A Tour Around the Board with Madame Fromage - Part II
This past Sunday, I had the pleasure of taking the second class in under a week with the cheese world’s own Madame Fromage, aka Tenaya Darlington.
To celebrate her new book, Madame Fromage’s Adventures in Cheese, being published in September, Madame Fromage teamed up with Cheese Grotto to offer a pairings-centric class on American artisanal cheeses. If you’re unfamiliar (as I was, quite honestly), Cheese Grotto offers award-winning cheese storage in the form of, well, a grotto for your cheese. Every cheese ages once you bring it home from the store, so you might as well try aging it in a hand-crafted storage container that’s made locally in New York’s Catskill mountain region, that looks beautiful and interesting as all heck on your countertop!
Cheese Grotto was founded by a woman named Jessica Sennett, who spent eleven years as a cheesemonger traveling around the United States. The most common question she was asked is probably one that we have all asked on occasion, “How do I store this cheese?” Jessica wanted to give cheese lovers the chance to not only have a foolproof way to store cheeses, but also to do it in a manner that helps create a hand-in-hand experience with the cheese itself to watch it age day in and day out, and learn how to determine one’s own preference for ideal ripeness.
The three cheeses that Madame Fromage sampled and paired for us were included in Cheese Grotto’s monthly subscriptions for September. The idea was for anyone who has a Grotto to have been able to age them in the Grotto in time for the class so they’d reach peak ripeness by October 1. The three cheeses included were:
Marin French Cheese Petite Crème, 4oz: a triple-crème Brie, made in Marin, California
Jasper Hill Farm Cabot Clothbound Cheddar, 8oz: a crystalline cheddar wrapped in cloth and aged in open air in Vermont cheese cellars
Grey Barn Farm Prufrock, 8oz: a buttery washed-rind cheese made on Martha's Vineyard
And the recommended pairings:
Three Little Pigs Jambon Sec
Blake Hill Preserves Apricot with Orange & Honey
Mitica Valencia Almonds with Herbs
Firehook Multigrain & Flax Flatbread Crackers
As of yet, I do not own a Cheese Grotto and did not have time to sign up for their subscription before this class happened, but that sure wasn’t going to stop me! I went straight to my shop and picked up a hodgepodge of cheeses and pairings that I did my best to try and resemble Cheese Grotto and Tenaya’s list, but, dear reader, I am humbled to say that I could not find two of the three cheeses locally, and did my best with what was at hand for the pairings.
What I ended up with was as follows:
I successfully procured Cabot Clothbound from Jasper Hill Cellars
I swapped Marin French Cheese Petite Crème for a different triple crème (though produced on a different continent all together, oopsies) - Délice de Bourgogne
I nixed Prufrock because I’m not a huge fan - yet - of funky washed-rind cheeses
Jambon Sec - Did not have… I am a nearly lifelong vegetarian (though you’ll forgive me for routinely eating cheese made with non-vegetarian rennet)
Apricot preserves with Orange & Honey - I had on-hand dried apricots and honey, so I drizzled the honey over a pile of them on my board. Et voila.
Valencia almonds with herbs - I had a small tub of Marcona almonds and some leftover homemade pesto in the fridge, so I combined them and made do!
Firehook Multigrain & Flax Flatbread Crackers - these I did indeed have in my cupboard
Now for the good stuff… all about the cheese!
Marin French Cheese Petite Crème (Délice de Bourgogne for me)
A cheese that Tenaya describes as a “Netflix and chill cheese”, this beauty is made with milk sourced from within a 15-mile radius of the farm in Marin County, California, and after being aged to peak ripeness feels like a plush jelly donut from the outside.
Because I wasn’t able to get my hands on this particular wheel, I paired using Délice de Bourgogne, a dreamy, dense triple crème with such a high moisture content it practically dissolves into milky deliciousness after hitting your tongue.
Here’s something (or rather, a few somethings) really cool that I learned during this class. With any bloomy rind cheese, as the bloom forms it can sometimes grow a couple of inches tall - taller than the cheese wheel itself! So, an affineur (a caretaker of cheese as it ages) will pet the cheese as one pets a beloved furry friend in order to press the bloom down and form the cheese’s rind.
Another thing Tenaya shared about bloomy rind cheeses is that as the cheese’s rind starts to form streaks the color of golden straw, the cheese is letting you know that it’s reached its peak ripeness. If the rind begins to turn the color of dark sand or even brown, it may be getting up there in age and will pass its prime soon. I didn’t know this explicitly, but when I think about the bloomy rind wheels in the back of my fridge that I’ve forgotten all about and finally get around to eating when the rinds are equal parts white and mid-brown, it all makes sense now! Plus, as the cheese ages, most of the calcium nutrients migrate to the rind rather than the creamline or the paste, so eat those rinds, folks!
Now back to Délice. Madame Fromage encourages the class to try the three areas of the cheese individually, and then all together as one bite. As we go from interior to exterior (because cheese like this ripens from the inside out), the paste had the texture of the most decadent cream cheese you’ve ever had. It was thick and heavy and stuck to the insides of my mouth in the most intoxicating way. Moving one level out towards the creamline, it was so moist and silky it reminded me of a snowflake dissolving on my tongue the second it makes contact. And finally the rind, it gives this peppery finish that really lingers. I happily washed it down with a glass of smokey red wine from the Península de Setúbal in Portugal.
I thought the Délice went nicely with the Marcona almonds soaked in EVOO and basil pesto. The lemon note on the pesto’s finish and the slight spice from the Chilean olive oil helped the cheese finish beautifully, without overpowering its delicate milky and mushroomy notes. Plus, pairing this cheese with the honey-drizzled apricot does help mellow the rind without burying it.
Cabot Clothbound aged in the Cellars at Jasper Hill
I tasted Cabot Clothbound for the first time just a couple weeks ago when my shop received a shipment. I was enamored with its fudgy texture, its subtle acidity, and its nicely balanced nuttiness with a slightly brothy undertone. I was happy for the chance to explore this cheese more with Madame Fromage and Cheese Grotto, and boy did it deliver beyond my expectations!
Tenaya began this lesson by explaining that there are two types of cheddar. There’s block cheddar that’s shrink-wrapped after forming and isn’t given the chance to develop a rind as it ages. This is how most commodity cheddars are produced. And on the other artisanal hand, there are cheddars that are formed, wrapped in cheesecloth, then smeared with a fat such as lard in order to attract beneficial bacteria. As the cheese ages in a cave or cellar, these bacteria work their flavorful, aromatic magic to create complex and spectacular cheeses such as our very own Cabot Clothbound. As Madame says, “a great cheddar should break apart like a scone.” As a lover of both pastries and cheese, this sounds like the perfect combination to me.
The recommended pairing for Cabot Clothbound was the Valencia almonds with herbs, but I subbed them with some DIY Marcona almonds soaked in EVOO and basil pesto. I tried it with one of the almonds, but the nuances of the cheese were a little stifled under the almond flavor. Still, the earthiness of the oil, basil, and the pine nuts in the pesto matched the earthy, grassy notes in the cheese, so it wasn’t a total loss of the pairing combination.
I tried Cabot Clothbound next with a piece of Medjool date, and that definitely wasn’t a winner for me. Though both had rich, fudgy textures, the sweet, velvety flavor of the date wasn’t complementing or contrasting the sweet, grassy and moderately acidic flavors of the cheddar. After cleansing my palate with a large swig of wine, I tried the cheddar and dried apricot drizzled with honey, and that did not disappoint! Madame Fromage explained one of the core tenants of all pairings: acid likes acid. There was a slight acidity in the dried apricot that didn’t either overpower or cower before the acidity of Cabot Clothbound. Very cool! Tenaya mentioned that even salt and vinegar potato chips would work nicely.
What are some of your go-to pairings, or the most out-of-the-box pairings you’ve ever tried? Leaves comment or DM me on Instagram!
