Winnemere and a Dark ‘N’ Stormy

Sometimes really great eating happens by accident. You have some really good items of food, and maybe in the back of your head you know they would work well together, but sometimes it’s only after you’ve tasted the combination that you know you’ve hit it right on the head. At Cowgirl this week, we’ve been featuring Jasper Hill Farm’s Winnemere. I really love this farm, and this cheese is fantastic. It’s based on a somewhat similar style French cheese called Vacherin, but in Greensboro, Vermont, they wash the cheese with their own raspberry lambic beer and wrap it in strips of spruce bark. The inside turns to a delicious “paste” with spectacular flavors.

Tonight, I brought home the store’s last available piece until winter, and coincidently decided to make myself a Dark ‘n’ Stormy. We happen to have a particularly good Bermuda ginger beer right now, and so I wanted to take the box’s advice and make this interesting sounding drink. It consists of pouring a shot or so of dark rum (couldn’t afford Black Seal so I opted for Barcardi instead) over ice and filling the high ball glass to the top with ginger beer. They are both non-alcoholic, but unlike the more common ale, ginger beer is more smooth and has less of a burn. The combination of the cheese and the drink was really just right: the slight buzz from the washed cheese carried over to the crisp ginger flavor of the drink. I would say go out and buy these foods but the real message is to take risks and perhaps be rewarded!

A Paris Journal

Well I’m home. Bigger soda containers and even bigger automobiles. More culture shock reflections to come. Now, the first European post in retrospect. I’m going to try and hit the main places, though I may not go in order. Going to get my three disposable cameras developed soon.

As promised, here are my thoughts on Paris that I jotted down while I was there. I tried to get a “drawing” on each page. Almost. Sorry if you can’t read it, that’s my actual handwriting. Click to enlarge, more after the jump.

A Post About Prague Without Any Kafka

Well, just now I’ve finished uploading all of my pictures from Prague. For a lot of individual detail and local color, took at the pictures and their captions.

I found Prague to be a well-preserved and beautiful city full of interesting traditions. People were not mean, but tended to be insular, even more than in Rome. But they do love their beer. Czechs drink the most beer per capita: more than anywhere else. Pilsner Urquell is the main brand, and it’s made locally in nearby Pilzen. A half-liter glass is often the equivalent of three dollars or less. And indeed, the Czech republic has it’s own currency and language, but they remain a Central European nation in the EU.

Prague has many modern conveniences, like H&M. Sometimes it felt to me that since the Iron Curtain lifted in ‘89, the city has been rushing to catch up, sometimes awkwardly. But some older holdovers, like the expansive tram system, are extremely pleasant. Indeed, this place’s history, while very different, reminded me of Rome. Prague wasn’t built in a day, but whenever that was, it was a long time ago.

Prague is also the city of the Jewish golem, prominently featured in my favorite book. I could write a whole post on that, but suffice it to say that they have a large Jewish community and a haunting cemetary (pictured above). Walking around the sometimes snowy streets, below castles near discotheques, Prague tended to be very pleasant.

Now I’ve dispensed with the long sentences. The food was awesome. Local dishes like goulash fill entire rooms with their smell. This food is often hearty and delish. I especially like hermelin, (don’t bother googling “hermelin cheese,” you’ll just find my picture from flickr) a brie-like cheese that’s often fried. I also had plenty of hot drinks, like hot cherry juice and hot ginger. Yum. There’s pictures of all of this and more on my flickr.

Vermont Butter & Cheese’s Cultured Butter

Mitch Hedburg (1968-2005) had a joke about having a cameo in a movie with Peter Frampton. Not being familiar with Frampton’s music, Hedburg had to come up with something to say that would detract from that: “Hey Frampton! Do you like toast? Me too! It is warm and crispy and the perfect place for jelly to lay. Now go away, I ain’t got shit to say to you!”

Toast is the perfect place for jelly to lay, but even more perfect is butter. Butter is so essential to so many things that we cook and eat that it’s really easy to substitute and forget about. Last week I even made a risotto with my vegan roommate’s “buttery sticks” because it was all that we had. No loss, it turned out really well, but I can never help but wonder what really good butter would have done.

So this weekend, I took home some cultured butter made by Vermont Butter & Cheese Company. I cannot stop making toast. I’ve been hearing about it for months; the reputation of the product and the company are both really high in the cheese world. Owner Allison Hooper is also the founding member of the Vermont Cheese Council. And her butter is really delicious. It’s nutty and rich, and hits you with waves of melting umami. I’m really loving this butter.

photo courtesy of flickr user Lex in the City

Squash Blossom are Sexcellent

When I first read this post last week, I was interested but had honestly never heard of squash blossoms. So, fast forward a week or so and I’m at the Dupont Farmer’s Market today, and here’s six squash blossoms for $1.50. Hell, I’ll try anything for $1.50. They were beautiful, and the woman suggested making a light tempura out of them with a light beer or sparkling water, which I’m sure is good, but sounded a little off to me. Anyway, I continued to walk around and shop and I remembered the recipe on Amateur Gourmet. I really recommend Amateur Gourmet for recipes; he’s really adventurous, and writes in a really peculiar and amusing way that I can relate to: “This recipe is a composite of several recipes so I suppose you can say this is a recipe I created myself and if you said that I wouldn’t correct you.” I looked in the fridge when I got home and had everything except fresh chevrè (I know, the guy who works in the cheese store doesn’t have the right cheese) so I used my roommate’s ricotta, which was of the perfect consistency without the tartness the goat cheese would have had. Also, one of the commentators suggested using a chive to tie up the end of flower and that worked great, but it was a bit tricky to get them tied. All in all, the flavor was great and it smelled amazingly floral (big surprise, right?) while frying. Make this, but get a friend to help you with the prep.

Photo Tour of C’est Cheese

In downtown Santa Barbara, there’s this great little cheese store next to an Our Daily Bread called C’est Cheese. It’s a really nice neighborhood style store, with local art for sale on the walls and old-fashioned hardwood counters. It’s small, they definitely have under 100 cheeses, and some of them you can get at a Dean and Delucca type place, but they are all taken care of, and I’m sure taste as good as the few I tried. They have a small wine section with a paddle in front of it that says “Do Not Enter If You’re Not 21,” so I didn’t. They also have a small but nice selection of artisan chocolates, which Cowgirl could do for. Anyway, on with the tour. Click here for a better look at any of the pictures.

I was immediately jealous of their ability to have only a screen door and still be able to keep most of their cheeses out all day, unrefrigerated. As you can see, the front display is pretty cute.

As you can see, it’s a small store but they give you plenty of room to wander around and they still manage to tastefully display many artisan dried goods. We have a lot of them at cowgirl. Like the cheeses, some were cheaper, some were more expensive.

I really liked how they used the drawers in the display; it’s like being in someone’s kitchen.

A few things about this photo: They have almost my dream set up: Plenty of space, chef’s knives, butcher paper, price list.

This is really nice looking display, but I think it might be a little tough logistically. When I asked to try the reblochon, which was in the bottom right of this case, the lady helping me had to get up on a stool and lean in precariously, which didn’t look like too much fun.

It’s kind of blurry but I just thought that these little mice holding the signs on the fig and nut bread were too cute.

Here’s one final picture. They choose to keep their cheese wrapped all the way around, and it appears to really work for them here. One place I worked in the past wrapped every cheese, and since there was usually between 300 and 500 cheeses, that didn’t always go well. Here, I didn’t see any sweat or signs of suffocating cheese. The selection, while small, is really good and obviously shows a great deal of effort on the part of the owners to make sure every base is covered. I’d be happy to have this as my local store.