Moldy Cheese

Friday, November 9, 2007
Bangor

No kitchen in France with which we’re familiar has a potato masher or pancake flipper, and now, here in Ireland, we’re lacking a whisk and a full-size cookie sheet, although we are lucky enough to have two pancake flippers. If you want to turn a pancake in France, or lift chocolate chip cookies off the pan, you have to use a flat spatula that is about 1 ½ inches wide and about 6 inches long. Works great for crepes of course, since it is flexible, but for American style pancakes it’s a disaster.

I mention this because tonight I made crepes for dinner, filled with a garlicky white sauce and spinach and salmon. Lacking a whisk, I had to mush all the little bits of flour up with the back of a spoon, a really tedious process that at home would’ve made me cranky but here I didn’t mind, since I don’t have anything I need to do tonight anyway. The really lovely thing about crepes is that if you make a big enough batch, you can have crepes for dessert, too. Having found Nutella on sale at the store today made me feel quite festive, as there’s nothing quite so good as a warm crepe filled with oozing chocolate-hazelnut spread – unless it’s the same thing with a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top. We’ll do that the next time.

We spent the morning doing schoolwork with Reed, then went to the pool this afternoon. I visited the butcher for the first time afterwards, confirming that his products were indeed from local farmers. So I bought an entire free range chicken, to roast for dinner tomorrow night or Sunday noon. I also stocked up on dairy products at the store, not to mention the Buy One Get One Free jars of Nutella, so on the way home my backpack was really heavy. I kept telling myself I was earning the right to eat Nutella, lugging it all the way home on foot. Tomorrow I must bake Reed’s chocolate birthday cake, and since it will be my first try with UK measurements and ingredients and pans and an unfamiliar oven, I’ll get started on it early in the day, in case it completely goes wrong and I have to do it all over again.

The refrigeration posting spawned another question about whether or not I’m familiar with the idea of eating cheese with mold growing on the outside. Americans of course are sort of grossed out by this idea but the truth is, yes, not only do I know about mold-encased cheese, I eat it regularly over here. Many many varieties of French cheese, as they age, grow mold on the rind, which is essential to the flavor. And of course blue cheeses are riddled with yummy mold. We’ve noticed that when we eat lots of stinky French cheese we have fewer digestive upsets than we have at home – possibly a side effect of all those cultures? Anyway, at Les Fromentaux, as the goat cheese we made aged, in the fromagerie at a temperature of about 55 to 60 degrees, it grew a layer of bluish green mold that's quite tasty. Goat cheese can be eaten at any age, by the way – our favorite was the soft new stuff that was about 3 days old. Again, keep in mind, these are raw-milk cheeses, aged in an clean but not sterile environment conducive to the proper flora and fauna. (Google roquefort cheese and you'll probably find out about this - roquefort cheese being aged in certain caves for the proper mold development.) Renee-Jo always checked the smell of the curdled goat milk before using it for making cheese, because she can smell if it’s been contaminated or not with bad bacteria. I wouldn’t recommend letting your average block of Tillamook cheddar go moldy, and then eating it. Pasteurized commercial cheeses aren’t meant to grow mold, and when they do, it tastes really horrible. There is a lot of information out there these days about the benefits of raw milk. Of course there are risks, too, but I tend to believe the theories that there are so many people with allergies these days because our environment and our food has gotten too sterilized, rendering our immune systems hyper-sensitive. Renee-Jo and I talked about this subject in French, and although I couldn’t understand everything she said, I could tell she was very passionate about the subject, and believed completely in the health benefits of eating raw milk goat cheese.

A lot more than potatoes

Cool, green Ireland is one of the hottest places in the world for foodies. Farm cheeses and smoked meats, a large variety of fresh organic produce, and creative cooks have completely transformed Ireland's culinary landscape in the almost 20 years since I first stepped off the ferry in Wexford from St. David's, Wales, at the crack of dawn one chilly December morning, and hitchhiked to Cork. The lady who gave us a lift in her band's van played the soundtrack from Phantom of the Opera almost the entire trip, but had no food to share.

My traveling companions (Mary, Liz, and Andrea) and I made do with crackers and cheese, canned pasta, and not-quite-done potatoes, cooked in warm but poorly equipped hostel kitchens, as we made our way west from Cork, looping back northeast to Dublin. We Americans were young and inexperienced, and I wasn't even brave enough to try the clear poteen (sp?) offered to me in an unlabeled bottle by one of the locals. I was afraid, I guess, of waking up sometime the next day, with my passport, money, clothes, and friends all gone!

This time, my family intends to eat very well indeed. We'll be helping at Gubbeen Farm in West Cork (www.gubbeen.com) during the month of April (2008), when the cows will be on fresh grass and their milk will make the tastiest of cheeses. Our host, Giana Ferguson, has been instrumental in Ireland's Slow Food movement and has been making cheese for much of her life. My six year old, Reed, like most kids, loves cheese. I know Giana will have a lot to teach us about how to make it!