Consider the Sheep: La Serena

Cheeses at their best:  What we’re especially loving right now

by Grace Mitchell

La Serena

Should you find yourself in search of an oozing, sheepy, expand-across-your-plate wedge of cheese, do take pause!  You needn’t look any further, for La Serena, a raw sheep’s milk cheese from Spain, quite nicely fits the bill.  Deep in the hinterlands of the southwestern province of Extremadura, a man and his son craft from the milk of their 2,000 Merino sheep these unusual wheels of cheese.  As are many traditional Iberian cheeses, La Serena is coagulated by enzymes found in the thistle plant, which lends a tangy, floral character to the goat and sheep milk cheeses made in this manner (most cheesemaking involves coagulation by enzymes derived from the stomach lining of unweaned cows, sheep, or goats).

This floral morsel doesn’t get any better than it tastes right now.  The confluence of Spain’s humidity this time of year and the fatty winter sheep milk yields wheels of La Serena that are at once perfectly voluptuous, delicate, tangy, and vegetal.  These days, the contents of these three-pound lace-bound wheels cavalierly slides like creamy lava within the rind, begging you to—please!—do as the Spanish do:  gently slice off the top of the wheel, and dive in with pieces crusty bread and chunks of chorizo in fondue-like fashion.

We can’t resist sharing our excitement over this sheepy goodness!  To round out your cheese plate with wedges of wheels that we’re also finding especially superlative in this moment, we recommend you to have a taste of the spicy, cakey, goaty Spanish Monte Enebro, and the milky, creamy, subtle Bavarian Blue.

I Just Can’t Wait to be King (of Cheeses)

by
Miriam Arkin

Here at Murray’s we find that the coming of fall (heralding all the delicious things that can be pulled from the ground, cut from the vine, and thrown into a pot) is the perfect time to pay homage to a bounteous cheese, Parmigiano-Reggiano.  We’ve stacked big golden wheels all over the store, and even split a few open—all the better to see how the two-inch thick rind gives way to a perfectly grainy texture.  But don’t be too quick to look beyond the rind!  It too has become an Italian staple, used to flavor soups and stews, and given to infants as what must be the world’s best teething companion.  Italians produce about 3 million wheels of Parmigiano annually, of which only 16% is exported abroad.  Interestingly, whether it is consumed domestically or exported, every single wheel of Parmigiano is inspected for quality by a member of an organization whose very existence seems like an ornate American fantasy—the Consorzio Parmigiano-Reggiano, whose responsibility it is to test and grade every single wheel of Parmigiano made in Italy.  Why care?  At the heart of the Consorzio are its inspectors, masters of cheese whose wise judgments guarantee quality even as production of Parmigiano increases every year.

Parmigiano-Reggiano is made on farms in the provinces of Parma, Reggio Emilia, Modena, Bologna left of the river Reno and Mantua right of the river Po.  Cheesemaking follows a careful pattern: the evening’s milking is set aside overnight, allowing the cream to rise.  The following morning, the cream is skimmed off the top, and the skimmed milk is then combined with that morning’s whole milk in bell-shaped copper cauldrons.  The milk is heated and rennet is added to curdle the milk.  After a few minutes, the fresh curd cut with a long bladed tool called spino into rice sized grains.  It is then heated again, allowed to cool, and removed from the copper vat with a cheese cloth, yielding about two wheels worth of cheese.  Once these wheels have spent 25 days in a salt water bath, they are set in special temperature and humidity controlled rooms where they age for at least 12 months.

After a year of aging, the Consorzio steps in, sending inspectors out to test every single wheel.  This is a feat in and of itself, but more fascinating still is how the inspections are carried out.  Instead of using a cheese iron (the long tubular beak used to reach the middle of cheeses) to take samples, the inspectors use them to gently tap along the exterior of the cheese.  They are able to listen for sounds that indicate cracks, voids, or other undesirable faults in the cheese.  That’s right, listen for them.  Based on their determinations, the 80lb wheels of cheese are seared with one of two large and clearly defined oval brands—”Parmigiano-Reggiano“ for top quality cheese that can continue aging, and “Parmigiano-Reggiano Mezzano” for lesser quality cheese that should be consumed young.  These lesser wheels are further branded with broad parallel lines, making it impossible to sell them as their worthier cousins.  If a wheel doesn’t meet the requirements to be called Parmigiano-Reggiano the smaller dotted inscription applied at the time the cheese was made is scraped entirely off the cheese, so it cannot be sold as the real thing.  After 18 months of aging, cheesemakers can have a Consorzio inspector come back to determine whether cheese can be further categorized as “export” or “extra” quality.  Export quality gets shipped around the world, extra quality is set aside to age for longer than the traditional 24 months, producing a dryer and more intense cheese.

We’ll be celebrating this auditory genius all month, and we’ve got enough wheels of export quality Parmigiano to circle the store, so please do come in for a taste.