by
Nick Tranchina

While we love all things local, “local” in
Manhattan
generally means “from somewhere in the northeastern

United States,” which is, sadly, unavoidable, as Manhattan is not exactly
dotted with small farms and dairies (at least not recently). 
And even when something is produced in New York City, it is
generally from one of the outer boroughs. 
Thus, I get excited when presented with a product that is actually
crafted right here in Manhattan.

Milano’s

“Suino d’Oro” salumi is the handiwork of salumi expert Charles Ventre and The
London Meat Company, and is handcrafted right in the center of
Manhattan’s Meat Packing District (the eponymous “Golden
Pig” stands proudly on the label). 
This alone is notable, as a visitor to this neighborhood could easily miss the
very few meat packers still left amongst the ever-growing number of fashionable
clothing boutiques that now dominate the landscape. 

However,
what really sets Milano’s apart is the quality of the salumi themselves. 
I could say a lot about the quality of the raw ingredients they use –
100% duroc pork sourced from a single farm in Iowa, and spices imported
from Italy and Spain – but what
really makes one salumi better than another is the skill, passion and

palate of the craftsman. 
The ability to tell whether something tastes the way you want it to taste
is paramount, and the drive to put in all the work it takes to get there is no
less essential.  But perhaps these
skills are at least partly ingrained: Charlie’s family has been making salumi in
Italy for almost 400
years,
and his grandfather started making salumi in Brooklyn back in the early 1900’s. 
Back then they used to slaughter the pigs right in the back room of their
shop on Union St. 

Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your point of view),
on-premise pig slaughter is a thing of the past, but the point is that Charlie,
and therefore,Milano’s has the benefit of hundreds of years of accumulated
salumi experience. 

Though
I could ramble on, the tastes of the products really speak for themselves. 
The first thing I notice when I eat them is the clarity of the pork
flavor.  Though there are a number of
different spices used in the salumi, none of them mask or overwhelm the
excellent flavor of duroc pig meat. 
The sopressata and dry sausages are both extremely versatile. 

They can be eaten with eggs for a energizing breakfast, sliced onto a
sandwich for lunch, chopped up and mixed into sauces at dinner time, or simply
noshed on over the course of the day with or without a glass of wine in hand.
 The pancetta actually fries up into a
stellar bacon, and the lardo makes an addictive butter substitute when sliced
thin and laid onto slices of warm bread. 
Of course, the guanciale is a must for fans of bucatini all’amatriciana.

Now,
while my idea of a great afternoon is to stand around and eat my way through 8
different kinds of salumi, you may feel have the understandable need to spread
your consumption out over a longer period of time. 
Thankfully, all the Milano’s product will easily stay great over the
course of a number of weeks.  You can
buy them all now, or buy one, see how
awesome it is, and then buy the rest.

Click here to see our line of Milano’s products 

Pass The Dutchie (on the Left Hand Side)

by
Michael J Anderson, Affineur

Gouda
. It’s a member of that elite group of cheeses that has transcended its
humble farmhouse origins and entered our collective cheese unconscious, with the
likes of Cheddar, Parmesan and Brie. Historically speaking, proper Gouda
(capital G) is a cow’s milk cheese from Holland, aged from anywhere between
several weeks and, in some cases, upwards of five years. The real deal can be
one of the most rewarding and economical cheeses you can buy: addictively
crunchy, with a butterscotchy, burnt sugar-y flavor that lingers for days – and
it only very rarely sells for more than $18 per pound. Unfortunately, more often
than not, what today passes as gouda (lowercase g) is an insipid, gummy, wan,
plastic-y affront to cheesedom.

So, what should you be looking for when you’re in the market for seriously
delicious Gouda
? Some guidelines:

• Real Gouda is from Holland. You’ll see goudas &
  gouda-style cheeses from Belgium, Germany, the United States and elsewhere,
  but the best are Dutch (with a few notable exceptions – Penterman Farm’s
  Marieke Gouda
  , from Wisconsin, is one of the few real contenders).
• Real Gouda is a wheel, not a log. The size of wheels
  may vary between 10 and 25 pounds, but you should always see the
  characteristic flattish-round ‘Gouda shape’ – the result of using a Dutch
  cheese press. Any cylinder or circular slice of cheese passing itself off as
  Gouda is likely ‘processed cheese,’ (i.e. not actually food), and probably
  squirted out of a tube. It can’t hurt to check the ingredients, either:
  milk, salt, culture, rennet, and annatto are all you should see.
• The best Gouda
  is never smoked or flavored. Some gouda
  flavorings have been around for quite some time, and have quite a bit of
  tradition supporting them – cumin or mustard seeds, for instance. Some are
  much more spurious, if not downright ridiculous – Italian herbs, black
  truffles, potato chips (!). More often than not, smoking or flavoring is
  used to gussy up an otherwise boring, uninspiring cheese. Again, there are
  exceptions, but I’d generally steer clear.
• All other things being equal, farmstead is the way to go.
  The Dutch factory cheese system is actually one of the best in Europe, and
  accounts for the generally high quality, consistency, and affordability of
  fine Gouda. But seek out Boerenkaas – ‘farm cheese’ – for a raw milk
  version. Latent enzymes in unpasteurized milk account for a greater depth of
  flavor, especially as the cheese ages over a period of months and years.
• Older is not always better. It’s really a matter of
  personal preference, but as a Gouda approaches, say, five years of age, it
  tends to develop more burnt, bitter characteristics. For me, two to three
  years is where most Goudas peak – your mileage may vary.
• And finally, some of the best aged Goudas are not technically
  Goudas at all. What? Well, it has to do with fat content, actually.
  Most aged Gouda
  -style cheeses from Holland are in fact ‘Proosdij Kaas’ or ‘Proosdy,’
  a variant that’s slightly lower in fat. Why? If you’ll permit me, I think it
  may be time for a…

*NERD ALERT*
Flavor development in aged Gouda-style cheeses comes from two main sources:
protein breakdown and citrate metabolism. In very general terms, the protein
breakdown accounts for the gradual ‘browning’ of the cheese, the crystalline
crunch, and the sweet caramelly flavors of a well-aged cheese. Citrate
metabolism results in the production of diacetyl, a characteristically ‘buttery’
aroma compound. A third factor is fat – flavors typical of lipid breakdown tend
to be more peppery and astringent. If the fat breakdown over time isn’t balanced
by the protein breakdown, free fatty acids can cause unpleasant sharp, burning
sensations in the mouth, instead of recombining into pleasant flavor & aroma
compounds. Just a 3% reduction in fat in the milk used for Proosdy as opposed to
true Gouda helps keep these factors in a more pleasing balance in longer-aged
cheeses. (And since I’ve got you here in Cheese Dork Corner, I should probably
also mention curd washing. This is a process undertaken during cheesemaking,
used for Gouda, Edam, Havarti, Colby, and similar cheeses, wherein the cut curds
are rinsed with warm water. This has the effect of removing dissolved minerals,
milk sugars, and whey proteins on the surface of the curds, resulting in a more
bendy, pliable, ‘close’ texture in young cheese, that develops into a
hard-candy-like consistency in aged specimens.)
*END NERD ALERT*

The point of all this, really, is just to make you aware of what makes real
Gouda
so special, and hopefully give you a context for its undeniable worldwide
fame. It’s a cheese that, for whatever reason, rarely seems to elicit the same
kind of rhapsodic contemplation as its cheesy peers – Parmigiano-Reggiano, for
instance. But there’s just as much virtue in seeking out the original Dutch
masterpiece as there is in finding a real English clothbound Cheddar, or a bona
fide Brie de Meaux. And just as much reward.

EPILOGUE: PRONUNCIATION
This is one you can really be a jerk about, if you’re into that. The technically
correct Dutch pronunciation is a very guttural G, with an ‘ow’ vowel sound -
‘HHHHHOW-duh.’ Where I’m from, we speak Standard American English, so I’ve been
saying ‘GOO-duh’ my whole life – a habit that’s turned out to be hard to break.
A compromise retains the ‘ow’ in the middle, but dispenses with the phlegm-y
initial consonant in favor of the more comfortable (to American tongues) hard G:
‘GOW-duh.’ Your cheesemonger should understand you no matter where you fall on
the pronunciation spectrum, though.