My highlight reel of ‘From Local Farms‘ videos was just chosen by Daniel and Mirra of The Perennial Plate as a top-four contender in their recent video competition. I’m honored to be on the list, to say the least. The very reason I started a video series at all was directly because of Daniel and Mirra’s earliest episodes – inspiring me … Read More
Would You Buy This Cheese?
This cheese entered my life as a gift. It’s an aged Bressan from Smoky Valley Goat Cheese, and Holly figured the mottled molds atop it would make it unsuitable for sale. She also claimed that this particular batch was so good that if she kept it for herself, she’d eat yet another lovely wheel of it by herself. I’m no … Read More
My Palate and Sinuses will Recover, Honest.
In 2006, a more than fledgling foodie at the time [and the year I started blogging], my wife and I spent a month traveling through western and eastern Europe, seeking regional food specialties. On that trip, having felt I knew cheese well, I went to France for the half-dozenth time, and had a major cheese awakening. Overall, their cheeses, even … Read More
Chocolate Espresso Chevrecake
This was an innovative-idea-to-me, but I googled it and apparently others have already discovered it. Oh well. Originality is not my m.o. Chevrecake. Cheesecake happens to be my all-time-favorite-dessert, and a few years back I spent some time mucking about with an individual [ramekin] sized chocolate espresso cheesecake recipe that I love dearly. It’s my birthday choice. And having recently … Read More
Jack-o-lantern & Chevre Cupcake
Although not a big TV watcher, I have to admit I really love ‘Jamie at Home’. I was recently watching his winter squash episode, and he very quickly whipped together butternut squash cupcakes with a very low-sugar icing. ‘Hm’, thought I, ‘I have a bunch of jack-o-lantern pumpkin in the freezer that needs to get eaten’. Then, thought I, “I … Read More
Valencay Epiphany
Well as it turns out, it took me a week or so to get to those brownish, fuzzy, kinda brutal looking Valencays that I aged in my cellar for a couple months. And as it turns out, I was wrong. They were not dead, bad, or past. They were SUBLIME. The reason I was cellaring these was to see where … Read More
Cheese Cellar Porn
You take milk. You make cheese. And you stick it in your cellar for months. Food preservation methods like this astonish me. My cheese cellar is low-tech and passively cooled and humidified. No gear. No electronics. No energy consumption. Old-school. Currently holds 90+% humidity and temp is a bit low at 5-6C. I took these photos because Holly asked me … Read More
Goat Cheese Post Mortem
My email this evening to Holly Gale of Smoky Valley Goat Cheese who’s consulting on my cheese cellaring project. “Finally hit an aging hurdle. These Valencays went in there in mid October, so nearly 2 months. They looked like this when they did. They held up really well until the last week or two. What’s interesting is that they seem … Read More
Cellaring Cheese
One of my goals this year was to start to get my feet wet at making cheese. I failed. I have not made cheese. But what has happened is a very happy thing: I’ve become good friends with cheesemaker Holly Gale and have had the opportunity to help their farm in a variety of ways – in exchange for cheese. … Read More
Cellar Dream-Come-True
I knew when I built my wine and root cellars, that they would bring me joy – but I had no idea it would happen so thoroughly, so quickly. Today I made a batch of very, very large saucisson sec. It was time to try again after my last slightly hurtful failure, and the humidity in my cellar has been … Read More
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