As seen on the streets of Chicago:
For when you just absolutely need cheese services, STAT!
I’d like to note that that’s “services” plural. Look, I’m from Wisconsin, and even *I* can’t come up with multiple services you can perform with cheese. I mean, there’s eating it and that’s it, right?
RIGHT?
I don’t remember if I mentioned it on here before or not, but Sara’s awesome Christmas present to my brother and I was a gift certificate to a cheese making class, run by Angelic Organics, and the class took place over the weekend. It was really cool!
The class was set up brilliantly. We made 6 kinds of cheeses total, all of which were varieties that didn’t need to be aged very long, so we were able to try all of them. They had each group take one kind of cheese to be responsible for, we had ricotta, but it was timed out so that different cheeses had interesting steps at different times, so we could all gather around to see. Also, the different cheeses were timed out so that they all finished at different times, so we could try them as they were finished.
The cheeses made were mozzarella, ricotta, queso blanco, chevre, feta, and formaggio. The mozzarella was unbelievably delicious, but complicated. I’d say our ricotta was the second best, followed by the queso blanco. The other ones were all good, but they were a little bland. In some cases this is because we didn’t add any flavoring and didn’t let them sit for as long as you normally would. Most of them were made with fresh goats milk, but a few were with cow’s milk. As part of the class, we even got to milk goats!
Nate and I ended up with ricotta because we didn’t care much about what kind we made. It turned out that it was the easiest to make, and the quickest. Despite that, we manged to make a huge mess when ours boiled over, and then later forgot that it had boiled over and used that burner again, causing a small fire. Just a smidge embarrassing. I’m sure everybody was like, “Oh of course, you invite guys to a cooking class, they mess everything up.” On the other hand, everybody liked our cheese. We made one without salt, one with, and one with some herbs like green onions and garlic. That one was the best and it went pretty fast.
The whole point of the class is to enable you to make cheese at home. So they gave us some recipes and pointers and stuff to take home. I don’t think I will ever make cheese at home, but I am content in the knowledge that I could if I had to. And as far as Christmas presents go, I have a little saying, it goes like this: if you give a man some cheese, he has cheese for a day. If you teach a man to make cheese, he will have cheese for a lifetime.
Okay, it has come up over and over that I don’t mind eating cheese that has been sitting in the sun. Specifically, there was an incident when we were camping last summer. A plate of cheese that hadn’t been used on the burgers ended up sitting in the sun for awhile and it got a little…slimy. Not wanting to waste food, and not minding the taste of warmed cheese, I ate it. Apparently some people find that gross. So here, presented in full for the first time, is my defense.
Okay, first let me say that cheese that has been warming in the sun is actually quite delicious. If you haven’t tried it then you really shouldn’t be saying anything. I have it on good authority from the 5 French guys I work with, that warm cheese, not cold, is actually the proper way to eat it. If you heard these guys talking about their cheese, you would understand that they are experts. The properties of cheese change depending on what temperature they are at, so it doesn’t taste exactly like cold cheese. Now, if you have tried it and didn’t like it, that’s fine. We don’t all have to like the same things. That being said, you can’t *love* regular cheese and *detest* slightly warmed cheese. It’s not THAT different. Furthermore, I think we can all agree that the best and tastiest cheese is melted cheese! So you REALLY can’t say that you *love* cold cheese and *really love* hot cheese but *detest* cheese that is very, very similar to the hot cheese that you really love. That just doesn’t make sense.
And what are you objecting to on the cheese anyway? Especially if you haven’t actually tried it? It can’t be the texture because that is similar to melted cheese. The oil and stuff on the cheese? Well guess what? All of that oil is in that cheese! It doesn’t come from somewhere else! When you are eating cold cheese that oil is inside of it, even if you can’t see it.
So what do you think, warmish cheese yes or no? Vote in the comments.
Shane Halbach 