Tag: french cheese
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Tasting Notes: Métier Brewing Company Beers and Cheese
This year has wrought its share of terrible things, but one bright spot in the darkness is the beautiful foods that are still being produced for us to enjoy. Just as animals don’t stop producing milk, plants don’t stop growing and people don’t cease needing to eat—even when lives are threatened by a pandemic, social…
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8 Weeks of Celebration Cheeses: Week 8
We have made it to the end of my “8 Weeks of Celebration Cheeses” series—and subsequently to the end of 2018. If, like me, you are scratching your head and wondering where the time went, just know that it tends to fly when you are having fun—as you should be when cheese is a part…
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8 Weeks of Celebration Cheeses: Weeks 4 and 5
The gig is up, right? You already know that I’m posting two weeks’ worth of celebration cheeses at once because I got behind due to Thanksgiving week and weekend craziness, and the inevitable sinus infection of doom that came after. Well, yes and no. I mean, yes, I got behind on posting; such is life…
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8 Weeks of Celebration Cheeses: Week 3
People who get excited about scraping sheets of melted Raclette cheese over boiled potatoes, cornichons, pickled onions, and prosciutto are not wrong. It’s very right to love the ritual of making Raclette. That ritual, and the cold-weather warmth that it conjures, are only part of my reasoning for naming the third 2018 holiday cheese none…
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8 Weeks of Celebration Cheeses: Week 2
As a cheese retailer, you’re not always able to get all of the cheeses you want at all times. Sometimes it’s because the cheese is only available certain times of the year because it’s made seasonally, or because a small-batch cheese sells out. Other times, cheeses are more difficult to get—and harder to sell to…
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What is the Difference Between Chèvre and Goat Cheese?
“Where’s your goat cheese?” I answer this question at least three times a day at work; my response is usually not immediately helpful to the person asking. “Here is our goat cheese section in the cheese case, and over here we have two shelves of goat cheese on this wall. Is there a specific type…
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Ossau-Iraty is Oh So Yummy
Once upon a time I wrote about Mahón, and my deep and undying devotion for that cheese. I share those feelings equally with another cheese: a sheep’s milk Tomme from France’s Basque country that goes by the name of Ossau-Iraty. Mahón doesn’t have to worry about me cheating on it; I give these cheeses both…
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Fresh Cheeses to Freshen up Your Summer Picnics (and Everyday Life)
Fresh cheeses are the wee babes of the cheese world, you might say. Allowed to sit for only a few days before they should be consumed, these youngest cheeses are fresh in all senses of the word. Understanding fresh cheeses requires a quick lesson in cheesemaking. The milk, which must be pasteurized if a fresh…
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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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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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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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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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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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What in the Heck is Raclette?
Raclette is the new big foodie thing. You heard it here first, okay? Raclette is both a cheese and a dish. Raclette is a type of cow’s milk cheese that, like Gruyère, is made in Switzerland and in France. In Switzerland, Raclette is the name given to a style of cheese, and each Swiss Raclette…