Every two years, Slow Food’s hometown of Bra, Italy, in the region of Piemonte, holds its annual cheese festival, and purveyors and buyers of fine cheese flock from all over Europe to come and taste and buy. Back in ’99, I got a call from a friend asking me if I’d like to come and teach some classes there on American farmhouse cheeses. I said yes and they put me up in a charming apartment in the old town for a week. There, I got to know the wonderful staff of Slow Food, and especially the visionary founder Carlo Petrini.
Two years later, I was out for a morning run in downtown Manhattan where I live and work when the planes struck the towers and I watched as the terrible events unfolded from a few blocks away. When it was clear the hospital in my neighborhood was not going to see much action, and did not need my help, I flew to Italy to help in the first-ever American cheese booth. The day of the opening ceremonies the few of us who’d made the trip over were sitting in the front row of the town square as the officials gave their opening ceremony speeches. We were introduced in Italian and when we turned around we saw the crowd of a thousand standing and giving us an ovation simply because we were the Americans and had the world on our side. The greatest tragedy of the decade is that this intense feeling of goodwill did not survive.
Since the Wall Street Journal presented our dispatch from the festival — our top 5 cheese picks (and trust me – you don’t want to miss ’em) — I instead present my top 5 moments from Cheese:
-Visiting with Carlo Petrini, who bought us a lunch of tasty bombette, little pork snacks from Puglia and arranged for us to visit the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Pollenzo.
-Catching up with old friends Zoltan Bogathy, who opened Culinaris in Budapest many years ago; Mama Gisella, my self-proclaimed Italian Mamma, who took me around Italy when I knew no one and knew little about Italian cheese.
-Seeing Murray’s alums Zoe at Jasper Hill and Tom and Staci at Rogue Creamery in Oregon, and the founding mothers of cheese like Allison Hooper and Mary Keehne.
-Eating Favorites: the fabulous vitello tonnato at Floris in Turin; the Nebbiolo Risotto at Agrifoglio, also in Turin; the delicious gianduja gelato at Riverno; and the feast celebrating the american cheesemakers at the fabulous Ca’ del Re at Castello di Verduno, where we’d had such a memorable meal six years earlier.
-The American Cheese booth! We were there with Vermont Butter and Cheese Creamery, Cypress Grove, Rogue Creamery, the Cellars at Jasper Hill, Uplands Cheese Co. and Cowgirl Creamery.
Aaron Foster works in the Buying Department at Murray’s Cheese and is always on the hunt for the next delicious experience to share with our customers. This year Aaron attended the American Cheese Society conference to learn about what it takes to make the nation’s best cheese, and to taste a few dozen himself.
As a first-time American Cheese Society Conference attendee, I honestly didn’t know what to expect. I’ve worked in cheese for over 9 years, but somehow I’d never actually made it to the main event. The conference is a moving target, one year in Louisville, another in Chicago, the next in Seattle, and so on. Having resolved to finally attend, as a representative of Murray’s Cheese, I lucked out with this year’s destination: Montreal. Now, I hear you say… isn’t it called the American Cheese Society? Indeed, it is. This is the first year that the conference was held outside of the continental US. I’m guessing Canada gets a pass because of a parenthetical “north”, as in (North) American Cheese Society.
Harbison aging in the Cellars at Jasper Hill
In any case, I was excited to travel to Montreal to meet some of the great minds of our industry, and to introduce myself to the cheese luminaries whose books I read and whose names have been synonymous with American dairy since before I was born. I arrived in Montreal late in the evening on my birthday, August 3rd, and joined the crew from the Cellars at Jasper Hill for dinner. Part of what is so amazing about the conference is that it pools together cheesemakers, retailers, distributors and enthusiasts, to share their views and insights with one another. Dining with the cheesemakers from the Cellars, I was able to explain how their cheeses are received by actual people, customers who buy Bayley Hazen Blue or Cabot Clothbound Cheddar from our cheese counter. It’s almost silly to imagine, but cheesemakers rarely interact with the people who are eating their cheese most of the time. On the flip side, we as retailers and cheese consumers often don’t fully understand the challenges and work that happens at the farm.
The American Cheese Society conference is made up primarily of lectures, seminars and panel discussions which happen throughout the day. Some are very technical, geared towards cheesemaking minutiae. Others are historical or cultural, say – the history of monastic cheese in the US. And still others concern themselves with issues of regulation and safety. As a retailer and a diehard cheese-lover, I made sure to attend as many different seminars as possible.
I started with a lecture on starter cultures… the beneficial microorganisms added early in the cheesemaking process to help acidify the milk and develop flavor in the cheese. Suffice it to say the bulk of this talk was way over my head, but I took away two points – that cheesemaking is usually more science than art, and that even small variations or inconsistencies can make for wild variations in the end product. Cheesemakers need to keep extraordinarily detailed records of their process, and need to replicate that process to the T; a make at 92 degrees F might yield a cheese with perfect texture and depth of flavor, whereas a make at 88 F could result in a cheese that’s barely recognizable. I don’t envy cheesemakers – that’s a pretty narrow margin for error.
I attended another talk on food safety from farm to fork. From a food safety perspective, cheese is a relatively safe, although perishable, product. But from cow to cheese vat to aging room to distributor to wholesaler to retailer to consumer, a given piece of cheese passes through many hands. We all have a duty to take every precaution to ensure the safety and preserve the quality of the cheese.
My next seminar was a tasting workshop, on identifying flavor in cheese. It’s not as easy as you think! We practiced by tasting candy while holding our nose. What tasted only sour and sweet with our noses pinched was actually a very strong mint once we could smell again. This exercise was meant to demonstrate how much taste is actually a function of smell. We also smelled covered containers of six different scents, and had to guess what they were. I got three out of six (butter cookies, black pepper, onion powder), but missed a gimme like sauteed mushrooms. The point is that we unwittingly depend on visual cues to help categorize what we’re smelling and tasting, and to be more conscious of this when evaluating flavor in cheese.
Aaron Foster with Sister Noella, “The Cheese Nun”
But the best talk I attended was on the microbiology of cheese rinds, called Growing Mold Gracefully. Led by cheese rockstar Sister Noella Marcellino of Connecticut’s Abbey of Regina Laudis and Harvard microbiologist Rachel Dutton, the panel treated the diversity and complexity of micro-biomes in cheese rinds. The rind of a cheese is an exceedingly complex conglomeration on molds and bacteria that exist in a delicate and unique symbiosis. Every cheese in every batch is different; and while cultures may be added to guide rind development, Rachel and Sister Noella agree that the influence of indigenous microrganisms is far more important. Rachel is using state of the art gene sequencing techniques to develop a taxonomy of organisms found in cheese rinds. She has already discovered that cheese rinds exhibit some species that have also been found in Arctic sea ice, Norwegian fjords, and Etruscan tombs!
The conference ends, as always, with a tense announcement of the winners of the cheese contest, punctuated by the Best in Show award. This year, there were 1,676 entries across 99 different cheese categories. I certainly don’t envy the judges for their tasting duties… the judge who tasted the least amount of cheese still tasted nearly 100 varieties. This year, Rogue River Blue from Rogue Creamery in Central Point, Oregon took Best in Show. A lovely leaf-wrapped, raw milk blue, this seasonal beaut of a cheese will be available from Murray’s in a few short weeks. And finally, comes the Festival of Cheese – the attendees’ opportunity to taste the myriad entries, and to get a true lay of the land for the American cheese industry. I probably made it through 50 different cheeses before giving up… perhaps I’m not quite fit to be a judge yet.
All in all, the American Cheese Society conference was a fascinating and rewarding experience, enormously valuable to cheese professionals and enthusiasts alike. I won’t miss another one any time soon.
Stephanie Butler was the grand prize winner of our Facebook contest for a trip to Vermont to attend the VT Cheesemakers Festival. She was gracious enough to contribute this blog post about her experience on the trip. Thank you, Stephanie – we’re glad you had such a great time!
If you’ve never eaten a half-pound of cheese on a tour bus in a McDonald’s parking lot in Nowheresville, Massachusetts, then obviously you’ve never gone on a trip with the Murray’s Cheese crew. I was lucky enough to win two tickets to the Vermont Whey-cation, and my boyfriend and I spent a whirlwind 40 hours tasting cheese, smelling cheese – by Sunday night I think we were even exuding the stuff through our pores.
Aging facility at Spring Brook Farm
Our trip started with a tour of Spring Brook Farm’s Cheese House. Lead cheese maker Jeremy Stephenson took the time to guide us through each aspect of the 18-month-long process it takes to create one wheel of their tasty Tarentaise. Their cheese caves were something to see: twelve rows of wooden shelves with hundreds of cheeses waiting their turn to be washed and rotated. After the tour we got some time to sightsee around the beautiful grounds, where I met and fell in love with a sweet Jersey named Daisy.
Stephanie at the farm!
On to dinner at Bluebird Tavern, where we were treated to a feast of Vermont’s finest foods. Allison Hooper, the founder of the Vermont Butter and Cheese Creamery, joined us for the meal, where each dish included one of her cheeses as an ingredient. My favorite had to be the whole roast pig on grilled bread with baked goat cheese and pickled blueberries, but the heirloom tomatoes with basil and mascarpone were certainly a close second. I washed everything down with pints of Hill Farmstead Brewery’s Edward, an American Pale Ale I can’t wait to try to track down here in Brooklyn. Add some banana pudding with whipped goat cheese in individual jelly jars for dessert, and I slept that night like a bump on a Vermont log.
Approaching Shelbourne Farm
We awoke the next morning eager to truck off to our ultimate destination: the Vermont Cheesemakers’ Festival at Shelburne Farms. I expected the festival grounds to be gorgeous (it was originally a summer home for the Vanderbilts), but I really didn’t have any idea just how beautiful it would be. Right on the shores of Lake Champlain, with the hazy Adirondacks across the water, I was ready to make plans to move to Burlington right then and there. The festival more than lived up to the setting, with cheese makers sampling their wares next to truffle makers, beer brewers, picklers, and bakers. Non-cheese highlights for me were the Vermont Smoke and Cure booth, which gave away generous samples of delicious pepperoni (available at Murray’s!), Red Hen Baking Company’s yummy wholegrain loaf (we bought the last one), and the kind ladies at the Vermont Maple Foundation booth who gave us tastes of maple cheesecake. As for cheeses, I loved the creamy ricotta from Narragansett Creamery, Vermont Shepherd’s rich and tangy sheep cheeses (ed. note: Vermont Shepherd cheeses will be available this fall), and just about everything from the Cellars at Jasper Hill.
So much cheese!
After taking in the festival barn, we adjoined to the huge waterfront lawn, where fellow picnickers had set up blankets, wine buckets, and hiking chairs. It was an idyllic scene, for sure, with barefoot children running around, 4-H teenagers showing off their baby goats, and a gentle breeze floating over our heads. I lunched on some Vermont pizza while my boyfriend chowed on a grass fed hamburger, and we toasted our sample wine glasses full of local rosé. “To the good life!” we said, and, for two days in Vermont, it certainly was.
Beth Ann from Murray’s Wholesale department makes friends with a goat.
To stay up to date on the latest news from Murray’s Cheese and hear about contests like the Vermont Wheycation Giveaway that Stephanie won, be sure to like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter!
As the Store Director of our Greenwich Village shop, I get asked lots of questions every day. Questions like ‘Do you have any raw milk cheeses?’ or ‘I am having five people over and need to get 5 cheeses – can you help me?’ The other question I get, not as frequently, is ‘Why are you so thin?’ Fact: I do eat a lot of cheese. But I also work a lot of hours on my feet and if you’re here on a busy Saturday, you’ll see that I’m burning a lot of calories along with my staff.
The truth is that I run. I run a lot. About two years ago, I decided I needed to lose weight and wanted to run a marathon before I turned 41. So I started running, and watching what I ate. I enjoy it so much that I have considered getting a treadmill for the home and often read up on the best models like https://trustedtreadmill.com/proform-carbon-t10-review/. The end result two-plus years later is that I lost 60 pounds, went from a 2XL to a large and saw my waist shrink from a tight 38 to a comfy 34.
I know what you’re thinking – another born-again thin dude who runs all the time. But I promise to stick to what I know: dairy!
While training for what was to be my first marathon (in Honolulu!) three years ago, I suffered a stress fracture when I ran my first 20-miler. Any chance of running in Hawaii vanished. I was in a lot of pain, but I did find that some natural products made a difference and provided a little relief. For example, a friend of mine recommended Elixinol to me. In case you were not aware, Elixinol is a leading producer of high-quality CBD oil products including capsules, liposomes, balms, and CBD drops. There is a lot of research out there that suggests that cannabinoid cannabidiol (CBD), the chemical in marijuana, can strengthen bones and help heal fractures, and in my experience, it did make a big difference to my pain and had me looking for other alternative remedies, such as private label softgels and similar natural-based remedies to aid with my pain relief.
That being said, my fracture also taught me something very important. While recovering I had plenty of time to figure out why it had happened. A quick look at my diet revealed a key piece missing. Any guesses? It was dairy! The only dairy I consumed was half-and-half in my coffee. I had cut out cheese, ice cream and yogurt under the guise of my diet and cutting out fat. (The lack of dairy was not the only culprit – I was also over-training and not following the key running mantra of no more than 10% further or faster than what I did in the previous week).
Fast forward two years – I’ve done lots of research on nutrition, using sites like https://thenutritioninsider.com/, and have added lots and lots of dairy to my diet. As a result, I’ve maintained my weight and have become a fairly good ultra marathon distance runner (with a half-marathon, marathon, 50-miler and a 50K under my belt). Not a single day goes by where I don’t eat dairy of some sort. By eliminating dairy I was eliminating calcium and short changing my body of protein and fat.
Here are a couple of things that get me through the day (not including bites of cheese). I’ll be contributing more blog posts in the future, so check back for other tips, whether you’re interested in increasing your exercise regimen or you’re just curious about the diet of a cheesemonger/runner.
Strained Yogurt: My day begins with a strained yogurt every morning. I vary it up: either Fage Total 2%, a Greek style low fat yogurt that packs a whopping 20 grams of protein and 6% GV of fat, topped with Bee Raw Star Thistle honey. I also like Siggi’s Skyr, an Icelandic style yogurt – it’s incredibly tasty and full of protein. These strained yogurts have a lot of the whey removed — leaving a deliciously thick, protein- packed punch that gets me going in the morning.
Mid-Day Snack: We all have that mid-day snack attack when you need to get some life back into your limbs and your brain. In the past, I would turn to something sugary or a cup of coffee, but my new pick lately is a White Cow Dairy Tonic. What the heck is a whey tonic and why is it so good? Part yogurt whey, part yogurt solids, part delicious flavors like star anise or turmeric, these tonics contain lots of protein and are really refreshing. We already love fourth generation dairy farmer Patrick Lango’s amazing yogurts and custards that come in flavors as diverse as Chocolate Malt and Apple Pie, when Patrick mentioned the tonics back in January, little did we know how hooked our staff would get.
The whole Murray’s crew swears that there is restorative goodness in every bottle of Dairy Tonic. They keep us on our feet whether we’re running around the store or running 50 miles in the park.
Murray’s staff aren’t the only ones who think White Cow Tonics are incredible – check out write-ups from The New York Times, Tasting Table and Serious Eats on these amazingly refreshing drinks. Yogurts and dairy tonics are currently available at our 2 retail locations only.
The goats that stole my hear (Prairie Fruits Farm)
I came to work at Murray’s Cheese because of my love for slow food – and my work at Slow Food. For many years I worked for the sustainable food-loving organization, thrilled at every chance to meet food producers along the way — cheesemakers being no exception. A few years ago, while on a US tour with the organization’s founder Carlo Petrini, I fell in love with goats (and goat cheese) during a visit to Prairie Fruits Farm, the first farmstead cheesemakers in Illinois — whose cheese you’ll now find on our NYC and online cheese counters.
The Petrini entourage drove down to Central Illinois from Chicago on a warm May day. Having been on the road hosted in restaurants and lecture halls for days, a farm day was a welcome stop, and we were about to be hosted by farmers who had been making and selling cheese for less than 2 years. We arrived to meet Leslie Cooperband and Wes Jarrell and their kids – I mean their goats – who were joyfully running and playing on the lawn safely inside of a little fence. Named for the fruits on the property, Prairie Fruits grows apples, peaches, pears and berries in addition to cranking out farmstead cheeses using milk from their goats, and also sheep’s milk from a neighboring farm.
What I remember from that day four years ago: tasting the most exceptional, sweet and creamy chevre; cuddling with goats; touring their small, well-run cheesemaking house; and savoring a farm-fresh meal with the inspired cheesemakers. Leslie and Wes left academia to make cheese and to help build a vibrant food community in Central IL — they were welcoming, knowledgeable, and had the cutest kids on the planet.
A gooey piece of Angel Food
Flash forward a few years, and Leslie and Wes have continued expanding their operation. Their cheese is available in fairly limited quantities, so we’ll be selling a variety as we’re able to get ’em. The two all-goat, gooey bloomy rinds are Angel Food and Little Bloom on the Prairie. Angel Food is 3 weeks old with a thin, edible white rind – it’s a ladled curd cheese. A bit stronger, Little Bloom is a cut curd that has ripened for four weeks. Turning to sheep, we’ve got Ewe Bloom, a Camembert-style square cheese that’s pleasantly pungent. Black Sheep is ash-covered and soft-ripened, reminded us of Selles-sur-Cher. Not surprisingly, Prairie Fruits picks are really enjoyable with fresh or dried fruit. Perfect for your summer picnic of a fun way to end your next BBQ!
Murray’s Cheese currently has select Prairie Fruits cheese in limited quantities in our New York City stores and online. Not all styles are available at all times, so check back soon or give us a call if you don’t find what you’re looking for.
