cheese

Learning Roman pastas (#1)

Posted on by Pat and David
Much as we love Trastevere and its restaurants, one of our other favorite eating establishments is right on one of Rome's most tourist-thronged plazas—just the type of location that we usually avoid at meal time. But when we stopped for coffee one morning at Ristorante-Caffè di Rienzo (Piazza del Pantheon 8/9, 06-686-9097, www.ristorantedirienzo.it), we struck up a conversation with Marianna Di Rienzo, whose father opened the restaurant in 1952. She even invited us to come back at dinner time so that the chef could show us how to prepare some classic Roman pasta dishes. Chef Alessandro Sillani has been with Di Rienzo for 15 years. When we returned around 6 p.m., he and his assistant Tsatsu Nicholas Awuku were not even breaking a sweat sending...Read More

Cooking with Comté

Posted on by Pat
If you've ever eaten a croque monsieur in a cafe anywhere in France (my absolute favorite is served at the News Cafe in Paris at 78 rue d'Assas across from Jardin du Luxembourg), chances are you've eaten Comté cheese. The firm and nutty Comté is the largest selling hard cheese in France. I'd always figured that only a big factory could turn out enough Comté to satisfy the appetites of the fromage-loving French, but it turns out that Comté is still made pretty much the same way that it's been made for about a thousand years--that is, small-scale and personal. And the whole process is open to the public: from brown-and-white Montbéliarde cows grazing in buttercup-laden meadows, to milk delivery and early morning cheese-making in...Read More

Say cheese in Montreal

Posted on by Pat and David
The graffito above pretty much says it all. Montrealers love their cheese. We've been in Montreal for most of the last month doing the research for Food Lovers' Guide to Montreal, to be published next spring from Globe Pequot Press. (See our first volume in the series, Food Lovers' Guide to Massachusetts, under the tab ''Some Books.'') We have to admit that we are staggered by the explosion in artisanal cheese-making in Quebec. La Belle Province is beginning to rival La France when it comes to great fromage. Many of Quebec's best cheeses are made from raw milk, but thanks to NAFTA, all Quebec cheeses are allowed into the United States, even though similar cheeses from France might be banned. Gilles Jourdenais, owner of La...Read More

The tang of Burgundy’s other signature taste

Posted on by Pat
You literally walk on wine in Beaune, the center of Burgundy's wine trade, because the town is honeycombed with cellars dug by the monks who were Burgundy's first vinters. Millions of bottles sleep their way to perfection under the cobbled streets, and millions more are tucked into the cool, dark recesses of the town's 15th century fortified walls. The rough streets, old stone buildings, and a profusion of statues of the Virgin Mary (including one where she holds the infant Jesus in one hand and a bunch of grapes in the other) make Beaune undeniably picturesque. But it's even more fun to taste Beaune than to look at it. As close as I can tell, there are no statues of Mary hefting a bag of...Read More

Bringing food through US Customs

Posted on by Pat and David
Sometimes you can’t bring the taste of travel back home. We learned the hard way by trying to bring in a large block of mountain ham from Spain. Mind you, this was the choicest grade of jamón ibérico (from acorn-fattened black-footed pigs), and priced accordingly. The salesperson at the factory in Jabugo assured us that it would go right through U.S. Customs because it was vacuum-sealed. When we declared the ham, Customs promptly confiscated it as if we were smuggling uncle Guido’s homemade country sausage. You can argue the validity of the policy all you want, but Customs people do not make policy. They only enforce it. One of us was already tired of pungent Spanish ham anyway. To avoid disappointment, costly or not, it...Read More

Cold turkey warms to the Hot Brown

Posted on by Pat and David
[caption id="attachment_459" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Hot Brown sandwich"][/caption] The chefs at the Brown Hotel, which has been one of Louisville’s social centers since it opened in 1923, probably didn’t have Thanksgiving leftovers in mind when they created the Hot Brown Sandwich. But it’s one of our favorite ways to use up excess turkey. Chef Fred Schmidt dreamed up the open-faced turkey and bacon sandwich in 1926 as a treat for up to 1,000 hungry dancers at the hotel’s swanky soirees. Schmidt’s solution to the light-night rush on the kitchen used ingredients readily at hand: toast, roast turkey, Mornay sauce, and bacon strips. With the unbeatable combination of bacon and cheese sauce, it’s no surprise that the popularity of the Hot Brown has spread well beyond the...Read More

Raclette made simple – in a grilled cheese sandwich

Posted on by Pat and David
And speaking of cheesemongers…. We have fond memories of eating raclette--a big plateful of melted cheese with cornichons and boiled potatoes--after a tough day of winter snow hiking in Switzerland. It has always seemed too much trouble to make at home: Buy a big block of raclette cheese, find or build an open fire, etc., etc. But one day when we were in Rubiner’s Cheesemongers in Great Barrington, Mass., we wandered into the Rubi’s Cafe for lunch and found the perfect solution to our raclette craving. Rubi’s piled shredded raclette cheese and sliced cornichons onto sourdough bread slathered with Dijon mustard and stuck the sandwiches into a panini press. Voila! Instant raclette in your hand. (And easily duplicated at home.)

Cheeses that stand alone

Posted on by Pat and David
[caption id="attachment_370" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Formaggio Kitchen, Cambridge, Mass."][/caption] Few foods so directly conjure up their origins as artisanal cheeses. Walking into Formaggio Kitchen in our home town is like taking a trip around the world. This is where we went for the Cabrales to serve with apples, and FK is our go-to vendor whenever we need something really special. Ishan Gurdal first opened a cheese monger’s shop here more than 30 years ago and built his own ripening caves in 1996. His cheeses are so special and so perfectly cared for that even Thomas Keller of the French Laundry orders from Ishan. Formaggio Kitchen has a second location in Boston’s South End, and also sells through its web site: Formaggio Kitchen.

Cabrales – why it’s good to get the blues

Posted on by Pat and David
We saw many more cows than sheep or even goats as we drove the twisting mountain roads through the Picos de Europa mountain range last spring. Although the Principality of Asturias is the oldest of Iberia’s former kingdoms, the steep green mountains looked more like Switzerland than Spain. Cows may have predominated, but milk from all three dairy animals goes into Cabrales, possibly the most pungent blue cheese in Europe. When we stopped for lunch in Las Arenas de Cabrales, we made sure we got the blues. The cheese is made by shepherds in the nearby hills, but Las Arenas (pop 797) is the market town. In Sidrería Calluenger (tel: 985-646-441), a hard-cider bar on Plaza Castaneu, we enjoyed a sumptuous lunch of stuffed red...Read More