American terroir? Or simply skillful cheesemakers...

In my last post, I mentioned that Europeans put great store in geographic origin. In fact, the French term "terroir" is often used to refer to the features of (usually) a wine that are geographically determined. It's interesting that hardly any time elapsed from my making that post when I found myself looking at a book entitled "American Terroir," which uses that concept in characterizing some of our domestic foods: not just wine, says thw author, but vegetables, cheese, and such are terroir-dependent. And each of his chapters describes a different food, and points out somewhere on the North American Continent (yes, despite the title, his focus is the whole continent, not just the U. S. A.) where a great version is produced.

And one of those chapters talks about cheese. And his example is from Northeastern Vermont, Jasper Hill Farm, a cheesemaker and affineur that's been mentioned before in this blog. Now although he mentions the great Stilton-like cheese that they produce, Bayley Hazen Blue, most of the chapter describes a cheese of theirs that I haven't tasted, Winnimere. Now from the way it's been described, this is a Taleggio-like cheese, which would make it resemble Meadow Creek Farms' Grayson and Cowgirl Creamery's Red Hawk, and so we have three American products, from Vermont, Virginia, and California, all closely resembling an Italian cheese (Taleggio) and, of course, thus also resembling a French type, Pont l'Evêque. Given that these places cover quite a lot of territory, I think that makes a strong case that it is not terroir that makes a great cheese, but the skill of the cheesemaker. (And I'd love to try Winnimere, because Jasper Hill seems to have some great cheesemaking skills!)

Classifying cheeses

In Europe, they consider geographic origin the most important identification of such products as wine and cheese. Label a sparkling white wine from California or New York State as "champagne" and all France will go up in arms ("Champagne," according to French law, and probably by now European Union law, must come from a certain area in France!). So if an American company wants to sell wine over there, they must conform to these geography-oriented regulations.

Here in the US, geography is less dominant; anyone can call a cheese "Cheddar" even if it doesn't come from England, though lately we have seen State additions to these ("New York State Cheddar," "Vermont Cheddar," "Wisconsin Cheddar," etc.) but as far as I know we do not have laws about these. What does matter in the USA is trademarks: try to pass off a cola drink as "Coca-Cola" if it's not made by the company that owns that trademark, and it could get you in a pile of trouble.

In any case, these restrictions mean that categorizing cheeses to group together very similar ones runs into terminology problems. Consider four cheeses I have bought in recent days; two from the USA and two from Europe. (I bought three of them at Whole Foods Market; the fourth is also available there, but I didn't buy it there; namely Red Hawk, which I got at a kiosk that Cowgirl Creamery ran at the Bethesda Farmer's Market.):

1. Taleggio, from Italy;
2. Pont l'Evêque, from France;
3. Grayson, from Virginia; and
4. Red Hawk, from California.

The first two are geographical designations; anyone in those parts of Italy and France can produce a cheese by that name, while anyone not in those parts of Italy and France can never do so, no matter how much like these cheeses their product is. The last two are trademarked. Meadowcreek Farms produces Grayson; anyone else (even if they are located in Grayson County, Virginia, the source of the name!) would be out of luck. Cowgirl Creamery produces Red Hawk and several other cheeses, but I'm talking about this one, because it is so much like the other three in this list.

All four of these cheeses are soft (almost liquid), with a thick leathery rind. They have a strong smell which might suggest spoilage if you didn't know they're supposed to smell that way. And they taste almost identically. The Grayson is slightly darker, more yellow-orange, and somewhat stronger-flavored than the other three, but I'd be hard put to tell the other three apart; and even the Grayson, in the dark, would be nearly indistinguishable. But there is no one word I could use generically to refer to these cheeses (and others like them). If I described them as "Taleggio-type" or "Pont l'Evêque-type," the Europeans would be as horrified as they are with "California champagne," and if I described them as "Grayson-type" or "Red Hawk-type," the trademark-owners would sue.

What are we to do? 

Three more cheese recommendations

As I taste the various cheeses I've bought, from time to time I will put in recommendations and descriptions into this blog. Three cheeses I've had some recent tastes of are described in this posting. Two are blue cheeses and the third is a goat's milk cheese, all from the United States, though the third has a name that would suggest it was from Spain.

As I said in a posting on December 18^th, I was told at Cowgirl Creamery that the Jasper Hill Bayley Hazen Blue was very similar to English Stilton. And in fact, it has a nice "earthy" taste superimposed on the "tang" you expect on a blue cheese, exactly like Stilton. It's probably the first USA-produced cheese I've had that I'd compare to Stilton, and a new favorite of mine.

Rogue Creamery's Smokey Blue is another, quite different, American blue cheese. It combines the nice taste of a smoked cheese with the "tang" of a typical blue cheese. I've been getting it at Whole Foods Market, but it can be bought at a number of places, including online (click on the Rogue Creamery link in this post).

And something completely different, also purchased at WFM: Cabra La Mancha is produced by a company named FireFly Farms, a fairly-local company (located in Maryland). It's a goat's milk cheese, but despite that, the cheese I think it most resembles is Meadow Creek Dairy's Grayson (which is made from cow's milk). Both have strong aromas and strong tastes — perhaps too strong for some people, but I love them. And the aromas, tastes, and textures are quite similar. Both are similar to the Italian Taleggio, but more strongly flavored and with a more powerful aroma than even a Taleggio. Oddly, I don't notice a lot of the characteristic goat-milk flavor in FireFly Farms' Cabra La Mancha.

All three of these are cheeses I really like, with the Bayley Hazen Blue particularly recommended.

A couple of finds

Today I was traveling around DC looking to see what I could spot in teas and cheeses, and was pleased to find a couple of cheeses I was not expecting. I'd read of the existence of a blue version of the English Cheshire cheese, but had not been able to find it for sale in this country except by Internet order (and that involves paying for shipping, so I tend to avoid that for things like this). But today I saw "Appleby Cheshire," visibly a blue cheese, on sale at Dean & DeLuca in Georgetown. Now, Dean & DeLuca tends to be overpriced, and I could see other cheeses in the case that I regularly buy at Whole Foods Market at prices a few dollars per pound higher than WFM charges, but I had no option if I wanted to try it. So I bought some — actually, more than I wanted to, because I usually want to buy something like that in ¼-pound amounts, and the man at the counter didn't want to try to cut ¼ pound from a piece of slightly more than a third of a pound that he had there, since it tends to be a crumbly cheese, and therefore I had to buy the whole piece. Then after that I was in Eastern Market, which has a cheese shop called Bowers, and I saw a white Stilton with apricots. (White Stilton, actually has little to do with blue Stilton, which I think is one of the greatest cheeses in the world; however, I've had white Stilton with various fruits in it and it works very well, so I wanted this. I had not been able to buy those fruit-mixed white Stiltons for a while — Giant used to carry them, but stopped.) So that was another buy I had to make! (I also bought some tea today, but nothing I want to describe here today.)

Eclectic food choice?

When I was younger (I'm in my 60s now) I'd sometimes thought that I'd like to open an "eclectic" restaurant. Not like a Chinese or an Italian place, with one and only one country's food showcased, but a place where a group can come in and one have a Chinese dish and another a German or a Mexican one. Well, I never got the capital to open a restaurant, and I'm too old to start a new business now. But there is now the nearest thing I've found to my eclectic restaurant idea: the prepared food bar at Whole Foods Market. I hadn't planned my restaurant to be served buffet style, or priced by weight, so it's still not quite the same, but thinking about my experience yesterday, when I was trying to decide between Moroccan chicken with lemons and olives, on the one hand, and beef chili (Tex-Mex?) on the other, I realized that WFM really provides a nice eclectic-choice spread.

Now if they can get people who can cook like this, and I've had, in the past, things like German Sauerbraten and St. Louis style pork spareribs, why can't a restaurant? I can'd do the new-business thing at my age, but I wish someone might!

The affineurs

In France, the cheeses tend to be aged by specialists (affineurs). And some of these affineurs are very well known for their expertise. (The name of Hervé Mons keeps coming up as I read cheese articles on the Web; I mentioned his name in connection with his Tomme des Bois Noirs.) In this country, the affineurs tend to have corporate names rather than personal ones, and the use of specialist affineurs is not as common. But anything put out by Jasper Hill Farm is good, and Rogue Creamery is another specializef affineur that puts out a good product.

These are names to look for.

A cheese blog I just found, and a cheese I've been enjoying

Today I was planning to make a post about another cheese I have in nmy collection, Gabietou, which I got in a version aged by the same Hervé Mons I had mentioned in conjunction with the Tomme des Bois Noirs which I had written earlier about. I wanted to look up something about it, and in the process found this post on this blog. How about that -- a blog just about cheese and nothing but! Well, I'm happy to recommend it to you. And oh yes, Gabietou is a nice cheese, too, with a great taste. Most cheeses are made from one kind of milk -- cow's, goat's, or sheep's, usually. The Spanish make some cheeses from mixed of two or all three of these, but this is the first French mixed-milk cheese I've encountered. It's made from a mix of cow's and sheep's milk. You can get it at Whole Foods, and probably elsewhere. A great cheese.

Blue Pearl yesterday

Not too surprisingly, since it was the only thing open in the area (except a Starbucks, and they don't have full dinners!) Blue Pearl at lunchtime was pretty busy. I was wondering whether they would make any concession to Christmas, but they didn't; there were a few items I don't usually see there, but in at least one case I know it's something they save for weekends: a delightful dish of shrimp and pineapple in a cream sauce that I wish was available during the week. The only other things I noticed that aren't there normally were ribs and a kind of fried fish, but I suspect they are just normal extras on weekends when their price goes up. (That's why I don't usually go there on weekends.) The cabbage soup seemed to have much more meat than usual, though. (And that is a definite plus. I like that soup, but I'm enough of a carnivore that more meat than usual is only an improvement on a good thing!)

December twenty-fifth - a special day?

Today is that annual ritual: trying to find a place that is open to have a meal. If you're not Christian, it's no big deal holiday, but most of the people who operate restaurants are, so they've closed for the day. One often ends up at a Chinese place because most of them are not Christians. In fact, I saw a column in a newspaper recently that referred to the Jewish tradition of eating Chinese food as opposed to exchanging presents under a tree.

Well, today I'll be eating at a place that, I think, is run by Chinese, though it doesn't really specialize in Chinese food (it has some, but actually is an eclectic buffet, one of several that seem to be run by Chinese in this area), the Blue Pearl Buffet in Silver Spring. I don't often go to the Blue Pearl on weekends — they charge $11.45 at lunchtime, as opposed to $7.95 weekdays — but I probably have little choice in the matter; at least I know they'll be open because my wife has already checked with them. It will be interesting to see whether they've altered their menu in any way because it's Christmas; as far as I'm concerned they'll be fine if they don't. I'd actually like to forget that the Christians are celebrating their holiday today, and treat it as just another day of tye year. It's the one day that I really feel like a minority.

A couple of interesting blogs

I noticed that at the Whole Foods Market at Friendship Heights station, there is a bulletin board in the dining area where several printouts of blog posts about that particular store were posted, and today I decided to look at a couple of those blogs. There's one called "The Bethesda Foodie," which looks quite interesting. The woman who writes that blog obviously has more to spend on restaurant meals than I do, so the places she posts about are often beyond my ability to afford them, but it's interesting to look at the posts she's made. Please look. The other one I've just been looking at is called "Cup of Creativi-Tea." She does more cooking than I could ever try, but again, it seems like an interesting blog.

Bayley Hazen Blue

I first ran into a California cheesemaking company called Cowgirl Creamery at a farmers' market in Bethesda, Maryland. The lady manning their table told me they had a store in downtown Washington, D. C.; I don't get there that often, but yesterday I was at the Library of Congress and my path home would take me only a few blocks away from Cowgirl Creamery's store. So I broke journey at that point to visit the store. At the Bethesda location, they were selling only their own cheeses, but the store also includes a lot of other cheeses, both from the U. S. and imported from Europe. (Not as many as I can find at Whole Foods, but still I saw cheeses that Whole Foods does not carry.) One of the cheeses I saw was labeled "Jasper Hill Bayley Hazen Blue." Now, the name "Jasper Hill" is familiar to me. They age and market the Landaff cheese I mentioned in a previous post, as well as a delicious clothbound cheddar. And I love blue cheeses, so I asked about this one. The person at the counter told me it was very much like a Stilton, which is a strong positive to me. Shropshire Blue, my favorite cheese, is also very close to a Stilton; some people say they are indistinguishable, though I think I can tell the difference. So I took a taste, liked it a lot, and bought some. And this posting to to mention the cheese to anyone who cooses to follow this blog.

Cuisines of the world: my favorites

I must say, there is no national cuisine that I've tried that I haven't found things I liked in. But my favorite cuisines are two that have a (well deserved) reputation for high spiciness: Thai and Szechuan-Chinese. So obviously, I love very spicy food. But this doesn't mean that lower levels of spiciness are objectionable, if the seasoning is done right. The one country I have visited where I never got a single meal that was not very good is Italy. Italian food is not in a category like the two I mentioned for spiciness, but they use the seasonings they do use in a very nice manner. (I never visited Thailand or China, so that is part of the reason these countries don't figure in my "best experience" description. But France, the supposed gourmet paradise, can't hold a candle to Italy. I've had some good meals in France, but some that I would not want to revisit.)

Even countries like Germany, though, with no great reputation, can put out some tasty food. The sausages I liked at Zum Zum (see my earlier posting) were typical of Germany, and in Germany I got some wonderful ones. I think that German food gets an undeserved bad rap; I enjoyed most of what they served me there — probably more than in France!

There are some problem cuisines. Indonesians use a lot of eggs — and I can't abide eggs; even looking at one is a major turnoff. This doesn't mean I can't find a good meal at an Indonesian restaurant, but that I have to be careful. (Similarly, I was with a friend at a Brazilian restaurant once, and I ordered something that seemed interesting from the menu description, only to find it coming out with a fried egg on top! Fortunately, my friend thought it looked more interesting than what he had ordered, and we just swapped dishes. So that worked out OK.)

An experiment with two cheeses

Among the cheeses I have had recently in my refrigerator are two that I considered rather similar, one from France and one from this country, and I wanted to compare them closely to see if I could really tell them apart. I was down to small pieces of each last night, and when I came home I decided to make myself a small cheese plate (which I do often) with these two as my featured cheeses. The two are Tomme des Bois Noirs, the French cheese, exported by a cheesemaker (strictly speaking, a cheese ager, which the French call an affineur) named Hervé Mons, and available from Whole Foods Market in this country, and Landaff, the American product, which I mentioned in an earlier post. Both cheeses are somewhat similar, in my opinion, with a somewhat earthy taste, both have a rather similar appearance (there is no really distinct rind, but the outside is very dark from the aging, while it gradually lightens, toward the inner part of the cheese, to a nearly white color), and as it happens, both are produced as farmstead cheeses sent to a specialized aging place separate from the farm where the milk is made into cheese, which also markets the cheese after it is aged. It is true that the Tomme is made from goat's milk, unlike the cow's milk used for Landaff, but if you click the link you will find that Mons deliberately set out to create a cheese without a strong goaty flavor, and I think he succeeded.

Well, tasting the two in quick succession, going back and forth, I come to the following conclusions. The Tomme is certainly stronger in that "earthy" taste I rather like, while the Landaff has a noticeably more acid ("sharp") taste. The Tomme is somewhat firmer, and the Landaff softer, though this difference in texture is slight. (Of course, as has been noted in Landaff Creamery's description of their cheese, farmstead cheeses do vary, so I might have come to different conclusions if I'd tasted different days' purchases of these cheeses.) But they are very close; I can't say I like one better than the other, but both are among my favorites in the "not-blue" category. I will certainly be likely to continue buying both of them.

A restaurant chain I miss

Years ago there used to be a chain of sausage restaurants called Zum Zum. (Though they were a chain, I suspect I'd only been to one of their restaurants.) I loved the variety of sausages they gave you a choice from. 

Unfortunately, they've disappeared. In fact, a search showed me that the trademark expired back in 2001, which probably means they went out of business well before that. Too bad. It would be nice to have a place like that around.

Food holidays

As an American, I'm always happy to celebrate Thanksgiving, our premier "food holiday." It is probably the one holiday we have in the USA with its own special foods: turkey stuffed with (usually) a traditional mix of bread and herbs, which absorbs juices from the turkey to get its own special flavor, and cranberry sauce (my personal favorite!) My family, when I was a child growing up, always had a traditional Thanksgiving dinner, though for some reason my mother seemed to believe that the candied sweet potatoes were a favorite of mine, though in fact I barely tolerated them. The stuffing and cranberry sauce were my treat, though I enjoyed the turkey too, as long as I got the white meat, and usually I had no problem getting it.

I had a friend (still have him, but we live hundreds of miles apart, so I have much less contact with him) who didn't much like turkey. I understand that his family had unconventional Thanksgiving meals with something other than turkey featured. It would seem weird to me, but for him, it was better that way.

Besides being an American, I'm Jewish, and we are just finishing up one of our own holidays, that also has food associated with it: Chanukah. (You'll see a lot of other spellings, but this is the one I prefer.) Apparently, different groups of Jews have different traditional Chanukah foods, but they all have in common that they are fried in oil to commemorate the oil lamp that burned for eight days with one day's supply of oil. In my culture (deriving from northeastern Europe), the traditional Chanukah food is a pancake made from shredded potatoes (the pancakes are called latkes in Yiddish, my ancestors' native language). I love them. (Other groups of Jews have their own traditions; I understand one group serves a sort of jelly doughnut. It probably tastes good — I've never tried them, so I don't know for sure — but it wouldn't mean Chanukah to me.)

I got most of my holiday foods this year, though for some reason when I had turkey and stuffing from Whole Foods on their prepared food bar, there was no cranberry sauce, just some sort of cranberry-orange relish, and I'm no great fan of oranges, so I passed on that). At the Old Country Buffet, where I actually ate on Thanksgiving Day, they did have the cranberry sauce, so I was happy. Whole Foods did a strange variation on latkes for Chanukah, though. They served latkes with spinach and feta cheese on their prepared food bar, though I could taste the spinach but not the feta cheese. Not really that traditional, but I have to admit they tasted good. But I sort of miss the old-fashioned kind of latkes. (The hash browns at Blue Pearl Buffet are so similar to latkes that they will have to serve as my near-substitute. But even they aren't quite right.)

But now the two food holidays are over, and it's back to everyday. (Passover is also a food holiday, but that's many months off.)

Some more cheeses I like

From time to time I'll be adding to the cheeses I've mentioned earlier on this blog. For example, another cheese I've bought over and over again from Whole Foods is Mahon, a Spanish cheese that is also known in Catalan as Maò. It's a pretty nice cheese with a flavor I enjoy, and is often found at Whole Foods. Recently I found a soft cheese, (with an almost cream-cheese texture) made from goat milk, covered with a coating of herbs and peppercorns. It is called Fleur Verte - a French name, so I presume it comes from France. The distinct goat's milk favor is noticeable (though not really strong) but what you really notice is the herbs. I think it's delicious. This one I also discovered at Whole Foods.

A new discovery

I don't drink coffee, but I love tea, especially some of the flavored teas available, and although it seems that all the places I used to go to buy my tea from have gone out of business, I've come up with a couple of places I really like. I prefer places where I can walk in and buy, so I don't have to pay shipping and handling charges, although I have bought tea over the Internet with some success. And there have been two favorite places where I have bought tea, both in the Bethesda, Md. area: Zen Tara Tea Shop and Teavana. (The second of these is a chain, but has pretty nice stuff.) Yesterday I read of another place in a newspaper: the Georgetown Spice and Tea Exchange. I figured I had to go there, and this morning I did so. And I was favorably impressed.

They have tea, spices, flavored sugars and salts, powdered cheeses, and similar things in large glass canisters so you can open them up and sniff, which is really the best way to tell whether you'll like a tea. (I rather imagine the flavored salts don't have much of an aroma, but for tea it is the ideal way to make a decision, and since I don't do much cooking, it's for tea that I'll be coming to this place.)

They do not have as big a variety of teas as Teavana or Zen Tara, but they do have about 30 different kinds, most of which seem interesting (I bought three today). Because it is not just tea, but spices and the flavored salts and sugars that they carry, they could not have the 100+ varieties that Zen Tara has, but they have some types you can't get elsewhere. And so I'm sure I'll be back, though Georgetown is a bit out of the way for me. Like Zen Tara, it seems to be run by a nice person, and has a good variety of teas to choose from, so I want to see them succeed in their business. 

Cheese

One of the foods I really love is cheese.  And not just any cheese, but strong flavored cheeses, especially the various blue cheeses and the long-aged extra-sharp cheddars.

Some of the cheeses I like, of course, have pretty strong aromas. There's an Italian cheese called "Taleggio," which has the consistency of a Brie, but with a very strong smell. I like it, but even more do I like two even stronger cheeses, made here in the United States, that seem to be modeled on Taleggio. There is a cheese called "Grayson" produced in Virginia that is everything that Taleggio is, but more so. Darker in color, stronger in both flavor and aroma. And a California outfit called Cowgirl Creamery produces a cheese called "Red Hawk" which is similar, though not as strong as Grayson. Both these cheeses can be bought at Whole Foods Market, and Cowgirl Creamery has some of their own stores as well, including one in Washington, D. C. (the nearest city to where I live).

My favorite cheese of all is from England, a blue cheese called Shropshire Blue. It's very similar to a Blue Stilton (some Web sites and books say they are identical, but I think I can tell the difference!) and so, as you might guess, Blue Stilton ranks high on my favorites list. Another cheese (also a blue) that I recently discovered and have to consider a favorite is Valdeón, from Spain. It doesn't have the earthiness of the two British blues, but it has most of the taste that I love in a blue, in the extreme.

Getting away from blues, while there are lots of cheeses called Cheddars made in this country, and I like them, as long as they are aged enough to make them very sharp, I need to distinguish the "clothbound" Cheddars, which are so totally distinct that I do not even know why the same name is used for these as for the commonplace Cheddars. They have an earthiness and an entirely different flavor. I should add that a cheese called "Landaff," modeled on a Welsh Caerphilly (though I've never had an authentic Welsh Caerphilly, so I can't be certain it's a close copy), produced in New Hampshire but aged in Vermont and marketed by a Vermont company, is even more earthy, and I have to admit I like this earthiness a lot. So I've been buying Landaff at Whole Foods a lot lately.

I'll be posting more about cheese in the future. It's something I love to eat. And the variety of cheeses to choose from is amazing.

A new blog

This blog is not my only one; I have been blogging for a few years. But it is my first attempt at a blog that is not a political one, and because I don't want my political blog posts to influence people's opinions on what I post here, I'm trying very hard to keep my blogs separate, and I don't link to one from the other. You are invited to comment on my posts here, but comments need to be relevant; if you post a comment that appears to be spam (in the Internet sense! A post about SPAM, the meat product, would actually be relevant here!) it will be deleted.

I call this blog "The Individualistic Gourmet" because I am sort of a gourmet in that I have strong likes and dislikes in food, but my tastes differ from what other self-proclaimed gourmets have decided are received dogma.

Beef, for example, is supposed to be served rare; I insist on it being well-done, and I remember a trip I made to France (and other countries) many years ago when I had to argue with a French chef that the meat had to be cooked more. I do not believe I should eat blood.

I also prefer sweeter wines than gourmets are supposed to prefer; of course, this means I would rather drink the German whites (which tend to be both sweeter and lower in alcohol than other European countries' wines) than most others.

And there are a few things I despise: For example, mustard (so don't give me even a supposedly "gourmet" mustard like "Grey Poupon.")

As this blog continues, my other likes and dislikes will become obvious. If you have specific questions, you can pose them as comments to this posting or to others where they might be relevant.