Tag: formaggio
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The PhCheese is Baaaaaaaaaack
The PhCheese hasn’t been online much for the past few days, but with good cause. I started a new job and have been taking the time and space to assess the new location, learn about my new team, and make plans to be the best cheese boss on the East Side (of Lake Washington). I…
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A Cheese I Cantal Love Enough
It’s not enough for the French to have 6,000 types of native cheeses. They have to compete with the English on the one cheese that couldn’t get more English: cheddar. That’s right; the French have a cheddar, too. And it’s delicious. Really, ridiculously delicious. Sure, it’s not really a cheddar—and the French would probably not…
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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…
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A Couple of Reasons to Try Coupole
Let me tell you something about my current Cheese of the Week, Vermont Creamery’s Coupole. This petite little brain of a cheese comes in a neat little wooden crate, its delicate exterior protected to a certain extent from the pressures (and cheese pressers) of the world. Its name borrows from the French word for cupola,…
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Cow, Sheep, Goat: What’s in a Milk?
Milk is milk, is milk, right? Well, no. All milk serves the same basic purpose of nourishing a mammal’s young, but how that milk accomplishes its goal is different for each animal. Cheeses made from cow’s milk are perhaps the most prevalent in the United States, but goat’s milk cheeses and sheep’s milk cheeses are…
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Seven Pairings for Lovers and Friends
Roses are Red, Violets are Blue, I am crazy about cheese, And I guess I love you, too. Today is Valentine’s Day. Or, as you prefer it, Galentine’s Day or whatever. It’s kind of a last-minute holiday for many people. (Which is totally fine—it’s going to be OK, all right?) Regardless of what or…
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Serious Sunday Puns for Curd Nerds
Not only do my co-mongers like to say that Sunday is the best day of the week—because it’s Sunday Pun-day, naturally—but they also often say they just can’t believe I am able to keep churning out bad cheese jokes at the rate I do. It’s hard work, but somebody has got to do it. Also,…
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How to Stretch Mozzarella Curds at Home
If you’ve ever been browsing through a nice selection of cheese and stumbled across a container of stark-white curds simply labeled “mozzarella curds,” you may have wondered, “what do you do with those?” We sell such a thing in our shop, and customers ask that same question at least once every day. While there are…
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The French Like Reblochon, But the FDA Prefers Préféré
There are a lot of cheeses we can’t get in the US, thanks to the FDA’s strict rules on importing raw-milk cheeses. Anything aged fewer than 60 days can’t legally make it into the country, which rules out all name-protected bries and camemberts, as well as a whole slew of soft-ripened, fresh and young cheeses.…
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Three Reasons Why Pepper Pairings are the Hottest
Make no mistake: when I’m talking about “pepper pairings,” I mean hot peppers, chile peppers, spicy peppers! Whatever format they take, pairings involving hot pepper things are among my favorites. That’s not just because I live for food that makes my whole mouth go numb (although I’m not going to say I don’t enjoy foods…
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Super Cheesy Jokes for Super Bowl Sunday
Cover image courtesy of Olympia Provisions. The other cheesemongers in my life like to say that “Sunday is the best day!” Why? Because it’s Sunday Pun-Day. In keeping with tradition–in a show of thanks to all the super cheesy people who read this blog–I present to you a slew of super cheesy jokes, hand crafted…
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Teaching a Baby to Walk–Er, Crack
Cheesemongering isn’t exactly the most common profession. In other words, there aren’t that many of us. It’s an exciting occasion when a new one comes along. But more often than not, you have to create cheesemongers; mold them and shape them, as it were. We just got a new baby cheesemonger, as we like to…
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Just How Are Brie and Camembert Different?
A question that comes up a lot in the shop is, “what’s the difference between Brie and Camembert?” Typically, it starts out by someone holding up a small wheel of camembert while asking, “is this Brie?” The response of, “Nope, that’s a Camembert” is what gets the inevitable conversation going. Brie and Camembert are both…
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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…
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Sunday Punday: Smackdown of the Cheesiest
This is the transcript of an actual conversation among cheesemongers that happened just this past week. Nobody recorded it, but we did write down our puns afterward. Like you do. When you’ve got jokes, and you’ve got good jokes, you use ’em. *** Cheesemonger 1: I’m really keen on trying that Keen’s Cheddar we just…