Category Archives: cheese

Food Adventure: Cheesemaking in Upstate New York

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Lots of cooking coming up this week, but in the meantime, check out my post on SAVEUR.com on cheese-making in upstate New York! 

Here’s a teaser: When I was a little girl, I used to fancy that I was Laura Ingalls in Little House in the Big Woods, churning my own butter and frying crackling — despite not really knowing what crackling was. Last month, I visited Sprout Creek Farm, a working farm, creamery, and educational center in upstate New York, and watched a version of my dream come true. Read more at SAVEUR.com»

Party Favors: ColoRouge Cheese Biscuits

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Also on Chef Roth’s menu was a ColoRouge Grilled Cheese, little baguette rounds filled with homemade pesto, arugula, and slices of a stinky Camembert-style cheese from MouCo Cheese Company in Colorado. The cheesy bites were delicious, but with several blocks of the young cow’s milk cheese left over, the fridge at work was already beginning to smell. I decided to take few blocks home to see what I could do with them.

Photo courtesy of MouCo Cheese Company.
I decided I wanted to make some sort of cheese biscuit to go with the venison pie but worried about making a traditional cheddar-style biscuit since this was a soft cheese, rather than a hard one. Inspired by a recipe from the Home on the Range blog, I froze the cheese so that I could grate it into the dry ingredients.
Grating the peeled cheese into the dry ingredients.
Using my fingers, I gently combined the flakes of frozen cheese and butter into the flour, baking powder, and baking soda mixture, added a cup of milk to create a dough, and then dropped them on a baking pan lined with parchment paper. The biscuits were ready to eat 12-15 minutes later — hot, steamy, and a hint of delicious cheesiness, ready to sop up the dregs of the pie.
ColoRouge Cheese Biscuits
ColoRouge  Cheese Biscuits
  • 2 cups all purpose flour
  • 2 teaspoons baking powder
  • 1/2 tsp. baking soda
  • 1 tsp fine salt
  • 1/4 cup unsalted butter, frozen solid
  • 1/2 wheel of ColorRouge cheese, frozen solid
  • 1 cup milk
Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Mix all dry ingredients together into a chilled bowl. Using a cheese grater, grate the butter and cheese through the large holes. Gently mix the shaved butter and cheese into the dry ingredients with your fingers until loose and crumbly. 
Add 2/3 cup of the milk to the bowl, stirring together. Add a little more at a time as needed to incorporate all the dry ingredients, but do not exceed one cup. The mixture should come together in a loose, slightly sticky dough.
Knead together a few times in the bowl. Place a large spoonful of dough onto a parchment paper-lined cookie sheet, evenly spaced. Bake 12-15 minutes at 425 degrees til golden brown. Serve immediately.
*Any soft cheese, such as a brie or Camembert, could be used instead, although I think the stinkier the better; the flavor mellows as baked.

Creative Time: Pimento Grilled Cheese

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A few years ago, when my mother and I went to Bonnaroo with a bunch of her friends, we prepared massive amounts of pimento cheese, using the large format Cuisinart that lives in her kitchen in Atlanta. To differentiate the two, we added some chopped jalapeno peppers and jus to one of the containers – and this spicy cheese spread was a total hit!

A Southern requisite.

Rather than waste half a jalapeno, a jar of pimentos, and half a block of Vermont cheddar cheese which didn’t make it into my marinated vegetable salad, these leftovers were perfect fodder for remaking this spicy pimento cheese. Since I lack a large food processor, I adapted and used a Microplane, which finely shredded the cheese.

Got to stick with the Vermont white cheddar!

This consistency ended up being a welcome bonus, as it greatly reduced the amount of mayonnaise needed to keep the spread together and created a dense, rich flavor. I added some ground pepper, but no salt, since the cheese was already quite salty. Then, I cut the rest of the previous day’s baguette into halves and created pimento grilled cheese sandwiches. Served with a yummy summer salad, it was a delicious, easy, and economical dinner!

Salty, cheesy goodness.

Quick and Easy: Marinated Vegetable Salad

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After the eat-fest that was Fourth of July weekend (er, well, my life in general), Toni and I decided we would try to tone down our diets. It’s the best time of year to do so anyway: produce is at it’s finest, and it’s so hot in this city that one hardly wants to turn on the stove. Mom gave me a few ideas, via our friend Chef Jacques Pepin, for some quick and easy summer salads. Yesterday, we tried the first one.

Thanks Chef!

The ingredients in this salad can all be found in most grocery stores: canned artichoke hearts (I prefer those preserved in water, not oil), caponata, pimentos, green olives, parsley, a bit of jalapeno, and cheddar cheese. Everything was chopped into bite-size pieces and tossed with a bit of olive oil. We let it sit to let the flavors meld while we cut up fruit for another no-cook salad: cantaloupe, apples, kiwi, and banana.

It’s prettier than it tasted…

The marinated vegetable salad was a success, with the predominant flavors of each vegetable shining through. We ate it with a bit of toasted baguette. The fruit salad, on the other hand, was a huge disappointment. We had bought the produce at the Food Emporium near Toni’s place, since the market was not open on Tuesday, and almost everything we bought was absolutely tasteless (the watermelon, the beacon of summer, didn’t even make it into the salad!) Thank goodness for the kiwi, which redeemed it, at least a little…

I LOVERMONT: Vermont Cheese

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I just had to post a link through to this amazing Newsweek article. Cabot cheddar cheese dominated my college diet, thanks to my lovely roommate who (despite her lactose intolerance) could not live without it, introducing me to the joys of white cheddar. I have been a large supporter of Vermont cheese ever since.

loving her cheese.

With amazing dairy farms and developments in sustainable agriculture at places like Jasper Hill Farms, the cheese industry is stronger – and more delicious – than ever. Go Vermont!