Last night I attended a casual mini trade show in Somerville MA. Gorgeous cheeses from around the world were out and available for sampling - including 6 I'd never tasted before. The crowd was small so you could actually talk to producers, and diverse, which made it interesting. Spain made a big showing, including a range of raw sheeps milk cheeses, and a lactic set goats milk from brand new Santa Gadea. Giovanni Guffanti Fiori brought a southern italian bell shaped 3 milk cheese covered in ash. Made with (I think he said) Maltese goat milk, this was a wild and wooly ride around a barnyard. I like it! but it is not for the faint of heart.

April was National Grilled Cheese Sandwich Month and The Lady and I, your humble Feline Foodie, promised 30 new grilled cheese recipes… alas… to mis-quote the late, great John Lennon… “we had grilled cheese plans and then life got in the way”… so even into mid-May, we are still posting grilled cheese recipes… this one today is #26 and as with the last, this is actually an open-faced cheese melt.

The Lady took Jasper Hill Farm’s sample #120125 to make her latest cheese sammy…

Using Original La Panzanella Croccantini for her bread base, she topped it with Prosciutto and then JHF’s sample #120125. She sprinkled a little rosemary on top.

She popped it in the toaster oven and three minutes later… ta da… we had dinner.

Another terrific grilled/open-faced sammy for the grilled cheese recipe vaults and future reference… living with The Lady does have at least one good side… Cheese, Glorious Cheese…

-- Spaulding Gray, The Feline Foodie, for Marcella (The Lady)

I rarely measure my ingredients and even when I do… it’s “sorta” that amount. Today, while watching The Players’ Championship, I made a mac n cheese using the 111228 sample, which was the largest of the three I received.

Here’s what I did:

It’s thrilling to be a part of Birth of a Cheese 2012 and want to thank Culture Magazine and Jasper Hill Farm for this opportunity.

With the cheese came a questionnaire to fill out with initial reactions to appearance, aroma, texture and taste. Wanting to impress, I found that challenging. Hopefully, the good folks at Jasper Hill won’t shake their heads and wonder about choosing me, “What were we thinking?”

Most of the cheese I taste is at the peak of its age and as the cheese maker wanted it enjoyed. To taste young cheese and then “follow” its aging is a special treat.
The three samples were in various stages of aging; all young; all on the way to becoming cheese… let me rephrase that… all on the way to becoming great cheese.

So let's get right down to it... last night I opened three cheeses from Jasper Hill. Each came wrapped in brown paper so aside from the rough shape, all of us receiving these new cheeses had no idea what to expect.

First Impressions

What greeted us were three samples, each obviously the same cheese yet... not... exactly.

Hi everybody! My name is Chris and I write the Artisan & Farmstead cheese blog Wedge in the Round: http://wedgeintheround.com/

Someday I hope to own my own shop. For now I eat, write, eat, eat and write a little then eat more cheese. I enjoy shooting pics of cheese, food and wine in general.

I'll be blogging my impressions of Jasper Hill's new cheese here at Culture. I cannot say thank you enough to Culture and Jasper Hill for selecting me to be a tester this year.

Three generous wedges arrived yesterday and I'm about to dive in for the first time. I'll let you know my first impressions soon.

Cheers!

Chris

Last Friday afternoon my wife and I drove into Cambridge, Massachusetts to pick up dinner. On the menu: cheese, a crusty bread, and any other specialty foods that caught our eye. We luckily found parking right outside of our destination—Formaggio Kitchen.

Although we aimed to get there a little earlier, my scattered brain and rush hour traffic put us at shopping an hour before closing time. It was fairly busy, and with everyone milling about in their coats it was a little cramped at times. Nevertheless, the staff remained enthusiastic, knowledgeable and genuinely excited to see customers. They offered us samples of cheese, salami and wine, ready to answer any question.

Although I’m a Leo, I really despise being the center of attention. Like, really despise it. I take-an-F-on-a-presentation-so-I-don’t-have-to-speak-in-front-of-the-class despise it. So, it’s easy to understand why I haven’t had a traditional birthday party in over ten years. Don’t get me wrong; I like celebrating my birthday (i.e. I like free stuff), but anyone, even people I love, singing a bizarre, repetitive children’s song makes me want to scamper upstairs and hide under the bed like a dog frightened of thunder.

Go ahead. Laugh. You know you want to.

I'm munching a Trader Joe's cheddar CheeseStick and reading Eric Asimov's article on The Pour (NYT) about tasting 18 Bordeauxs from the magic year of 1982; made so by the perfect storm of Robert Parker's enthusiasm for the vintage, a new parched public eager to learn about wine, and changes in Bordeaux economics that would sweep away sleepy local wine production in France...or so I have recently read!

The wines are 30 years old, and according to those who know, a club you can tell I am not a member of, they are now "in their prime." They have been stashed in a collector's wine cellar, enriching their "opulence" and gaining in value and fame.