Cheeseplates

two goats are a nice combo (when the goats are so fine)

On the way to our friends' for dinner, I stopped to pick up some cheese. They had been raving about a little place around the corner from them called Cheesetique, and I wanted to check it out -- so when they invited us for dinner my husband brilliantly volunteered us to bring cheese. The events which transpired leave me with 3 things to report:

1. Cheesetique is, in fact, pretty awesome. They cheesemonger brilliantly, with a great selection & nice accompaniments also available for purchase--all with a non-threatening atmosphere. Meaning: no one asks you if you need help in that weird "I can tell you don't really know what you're looking for" way, but when you DO need help, there are plenty of staff to help you. I suspect it was actually grown-up-Harry Potter that waited on me.
2. Cypress Grove Chevre may be my favorite creamery.  Since I love Purple Haze so much (see previous post), I immediately bought a firmer goat cheese called Midnight Moon, as it was helpfully labeled "by the people who brought us Purple Haze." It was *fabulous*. Tangy but rich, creamy for a firm chese, and with a bit of a goaty taste - but nothing that would frighten someone away.
3. Together, Midnight Moon and Purple Haze made for an outstanding cheeseplate.  Plain crackers really let the cheese flavors shine though - no accompaniments needed!

Cork -- just trust your waiter

I don't know if I was being lazy, or adventurous, but when saw the cheese menu at Cork, I decided to just ask the waiter to pick three for me. Maybe I was thinking that a place mostly dedicated to wine would probably take their cheese seriously too.  Or maybe I was owning up to the reality that, in the absence of descriptive blurbs, I have no idea which cheese is which on a menu featuring mostly artisanal US dairy farms. Regardless, I opted for the "would you just pick three for me?  I tend to prefer stinky cheeses" approach.

And it paid off!  He came back with:

• Humboldt Fog: a creamy ripened goat's milk cheese that looks like morbier (with the line of ash in the center), but melts on the tongue faster and has more tang than animal flavor;
• Manchego: a reliable flavorful standby that holds up well to strong cheeses (and is generally loved by everyone if you are sharing with someone who doesn't like stinky cheese); and
• "Red Hawk" from Cowgirl Creamery: a triple cream, washed rind, cows milk cheese that has that great "this definitely can from a farm with hay and animals" kind of flavor. I loved it.

The plate came with mixed nuts, fruit bread, and what appeared to be a smear of grape jelly, but was probably currant or something else more dignified. Definitely a place I will go back to for more cheese.  Throw in a glass or two from their extensive wine list, and you've got an excellent evening.

Lavender Fennel Goat cheese rules the plate in Tucson

I have officially located the best cheese ever.  

While in Tucson for Christmas with my husband's family, we went for dinner to Vin Tabla. They have a terrific (if brief) cheese menu (available here) and we ordered 1 oz each of the following: 

• Brillat Savarin, which is a melt in your mouth soft cow's milk cheese;   
• Cabecou Armagnac, a soft goat's milk cheese wrapped in chestnut leaves that have been soaked in french brandy;  
  
• Purple Haze, a fluffy chevre with a dusting of lavender and fennel seed mixed in.
  

The Purple Haze blew me away!  I've never had a cheese that tasted like morning. It was just so pleasant and fresh and creamy, with none of the heaviness that people sometimes associate with cheese. I liked it so much, I looked to see if I could get it at the Cowgirl Creamery here in DC -- happily, I can.  Check out their cheese encyclopedia entry with full info.

two blue is too blue

 I had enjoyed the Gorgonzola Dolce at Proof so much that it made me wonder how it compared to other sharper blues.   When I saw it at the cheese counter while shopping for our holiday party, I thought: "why not have two blues and let people compare?"

Well, because not everyone likes blue cheese, as I was reminded this evening when a large portion of both were left on the plate.  The accompaniments (honey, dried cranberries, and walnuts) went over well and I did hear a few people comment "oh, honey with blue cheese, I never realized how nice that was." However, all in all, I'd have to say this was not a successful cheeseplate experiment. :(

Commonwealth Gastropub

Ok, so technically it was a ploughman's lunch platter that we ordered at Commonwealth gastro pub,(with meats, cheeses, and pickles) but it was tasty and meets my formal criteria of being more than one kind of cheese on a plate with accoutrement. Stilton and some kind of herbed cheddar, to be exact.  Frankly, I thought the herbed cheddar was kind of gross, but the stilton was good. It came with pickle, apple, cabbage, prosciutto, and dollops of mustard and date paste, which made for a solid lunch with  pint of lager.  I'd say it's more for the british-pub-philes and less the cheese lovers, but since they never advertised it as a 'cheese plate' per-se, I can't really complain.

Proof Redux

My husband's folks were in town this week and volunteered to watch the baby so we could go to dinner together.  After much deliberation, we decided to go back to Proof so I could actually enjoy the wine and cheese (as an aside, the food and atmosphere are great too).  They have a solid cheese menu, including brief descriptions of each one (ie: "firm, tangy, complex").  After a pregnancy-prompted hiatus from the pasteurized cheeses I love, I went strait for the blues and those that sounded "stinky." This produced:

• Red Hawk: a mostly soft cow's milk cheese, which did have that barn-yardy flavor that people label "stinky," (the menu actually described it this way) but the cheese taste itself was on the thin side -- not quite creamy enough to make the flavor sort of go up your nose the way those kinds of cheeses can;
• Garrotxa: a semi-firm sheep's milk cheese labeled "herbacaous," which apparently means "nice, sound, cheeseplate cheese with enough flavor to be interesting, but not enough to put people off"; and
• Gorgonzola Dolce: an Italian blue, that I really loved.  Blue cheese can poke you in the mouth and overwhelm other things on the plate, but this one was smooth and creamy and had an almost sugary ending on it.  

They served it with raw honey, rum soaked rasins, peach puree, and fig/pine nut bread, which made for a really sweet cheese plate (so if you like dessert to be sweet, but want cheese, this is a nice compromise).  The waiter offered to pair it with a desert wine for me, and in retrospect I should have taken him up on it.  Definitely next time.

Return to cheeseplatery: old standbys

So now that I am no longer pregnant and can eat any cheese in the world again (see adorable baby photo at left), I was delighted when my cousin recently brough t over a selection of cheeses as an appetizer. Frankly, they were probably all pasteurized, but cheeses just taste better when you don't have to look at the wrapper to check. We had a brie, a chevre, and what I think was an Irish style cheddar (not looking at the wrapper has its down side too) with sesame crackers. Normally I am opposed to strongly flavored crackers b/c I think it drowns out the cheesy goodness, but with these three reliable standbys, the crackers were great.  I managed to dig up some Guava jelly from the fridge and we were set. Two nights later, I reprised the whole assortment when a friend came by for dinner. yum.

Proof -- that beer goes well with cheese

We had the six course tasting menu at Proof last night (every bit delicious by the way) with two of the three of us agreeing to the course by course wine pairing as well. When the cheese course arrived however, they paired it with a Belgian style white ale (a Foret for those of you interested). 

Now I for one can't stand Belgian white beers.  Upon my first introduction to Hoegaarden in grad school, someone had the unfortunate precision to assert that "this beer tastes like dirty socks," and I just couldn't drink it after that. Regardless, I was delighted to find that a restaurant respected for its wine and cheese had put forward a beer pairing! While wine is the go to beverage for cheese, I think it can really cover up some of the beautiful cheese aftertaste or alter the initial flavor of a cheese hitting your mouth.  Not beer -- beer is mellow and it doesn't mind playing second fiddle to an awesome wedge of cheese. My friend tells me this is becoming a trend (beer-cheese pairings), which is certainly fine by me!

The cheese course at proof included a rather calm Gorgonzola and a robust sheep/cow hard cheese called Mona.  The latter was nutty and delicious with the raw honey served along side.

P.S. Apologies that my cheese plate consumption took such a nose dive over the last few months. The whole pregnancy=no unpasteurized cheese thing kind of takes the magic out of ordering whim-motivated cheese place and seeing what turns up. 

Zola (kitchen lends a hand)

Ok, so one of the 8 million things that pregnant women are supposed to avoid is unpasteurized cheese.  Luckily, the US government has such stringent pasteurization laws that any cheese produced on an industrial scale is totally fine.  Problem is, most restaurants rely on delicious boutique cheeses to concoct their cheese plate. What is a pregnant cheese lover to do??

Happily, Zola is also willing to poke around in their cheese pantry and pull together a pasteurized only cheese plate if you ask them to. They made no promises on the pairing, but when it arrived, it was just fine.  An aged goat, something kind of like manchego, and what may have been an Irish cheddar. Frankly, it would have been great with a beer, now that I think about it.  A handful of fruity goos to pair with it (maybe quince?  nothing was labeled or explained) and I couldn't complain.  Ok, I could complain since I had no idea what any of the cheeses actually were, but since their kitchen had taken the time to find the wrappers and determine which cheeses were pasteurized, I thought I'd let it go.

Bar Pilar

With our valiant New year's eve efforts to go ice-skating foiled, four of us found ourselves munching a cheese and meat plate from the choose-your-own-assortment at Bar Pillar. We went with:

• a Camembert
• a Mimolette, and
• an Irish-style Cheddar 

Somehow I am always surprised that Mimolette is an orange cheese.  Subconsciously, I suspect that I associate orange cheese with American kraft singles, and Mimolette just sounds so French.  It turns out, this was a cheese commissioned by Louis XIV, who wanted a cheese similar to Edam, but to make it sufficiently different, had it colored orange (see wikipedia if you don't believe me).  This cracks me up. In any case, it pairs nicely with Irish style cheddar (it has a very clean cheesy taste), and the plate at Bar Pillar had some sound accompaniments (french mustard, quince, etc).  As aways, I like the fact that you can build your own from the menu, even if they were light on descriptions.