CHEESE NOTES

Sterling College: Fundamentals of Artisan Cheesemaking, May 15-24

In addition to being a full time cheesemaker at the creamery, I’ve also recently gotten involved with social media here at Jasper Hill Farm, including managing the Instagram account and writing newsletter content. My recent post, on Sterling College’s “Fundamentals of Artisan Cheesemaking” offering, in May, is one I’d like to share here as well. I had the good fortune to audit several of the classes with Ivan Larcher during the January session, and highly recommend the next session, running May 15-24, to anyone looking for an educational opportunity in cheesemaking. 

Back in 2013 I completed the Cheesemaker Certification course at UVM’s Vermont Institute of Artisan Cheese. Sadly, the educational department within the Institute had to shut its doors soon after, due to financial reasons, ending what was, at that time, the only educational program of it’s kind in the US (I was part of the very last graduating class). 

However, Sterling College soon began offering their own, similar program, and many of the professors from VIAC, including Larcher, have migrated from that program to this one. I can say, from my experience both at VIAC and at Sterling, that this is an excellent program and highly recommended. 

From the Newsletter: 

If you've been dreaming of taking a deep educational dive into cheesemaking, check out this unique opportunity! Sterling College, in collaboration with Jasper Hill, is now accepting applications for the next session of "Fundamentals of Artisan Cheesemaking". This is a two-week intensive intended for practicing and aspiring cheesemakers of all stripes, running May 15th - 24th.

At the end of the course you will leave with a deep understanding of the cheesemaking process — from a technical, scientific, sensory and historical perspective — and a certificate attesting to your completion of the course. Whether you're a dairy farmer looking to turn your milk into a value-added product, the employee of a cheesemaking operation hoping to expand your knowledge base, a cheesemonger wanting to gain a deeper understanding of the wheels and wedges in your counter, or even a home cheesemaker taking it to the next level, this class will have a bounty of knowledge to offer you.

Led by world-renowned French master cheesemaker and educator Ivan Larcher, "Fundamentals of Artisan Cheese" will provide students with all of the practical and scientific knowledge needed to create the highest quality artisanal cheese, as well as covering core concepts and practices on financial, facility design and management, distribution and marketing aspects as well.

Sessions will also be held with members of the Jasper Hill Farm team, including the chance to talk cheese with Mateo Kehler, co-founder of Jasper Hill; sensory and historical sessions with Zoe Brickley; food safety and sanitation & hygiene with Emily Hershberger; cave tours with the affinage team and cheese microbiology with our resident microbiologists.

Meet the Cheese Grotto, your Personal Cheese Cave

If there’s one thing every cheese lover dreams about having in their homes, it would be a proper cheese cave. What turophile hasn’t looked at the wedges and wheels stuffed into the cheese bin or the vegetable crisper, and wished they had a better solution? The truth is, home refrigerators are death for cheese. It’s not so much the temperature that’s the problem, but the lack of humidity and air circulation. Refrigerators are extremely effective at cooling the space within, but do so in part by extracting as much humidity as possible from the air, resulting in a very dry environment. Air circulation, as well, is not a priority, particularly within the drawers, the most likely storage location for your cheese. Some fancy refrigerators may include vegetable crispers with localized climate control, but odds are you don’t have that.

Result? That $25/Lb wedge of precious cheese begins a process of suffocation pretty much as soon as you get it home. A proper cheese paper can ensure a longer life (you’re not still using saran wrap, I hope?), but even so, the sooner you eat your cheese the better, especially in the case of soft-ripened cheeses with more delicate rinds and pastes (think bloomy’s and washed rinds).

That’s where the Cheese Grotto comes in. Jessica Sennett, a New York City-based cheesemonger with 10 years of industry experience, including at Cowgirl Creamery and Bedford Cheese Shop, as well as the resident cheese expert at 61 Local in Brooklyn and cheese editor for The Feed Feed (you may also recall her from the event we co-hosted a few years ago, the Cheese Speakeasy) found her customers challenged by cheese storage and learned they often had no idea how to maintain their cheese at the optimal stage of ripeness. Jessica set off in search of the perfect solution for home cheese storage, but when she found herself stymied, she set out to develop it herself.

In part, she was inspired by the aesthetic of the traditional French storage solution, a “cheese safe” — a wooden box with open sides, enclosed by screens, which was often stored on the kitchen counters or dining room tables of French homes (Google “French cheese safe” to see what we’re talking about). They look great, but are really not designed for extended storage of cheese, and do nothing to control humidity. After years of research and development in a Brooklyn design and fabrication studio, Sennett created what is, in essence, a cheese humidor. 

Cheese Grotto is a cheese storage solution complete with humidity and airflow controls found inside a glass and bamboo frame. Designed in conjunction with an engineer and an industrial designer, the Cheese Grotto has a vaulted ceiling to keep condensation from dripping on contents by directing any droplets to the sides (the same principle used in cheese caves, as you can see here). At 8.5” high and 7” wide, with a 12” depth, it provides storage space for approximately 3-6 cheeses (depending on the size of the cheese itself, of course), with two shelves that can be removed; if you have a giant wedge to store, you can remove the top shelf to make room. The Grotto is manufactured in Richmond, Virginia and made out of Plyboo (ie “plywood” and “bamboo”), a sustainable material.

Humidity is without a doubt the most challenging aspect of home cheese storage, and the Grotto tackles it with a clay brick that is soaked in water for a few minutes, twice a week, and then placed in the bottom of the unit, where it slowly releases moisture into the air. This may sound like a rather low-tech fix, but as a home cheesemaker, I’ve used similar wicking solutions in my home aging boxes, with success. 

Three vents in the back of the unit provide air circulation, and they can be closed off with a sliding panel, allowing control for the level of circulation,

The key to the Grotto is that the cheese can be stored unwrapped within the unit. Like a miniature cheese cave, the conditions are amenable to the maintenance of the cheese rind and retention of moisture within the paste. Cheese is a product that needs to breath, and the Grotto provides the conditions that make this possible.

It’s also a striking centerpiece for your meal; just pull the whole unit out of your refrigerator, bring it to your dining room table, pull the door open, and the cheese course is served in style.

A cascade of Bayley Hazen Blue curds, at the Jasper Hill creamery. From here they go on to the mounding table, where they are distributed to the moulds by the Cheesemaker. 

 And speaking of Jasper Hill, I’m happy to announce that after completing a 4-month internship in the Cellars and Creamery, in early October I came on as a full time cheesemaker! Looks like I’ll be sticking around the Northeast Kingdom for the winter! (Better stock up on my woolen socks). I also recognize that I have been severely remiss in posting to Cheese Notes over the last few months. My focus has been on the internship — and now the job — and the blog suffered as a result. 

The Adirondacks are home to a quietly growing local cheese scene, and now’s your chance to visit some of these cheesemakers (including friends-of-Cheese Notes Sugarhouse Creamery — located in Upper Jay, NY and makers of Poundcake, Little Dickens, Dutch Knuckle and many other fine cheeses). The foliage up there should be pretty spectacular this time of year as well, if you need the deal sweetened. 

Check out the Facebook page for more details:

The cheesemakers of Essex County are delighted to announce the Third Annual Essex County Cheese Tour! This self-guided driving tour follows the scenic Ausable River Valley through the foothills of the Adirondacks. It’s the perfect excuse to get out and soak up the fall foliage while also treating your tastebuds. On-farm tours and cheese samples are free! Cheesy lunch fare is available to purchase, and farm stores will be open for sales. This year, those that have their “passport” stamped by all three creameries, will have a chance to win one of three prizes.

Unique cheese pairings are all the rage these days; at cheese shops, restaurants and cheese bars, chefs, maitre fromagers and cheesemongers are increasingly constructing cheese plates and pairings that play with conventions or completely blow them out of the water. Top cheese events like the Cheesemonger Invitational feature the Perfect Bite section of the competition, challenging the competitors to build perfection in a single-bite portion, and often features highly innovative ingredients and combinations. From New York City to Seattle and points in between, increasingly the cheese plate is seen as a space for exploration and invention. 

One of the people at the forefront of this movement has long been Tia Keenan, a New York City-based chef-fromager who has brought a multidisciplinary approach to cheese pairing, acting as the driving force behind the game-changing cheese program at Casselula, in setting up the program at Murray’s Cheese Bar when it was first opening, and now, through her new book, The Art of The Cheese Plate (Rizzoli, 2016). 

If you’ve been wanting to up your cheese plating game, this is the book for you. Keenan has long combined a brilliantly creative palate with a sharp eye for the aesthetics of the cheese plate, combining not just flavor, texture and aroma, but also color, geometry, intuition and even humor to construct pairings that may seem odd at first but always win you over on your first bite. 

One of her main concepts is the notion of Supportive vs Contrasting pairings. Supportive pairings “reinforce textures and/or flavors latent in the cheese”. One example she gives is the “Ardrahan & Peanut-Tahini Fudge Roll”, in which the peanut flavors highlight the cheese’s “nutty creaminess and earthy saltiness”. A Contrasting pairing is exemplified by the “Winnimere & Mosto Cotto-Glazed Bacon”, which “relies on the tension between sticky bacon and oozing cheese”. 

Keenan offers a wealth of information about the cheeses featured, but ultimately, she defers to the many other excellent books out there on the A-Z’s of cheese, emphasizing that this is “a doing book, quite specifically about creating artful cheese experiences”. 

The book offers gorgeous photo spreads (thanks to Brooklyn-based food photographer Noah Fecks) and clear, detailed instructions for creating the accompaniments. I tried a few of the recipes, and was struck by how quick and simple all of them were, yet how delicious the results ended up being. The spreads are categorized with names like “Love Letter to Clothbound Cheddar”, “Smoky Bandits”, “Hard Day’s Night, “Flights of Fancy” and “Vice”, each focusing on a family of cheese, a theme, a creative direction or just a flight of fancy. 

I had many questions for Tia after getting my hands on this book, and she was kind enough to answer them. Not only that, she agreed to create a custom recipe, using one of the cheeses I’ve been spending much of my time with lately! Read on to learn more...

American Cheese Society 2016: Best Of Show

We have our top winners! The American Cheese Society 2016 competition winners were announced last night in Des Moines, Iowa, and here are the results! The big winner, for Best Of Show, was Little Mountain, from the Roelli Cheese Company.  Chris Roelli has been a long time fixture and award-winning maker on the Wisconsin cheese scene (as well as being an official “Master Cheesemaker” in that state), and this win is well deserved (you can see my post from four years ago, about his Red Rock cheese, here).   

Bleating Heart, who did well at the 2015 ACS competition, stepped it up by entering the Best Of Show 2nd Place ranks, as did The Farm at Doe Run, makers of longtime Cheese Notes favorite Hummingbird. 

3rd Place was also a tie, with the Caves of Faribault getting the red ribbon for their Jeffs’ Select Gouda, and Murrays Cheese and Jasper Hill Farm winning for their collaboration cheese, Greensward. 

Speaking of that last one, there are more and cheeses showing up at the ACS competition that are made at one location and aged elsewhere, a clear sign of the maturation and expansion of Affinage in America. The Greensward starts it’s life as a Harbison, made at Jasper Hill, which is shipped to the Murray’s Caves when green, where the ace team at Murray’s take over, washing and caring for the wheels to produce the funky final product. You can read more about the Greensward in my piece about booze-washed cheeses for Edible Manhattan. 

1st Place Best of Show  Little Mountain, Roelli Cheese Company Inc, WI 

2nd Place Best of Show (tie) Buff Blue, Bleating Heart Cheese, CA St. Malachi Reserve, The Farm at Doe Run, PA 

3rd Place Best of Show (tie) Jeffs’ Select Gouda, Caves of Faribault, MN   Greensward, Murray's Cheese & Jasper Hill Farm

If you want to see all of the winners, across all categories (be warned, it’s a big list!) you can see the complete list of winners here (PDF):  http://www.cheesesociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/2016-Winners-for-Website-3.pdf

Wishing you were in Des Moines to watch the announcement of the ACS 2016 Competition winners (aka the Oscars of the cheese world)? Well, if you can’t be there in person, you can stream it live via the American Cheese Society website! Link is here: http://www.cheesesociety.org/cheese-stream-2016/