Maquis, France, sheep milk
(really enjoyed this with the white and the first red. Paging Sarah Bowen- Sarah I asked Max about why this Corsican cheese is so mild when you experienced Corsican cheeses as being very strong. The answer is that because you were there you were most likely experiencing them as they should be tasted which is under 60 days of aging. American law demands a longer aging process to this cheese. Also Max said that the conditions that they use to age cheese there is different and not as cold as our caves which may make a big difference)



"Fluer du Maquis is made in Corsica from the milk of the Lacuane ewes. Its name means "Flower of the Maquis." the maguis being the local term for the typical thickets of rough underbrush where highway robbers and guerrilla fighters used to hang out. This cheese is quite similar to Brin d'Amour, meaning "a breath of love". During production, the smallish wheels are encrusted with rosemary, fennel seeds, juniper berries and the occasional bird's eye chili"*

3. Ocooch Mountain, USA, sheep milk
(This is divine and really super special. Its all about the texture, it is not quite a hard cheese and not really a soft cheese and there is something about that that is really yummy. This is also a raw unpasteurized cheese so it has a long long flavor)

"Ocooch Mountain is a lip-smacking delicious semi-soft milk cheese produced by Brenda Jensen at her Hidden Springs dairy in southwest Wisconsin. It is no wonder that this cheese has won several awards; it is produced from  "un-compromised" milk and her farm is environmentally sustainable. This is a wash-rind sheep milk  (this in itself a great start on an outstanding cheese) and it has a semi-soft texture that is aged 3-4 months. It has a nutty, buttery, olive oil aroma and flavor"

4. Le Moulis, France, cow milk
(I also had this last week but really enjoyed it even more this time with the Cabernet, in fact it was my favorite pairing of all of them)

5. Kunterner, Switzerland, cow milk
(The rind on this cheese makes it look like a brown brain. It is really super stinky and strong but not so big that I didn't enjoy it, it is a washed rind cheese, washed in a brine solution)

"The Swiss reblochon-style cheese is made from cow's milk. It has an assertive milk flavor and strong, but not overpowering farm aromas. The texture of Kuntener is deliciously soft and it tastes great on a plain baguette or in a Tartiflette- a classic mountain dish of potatoes and cheese"

6. Fleuron, France, cow's milk

"I noticed this time with the Fleuron a cheddar flavor that was comforting and yummy"

"Fleuron is a rare cheese from Aquitaine with the distinctly rich and floral flavor of brown Swiss cow's milk. Since 1928, the Baechler family has been making this cheese at the Domaine de Broc. Today, the 5th generation continues to produce this excellent pressed and cooked cheese, which, like fine wine, hold in its caves for a full 12 months of affinage before releasing. This permits enough time for it to develop the complex flavor of a true Artisanal cheese."*

7. Gorgonzola Piccante, Italy, cow milk
(Last week when James and I had all this left over blue cheese we ended up making an amazing beer based blue cheese dressing over an iceberg wedge with spicy and sweet walnuts. It was AMAZING! here is the recipe: http://www.cookingchanneltv.com/recipes/wedge-salad-with-blue-cheese-dressing-and-spicy-beer-nuts-recipe/index.html)

"Gorgonzola Piccante, a formidable cow's milk blue cheese from the region north of Milan, is Italy's answer to Roquefort. Its rough, reddish rind protects a tender, light yellow, blue flecked paste that is firm, moist and buttery. The flavor is sharp and sweet."*

Thanks to Sarah Bowen for the question about Fleur du Maquis! If there are any cheese questions you would like me to ask please let me know. Happy cheesing!