More on the Oregon cheese scene

The main - and pretty well only - frustration about my recent trip to Oregon was not managing to get down to the Rogue Creamery, which makes one of America's best blue cheeses. (Though I did at least manage to taste some)

However I came across some other great cheeses including this beautiful looking ash coated goats' cheese called Sunset Bay from Rivers Edge. As you can see it has a line of smoked pimenton through the middle which didn't greatly affect the taste but made it look very exotic. And it had a wonderfully silky texture.

It was served rather beautifully by John D'Anna of Cristom winery on a marble slab with two other local cheeses: Adelle (bottom left) a rich bloomy rinded cow and sheeps' cheese from Ancient Heritage Dairy and Boerenkaas, a hard Dutch-style cheese from the Willamette Valley Dairy (top left). The fourth cheese - improbably - was English Yarg.


I was also gutted to be missing what looks like the ultimate cheese dinner - a collaboration between Quady North, the Oregon winery Anne Amie, Rogue and Tim Keller of the Carriage House at the Nunan Estate in Jacksonville. Here's the menu (just to make you equally green . . .):

Amuse
Vella Asiago "Taffy"
Chamomile Pollen - Grapes - Raw Almonds & Black Pepper
Quady Winery Palomino Fino

Appetizer
Rogue Creamery Lavender Cheddar Cherry Apple Pizzetta
2009 Anne Amie Pinot Gris

Rogue Creamery Touvelle Cheese & Mushroom "Omelet" with Pommes Frits
2009 Annie Amie Riesling

First Course
Cypress Grove Purple Haze Chevre - Plain Curl of Chevre with Flower
2007 Anne Amie Prisme

Shaved Pholia Farm Hillis Peak & Duck Carpaccio - Pearl Onion - White Bean -Truffle Oil
2007 Anne Amie Pinot Noir

Second Course
Rogue Creamery Chocolate Stout - Mocha Poached Salmon with Grilled Corn & Cheese Risotto Cake
2007 Quady North 4-2 A Syrah

Grains of Paradise Crusted Lamb & Rogue Creamery Raw Milk Sharp Cheddar Tartlet
2006 Quady North Flagship Syrah

Main
Fiscalini San Joaquin Gold Stuffed Filet Mignon with Smoked Blueberries - Allspice Foam
2008 Quady North Cabernet Franc

Dessert
Rogue Creamery Caveman Blue Lemon Meringue Tart (Sounds totally wild! I can't imagine what this would taste like)
2009 Anne Amie Muller Thurgau

Rogue Creamery Oregonzola Plum Sponge Cake - Orange, Vanilla & Chocolate Covered Sunflower Seeds
2007 Quady Winery Elysium

It apparently takes place on August 19th.

A great way to make a cheese salad

I've been in the Pacific NW (aka Oregon and Washington State) for the past 10 days, hence the absence of posts but I've come across a lot of good cheese dishes. Not least this salad at a restaurant called Farm to Fork in Dundee.

What's clever about it is that it's basically a reconstructed round lettuce - or butter lettuce as they call them over there - picked apart, washed and put back into a lettuce shape. There were also fine shavings of red onion, roasted pumpkin seeds, a light buttermilk and blue cheese dressing and - best of all - a snowfall of blue cheese flakes, apparently from a piece of cheese that can been frozen and grated on a Microplane. It looked and tasted great.

I came across a similar one at a really good bistro called Le Pigeon in Portland. Not sure who's copying who.

Tilly: a rare British goats' cheese

The great thing about genuinely artisanal cheese - like 'natural' wine - is that it's finite. It may be a small experimental batch or only made at a particular time of year. When it's gone it's gone. So it was good to try this rare cheese from Mary Holbrook at the Bristol Food & Wine Fair from my friends at Trethowan's Dairy.

It's called Tilly after a field on her Somerset Farm and is an unwashed version of the unpasteurised goats cheese Cardo I was raving about last summer which is set using an extract of cardoon thistle rather than rennet.

I can't say I like it quite as much. Cardo has a particularly sumptuous silky texture but it's a delicious cheese by any standard - delicate yet intensely flavoured and not obviously 'goaty' at all.

Jess of Trethowan's Dairy says they simply can't get enough of it. "When we have a big do we have to save up our quota".

So we nibbled it extra slowly (with some dry Montlouis) and look forward - hopefully - to tasting it again next year.

On Sunday I'm off to Washington State and Oregon for 10 days so am hoping for a taste of the famous Rogue River Blue! It might be a couple of weeks till the next post though . . .

Gnocchi alla Romana

Despite the fact that I've been taught a couple of times how to make gnocchi I've never managed to master it - or at least not to achieve the featherlight consistency that makes it such a delicious thing to eat.

However when I was casting around for recipes for students recently I remembered this easy-to-make Roman version which is really surprisingly delicious. The thing to remember is to get the gnocchi mixture completely cold before you start trying to stamp it out.

And yes, for those of you might feel inclined to remind me, following my blogpost the other day, that it contains both eggs and cheese, I accept that it does. But the crucial thing is that it doesn't taste like it ;-).

Serves 4-6

600ml whole milk (i.e. not semi-skimmed)
150g fine semolina (spotted in Waitrose the other day. Also in Italian delis and some Asian shops)
2 medium eggs or 2 large egg yolks
75g parmesan or Grana Padano cheese
A good slice of butter
Salt, pepper and nutmeg

Pour the milk into a heavy saucepan and season with salt, pepper and nutmeg. Bring to the boil then lower the heat and shake over the semolina gradually, stirring vigorously as you so so. Replace the pan over the heat and stir until the semolina is thick enough to stand a spoon in. Cool for a few minutes then beat in the eggs and three quarters of the cheese. Spread the semolina into a rectangle about 1 cm deep over a wetted baking sheet and leave to get completely cold and firm .(A couple of hours at least. I didn't leave it quite long enough so it was still slightly soft when I started to cut it up.)

Heat the oven to 200°C/Gas 6. Thickly butter a baking dish. Stamp out circles from the semolina with a scone cutter or the rim of a wine glass and arrange them overlapping in the dish, tucking the offcuts underneath and down the sides. (Or simply cut it into squares and arrange them in the dish).

Melt the butter and pour over the gnocchi then sprinkle generously with the remaining parmesan. Bake the gnocchi for about 20-25 minutes until the top is nicely browned. Serve with a simple tomato sauce and/or a salad.

Real Danish Blue

Having spent 3 days in Copenhagen this week I've got a totally different perspective on Danish cheese, which is sadly represented in this country by industrialised Danish Blue and Samsoe. I'll be writing more about their fabulous soft cheeses which are often smoked or blended with herbs but it was good to come across a real organic Danish Blue at a small organic cheese shop off the Kultorvet called Osten ved Kultorvet which is run by a guy called Mikael Hendrikson aka 'Mikael the Cheese' (below).


It was called CumuluBlu and was much less harsh and fresher in flavour than the Danish Blues we get here, more like a creamy, slightly less salty Roquefort

There's another good cheese shop called Ostehjørnet at 56 Kongensgade with a beautifully displayed selection of international cheeses where we tried an award-winning semi-hard Gouda-style cheese called VesterHavsost from the Thise Dairy in Jutland.


We don't get this level of Scandinavian cheeses in England, unfortunately but if you're going to Copenhagen seek them out.

Do eggs go with cheese?

When you're working on a recipe book - as I am at the moment - you have to think not only 'would I actually make this' but 'would the people who are (hopefully) going to buy it?' And it's a tricky one when it comes to eggs and cheese.

Of course you couldn't make a cheese soufflé without both but even then not everyone likes the idea of hot cheesy foam, my husband included. And I don't really like cheese omelettes that much, still less that classic retro dish of eggs mornay - eggs in a cheese sauce (although a bit of spinach helps)

It does of course depend on the cheese. Parmesan is pretty good with eggs - much better than Cheddar which tends to separate and go fatty when inserted in an omelette (I shudder even to think about it). It also helps to have another ingredient in the dish like onions, potatoes or courgettes as in a frittata though even then I'm not that keen.

Or wasn't until I came across a near perfect cheesy egg dish the other night at a restaurant called Riverstation in Bristol: a cauliflower and smoked mozzarella frittata, about as unlikely a combination as you could imagine and which I had to order out of sheer curiosity. It was really delicious - though admittedly it doesn't look much from the rather blurry image above.

Smoking mozarella not only gives it a more interesting flavour but a firmer texture which really worked well in the frittata alongside the lightly cooked cauliflower. The accompanying roast cherry tomatoes which had been drizzled with balsamic vinegar provided an interesting sweet-sour contrast as did some bitter rocket leaves.

I checked out the recently published Flavour Thesaurus, my current bedtime reading, to see what author Niki Segnit had to say about eggs and cheese and she didn't even mention them as a combination which suggests its not just me who feels this way. What about you? Do you use the two together and if so how?

PS Writing this I realise I'm perfectly OK with quiche. Must be the pastry - and the cream!

Caciocavallo: an Italian cheese discovery

One of the unexpected bonuses of attending the chefs' conference Identita earlier this week was the artisanal food stalls which had some really great cheeses and salumi.

There was some pretty impressive aged Grana Padano, the less feted cousin of Parmigiano Reggiano (aka Parmesan) but the one that really stood out for me was this gourd-shaped Caciocavallo from Puglia (I think) though I've discovered from Juliet Harbutt's World Cheese Book, which I'll be reviewing shortly, that this type of pasta filata (stretched curd) cheese is made all over southern Italy. Some like Caciocavallo Silano have their own PDO - actually that may be the only one - and like other cheeses there are younger and older versions.

This was 24 months old and wonderfully rich, nutty and crumbly, the sort of cheese you could nibble at the end of a meal with a good red wine.

The Grana Padano crew were also showing off different aged cheeses with accompanying wines, a session I unfortunately missed. They paired the 12 month old with a 2007 Valpolicella Ripasso, the 18 month old with a 2006 Chianti Classico Riserva and a Salice Salentino Riserva and the 27 month with a 2005 Amarone, which I can imagine would have worked well. (This type of hard, grainy cheese is one of the few that reliably goes with red wine, particularly aged Italian reds)

BTW if you're interested in Caciocavallo there's a very interesting article on how it differs from Provolone on about.com here.