Tag: formaggio
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Ricotta: It’s Whey Better than it Seems
Growing up, I thought ricotta was kind of gross. It looked like cottage cheese, which reminded me of snot, and it tasted funny. Oh, how wrong children are about food. Or at least, how crazy it is that our tastes and preferences change and evolve so much as we age. Child-Courtney, in her pre-PhCheese primordial…
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Adventures in Home Cheesemaking
[metaslider id=536] Last summer, we put up a display that included some Urban Cheesecraft cheesemaking kits and some books on cheesemaking. I felt compelled to try out the deluxe kit at home, not just to make sure I could accurately sell the kits or help customers troubleshoot, but also out of a genuine interest in…
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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…
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Brie Vs. Triple Cream: What are We Even Talking About?
Brie is a very popular cheese—and duly so. People love brie, they ask for it, and they smear it on crackers, bread, bagels, bake it in pastry dough, and dump jams and preserves all over it. I encourage this behavior. Triple creams are also very popular. A lot of people come in searching for “Délice”…
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12 Bad Cheese Jokes to Help You Enjoy Your Sunday
In honor of Sunday—the last day of the week or the first day of the week, depending on how you view time or whether or not you’re European or American—I came up with some cheesy jokes. They are so bad you probably won’t forgive me. But let’s face it: I just can’t help myself. Happy…
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Why Shropshire Gives Stilton a Run for its Money (and Yours)
Orange cheese has a bad rap right now. But not all orange cheese is created equal. As I’ve mentioned in an earlier post, orange cheese came about in order to stop customers from exclusively choosing summer-milk cheeses over winter-milk cheeses. Since winter milk tends to be lighter in color and more subdued in flavor, and…
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Behold, the Mighty Mite!
Let’s face it, cheese is no angel. And by that, I mean it’s not a purified, pristine substance. Cheese is home to happy, thriving molds, yeasts, and bacteria. I know a lot of people would rather not admit this is true, just as they would rather live in blissful ignorance that their ground beef came…
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12 Books to Kickstart Your Weekend Reading Plans
I am often asked what some good books are for people who love cheese and want to know as much as they can. The people asking are sometimes cheesemongers, sometimes customers, and sometimes random people amused by my obsession with cheese. So I’ve compiled a shortlist of titles that are a good starting place for…
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Gorgonzola: A Tale of Two Cheeses
Let’s start by pointing out the fact that many people think “blue cheese” is a specific kind of cheese and “Gorgonzola” is not blue cheese. Gorgonzola is, in fact, a blue cheese, and blue cheese, like “Swiss cheese” is a blanket category that is bigger than most people will ever know. We’re going to focus…
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Why My Heart Beats for Mahón
There are a few cheeses in my arsenal that are my go-tos—the ones I can gush and go on about to anyone who will listen (or who will pretend to listen). I wrote a few months back about Robiola Bosina being one such cheese. You might call them my favorites. It makes sense, then, that…
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17 Ways to Go Big for Cheese on NYE
For whatever reason, New Year’s is not as big of a cheese holiday as Christmas. Granted, I grew up eating fried finger foods and black-eyed peas on New Year’s Eve–with the ubiquitous glass of champagne, of course—but nothing screams “cheese plate!” to me more than a night specifically designated for drinking, partying, and staying up…
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3 Easy Recipes to Cheese Up Your Weary Winter Nights
For many working people, it’s a struggle to come home and eat a balanced meal. Take it from your harried cheesemonger, who spends eight-plus hours a day on her feet: running around helping people, slicing never-ending quantities of lunch meat and charcuteries, carrying cheese, cutting cheese, wrapping cheese, rescuing cheese, counseling cheese (eaters), lifting, climbing,…
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Night Cheese and Gruyère Castles
Cheesemongers don’t always work around the clock. But when they do, they build castles in the air. Well, sort of. Into the air, if you will. The two week stretch leading up to New Year’s is the busiest time of year in the cheese biz. To prepare for the mayhem, my co-monger Alicia and I…
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The 12 Days of Cheesemas
In honor of the holiday season that surrounds us, and in lieu of a Sunday Pun-Day, I give you the gift of poetry and music. (Press play, and then scroll down. Feel free to sing along–preferably at the top of your lungs, and with feeling.) The 12 Days of Cheesemas On the first day…
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The One Cheesecake to Rule Them All
OK, folks. If there are a million cheesecake recipes out there, this is the best of all. Forget your custardy, New York-style cheesecake recipes. Dense, fluffy German cheesecake is the way to go—and my recipe is the one you should be using to figure that out. But first, some brief background information on German cheesecakes,…