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Turkey Day Cheese Tray 2009

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We got fogged in, so it was just the 2 of us in the country. We started the Thanksgiving dinner with a cheese tray. It was a baaa… night = all sheep.

Old Chatham Nancy’s Hudson Vally Camembert. Mmm…creamy New York sheep cheese.. And good with the cranberry sauce (less sugar than most, but added some ruby red port for flavor). Sheep cheese is supposed to be the easiest to digest.

Ricotta Salata. First time for this one. “One of Italy’s most unusual and least understood sheep’s milk cheeses.” Regular ricotta without the curds. A beautiful white. Salty like a dry feta. In Italian, ricotta simply means “”recooked.”” It is a cheese-making process rather than a specific cheese. This ricotta is also a salata, or “”salted,”” cheese. Good.

Cordobes. “Made from Merina sheep’s milk, this semi hard cheese is made specially for Whole Foods Market” — not really much about this. We expected it to be more like manchego- not really, but also good.

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First Portuguese Cheese Gardunha

Cheese from Portugal

An unexpected surprised from a friend — cheese from Portugal. “Gardunha is a raw goat’s milk cheese from the Gardunha Mountain range of Portugal. This cheese has a great texture and flavor. The flavor is intense and rustic.”  I came in a package of 2, and the rind was damp and goaty — washed rind? Goes perfectly with fruit – we had pears. Also olive bread.

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Pineapple Sorbet doesn’t distract from Cheese

CW Cheeses 1029809 AT's house

We just had to try out the new Kitchenaid ice cream attachment. We made pineapple sorbet–mainly because the pineapple was right. And if you have a cheese course in the same meal as a rich ice cream, it’s a bit too much in one meal. Next time we try a cheese ice cream…

The Old Man Highlander was from Cowgirl Creamery, but the others from Calvert Woodley:

Campo de Montalban is a Spanish cheese made from a mixture of cow’s, sheep’s and goat’s milk. This cheese is made in the region of la Manga and looks very similar to Manchego in texture and appearance, both have light to dark, waxy herringbone rinds and light butter colored interiors. In fact Campo de Montalban was considered a Manchego until 1985.

Etorki is a hard cheese made in the French Basque region of the Pyrénées from the milk of black-headed sheep (sic.)

Pecorino is always a favorite from Italy.


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Untraditional Topped Flat Breads at PS7 with Cheese

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Started out at PS7 in D.C. (777 I ST NW; blocks from Chinatown metro) for happy hour. The bar is probably the quietest room in the restaurant, and they have good happy hour drink specials — and surprisingly appetizers that included crispy dough and cheeses:

Untraditional Topped Flat Breads:

Mad Chicken: Buffalo chicken, celery, carrot, blue cheese; (nice and spicy sauce).

Sundried & Roasted: Eggplant, pesto, sundried tomatoes, feta.

(The Artisan Cheese Selection with house made accompaniments included: Red Hawk, Cow, California; Midnight Moon, Goat,  Holland; Barely Buzzed, Cow, Utah; Cashel Blue, Cow, Ireland — but since they kept their red wine too cold, I assumed they treated cheese selections the same way.

I was there with K for a Balvenie’s single malt scotch whiskey tasting. The 21-year-old stuff was good, but I liked the feature the best: Available in very limited quantities, the new addition to The Balvenie 17 Year Old range is finished in casks that once held Madeira Wine.

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New Cheese Accessories

It was so nice to get a hostess gift on Columbus Day from the As.  We didn’t have a cheese tray this size, nor did we have the Oxo cheese slicer. (sturdy like other Oxo products; dishwasher safe; but you do need to have the cheese nice and cold — not eating temperature).

For Saturday night dinner, I decided buy everything at the Kensington Safeway, and they do have a fairly large grocery store cheese selection — there were some aged cheeses just sitting in the case for $22 a pound. I chose: Aloute Baby Brie, because I had a rebate up to $6.49 through the end of 2009. For a grocery store brie, it was fine tasting, but not particularly creamy — could much more see it as a baked brie rather than room temp on the cheese tray.

I also got  Stripey Jack–Five layers of cheese in one, giving a striking display of red and white layers of traditional regional English cheeses–just because I knew it would look pretty on the cheese tray. Red Leicester, Double Gloucester, white and yellow Cheddar and Lancashire. Last: Denmark’s finest blue cheese — crumbly and good for salad, but probably not the best cheese plate selection.

New Cheese Tray
New Cheese Tray
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Pizza for Columbus Day

The A’s were in town for Columbus Day, so we had to do Italian. One of the six pizzas: Spinacholi — spinach, broccoli, fresh mozzarella cheese. M has the crust down just right. All the veggies from the local farmer’s market, and the cheese (and prosciutto from the Cleveland Park Special Pizza — prosciutto, mushrooms, spinach, mozzarella) were from Vace’s. Turkish Coffee included a period of calm before craziness and another giraffe.

spinacholli-pizza-beforespinacholi-pizza-beginingspinacholi-pizza

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Old Man Highlander with Fresh Figs from NC

Figs n Cheese
Figs n Cheese

Old Man Highlander is a Gouda-style cheese produced in 8 lb wheels and naturally ripened for 6-9 months from Calkins Creamery, Honesdale, PA. I picked it up with a friend, KK, who had never been in Cowgirl Creamery DC. Nathan, our cheesemonger, could not have been nicer. KK loved the place, and I got my CounterCulture coffee, too, along with this cheese of the week (though still $24.55 a pound — KK didn’t know there was cheese that cost that much). But it was hard to say what I liked better — the cheese or the fresh figss WWT brought from North Carolina. They might be a bit better with a soft cheese like blue or brie, but, mmm… still very tasty — soft figs with a bit of hard cheese.

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Cheese at Dino’s

Dino First Course
Dino First Course

Buffalo mozzarello

Lots of cheese
Lots of cheese

Bartagnoli Pecorino Taula
milk: Italian sheep
Bartagnoli Pecorino Taula
milk: Italian sheep
Fontina Val D’Aosta Appennina
milk: Italian cow
Guffanti Asiago Vecchio
milk: Italian cow
Guffanti Gorgonzola Staglionato
milk: Italian cow
Guffanti Eborianato di Pecora con Milele
milk: Italian sheep

This is tonight’s selection of cheese from Dino, a local Italian restaurant.  They extended Restaurant Week until Sept. 13th.  Additionally, they had a “No Corkage Fee” tonight, plus they gave us limoncello at the end of dinner.  The service was great, being attentive though not annoying.