Tag: cutting the cheese

  • Why Do Cheese Shops Always Sell Fig Bread and Date Cake?

    Why Do Cheese Shops Always Sell Fig Bread and Date Cake?

    “This is cheese?” That’s the question—always practically shouted, always with incredulity—we get 99-percent of the time when a customer notices our fig bread and date cake for the first time. Last week, an older gentleman even picked up a wedge, looked me square in the eye, and said, “so this is what’s become of fruitcake?”…

  • Grand Ewe’s One Tough Gouda

    Grand Ewe’s One Tough Gouda

    Okay, okay. I’ve definitely gotten the memos from my readership that this blog needs MOAR VIDEOZ. And so I took some time out of my busy workday of managing a cheese shop to stop and cut the cheese–and film it for y’all. (And no, mom, I did not “glam it up” for this one. This…

  • 430 Pounds of Cheese

    430 Pounds of Cheese

    Four-hundred-and-thirty pounds of cheese. Let that number sink in: 4-3-0. It sounds like it could be a metaphor for my life. Or not a metaphor, but rather my reality—although there are way more than 430 pounds of cheese in my shop. It could also refer to my four days in San Francisco for the Three-Day…

  • Cutting the (Night) Cheese

    Cutting the (Night) Cheese

    Cutting into a clothbound cheddar is easier when it only weighs 10 or 20 pounds, as opposed to 90. This Beecher’s Handmade Cheese Flagship Reserve is a small-format clothbound cheddar-style cheese, made in Seattle. Flagship Reserve is made with the curds leftover from making Beecher’s Flagship, so it is similar to the famous Cheddar-Gruyère blend.…

  • Clothbound Cheddars: Unveiled

    Clothbound Cheddars: Unveiled

    We all know what cheddar is; we’ve seen it, we’ve eaten it, we (most of us) like it. But while the name “cheddar” already conjures a place (England), a process (cheddaring), and a style of cheese (duh), the types of cheddars are diverse—adding layers of meaning to a common term. Today I’m interested in just…

  • The Most Dangerous Cheese—But Also the Most Adorable

    The Most Dangerous Cheese—But Also the Most Adorable

    Let’s talk about one of the cutest little hard cheeses, Mimolette. Its name is adorable. (It’s pronounced “Mee-moh-let.”) It’s a little round ball; weighing around seven to eight pounds and measuring about seven to eight inches in diameter, Mimolette is fairly light as hard cheeses go. It kind of looks like a cantaloupe—or like a little…

  • Cutting the (Blue) Cheese

    Cutting the (Blue) Cheese

    Last week we talked about Shropshire. I don’t have a video of anyone cutting Shropshire right now, but I do have one of me cutting a Colston Bassett Stilton from Neal’s Yard Dairy. The Shropshire and Stilton we carry, both from Neal’s Yard, are the same size and appear nearly identical on the outside. So…