Tomme Crayeuse
June 16, 2009
Country and region of origin: Savoie, France
Milk: Pasteurized Cow’s Milk···
Age: aged over 6 weeks
Rind: natural brushed rind
Creamery: Schmidhauser
Creamery website: Schmidhauser Website
Properties: Creamy, pale paste. When ripe this cheese is spreadable. Surprisingly rich for a single cream, especially one made with pasteurized milk.
Uses: This is such an extravagantly good table cheese it’s hard to imagine other uses for it. But it would melt beautifully. It would be fine with fruit or with crackers – or spread on baguette.
Wine Pairings: A big, spicy red would be nice. Perhaps a Syrah. I can also imagine having this with Champagne or Cava.
Production Notes: First created by Max Schmidhauser in 1995, this was intended as a tomme alternative to the Tommes de Savoie of its region. In this, of course, it is successful. It is richer, creamier and more luxurious than most Tommes de Savoie.
Nutrition Data
Testimonials:
Baita Friuli
June 14, 2009
Country and region of origin: Italy, the Friuli-Venezia region of Giulia
Milk: Pasteurized Cow’s Milk
Age: at least 5 months
Rind: Natural rind, not particularly edible
Creamery: Various
Creamery website: Unknown
Properties: Nice, firm and buttery-colored, Baita isn’t a particularly well-known cheese but it’s a fine, slightly fruity, oddball of a cheese. It reminds some of cheddar, some of gruyere. For me, it depends upon what you’re eating it with. It melts beautifully.
Uses: Grating, cooking, sandwiches, munching
Wine Pairings: Zinfandel, Pinot Noir, or hearty red wines; some suggest dry Rieslings, also
Production Notes: Wheels are about 22 pounds, typically. Listed ingredients are cow’s milk, rennet (animal rennet) and salt.
Asiago Pressato
June 9, 2009
Country and region of origin: Italy, Veneto
Milk: Pasteurized Cow’s Milk
Age: 2 months
Rind: natural, inedible
Creamery: Agriform
Creamery website: Agriform Website
Properties: This is not, as is commonly thought, the younger version of Asiago d’Allevo. Asiago Pressato is also a DOP cheese, though its DOP criteria is quite different from that of Asiago d’Allevo. Asiago Pressato is, by contrast, invariably a mass-market cheese. It is creamy, semi-soft and relatively mild in flavor.
Uses: A good sandwich cheese and a fine melter, it’s also a decent snacking cheese.
Wine Pairings: It would be pretty good with a nice, crisp white or a light, fruit red.
Production Notes: Asiago Pressato is an “industrial” cheese, called “pressato” because it is pressed to speed up ripening. It is higher in fat than Asiago d’Allevo and also milder and more rubbery. This is not to say that it doesn’t have its uses, simply that it is a less regarded cheese among those who care about such things.
“Asiago” (aged domestic)
June 8, 2009
Country and region of origin: United States/Wisconsin
Milk: Pasteurized Cow’s Milk
Age: one year
Rind: Black Wax
Creamery: Saputo (“Stella”)
Creamery website: Saputo Website
Properties: A fairly salty, hard cheese that bears little resemblance to the Italian Asiago dAllevo from which it gets its name, this is nonetheless a fairly popular cheese in this country.
Uses: a versatile grating cheese. Some do like this as a table cheese also.
Wine Pairings:
Production Notes: One of the reasons that Stella cheeses are so popular is that there is little-to-no variation between wheels. Stella aged asiago is the same in December as it is in June. Thats consistency is comforting to Stellas particular demographic. An interesting note is that there is also little difference between this cheese and Stellas Parmesan cheese. Stella cheese are all customer favorites.
“Asiago” (mild domestic)
June 8, 2009
Country and region of origin: United States/Wisconsin
Milk: Pasteurized Cow’s Milk
Age: 6 Months
Rind: Brown wax···
Creamery: Saputo Foodservice (“Stella”)
Creamery website: Saputo Website
Properties: A fairly salty but mild semi-soft cheese that bears little resemblance to the Italian Asiago d’Allevo from which it gets its name, this is nonetheless a fairly popular cheese in this country.
Uses: a fine, inexpensive cheese for cooking and sandwiches.
Wine Pairings: This would be okay with a fruity red or a cold, clean white.
Production Notes: One of the reasons that Stella cheeses are so popular is that there is little-to-no variation between wheels. Stella mild asiago is the same in December as it is in June. That’s consistency is comforting to Stella’s particular demographic. An interesting note is that there is also little difference between this cheese and Stella’s Kasseri or Romano cheeses. The Romano is slightly drier, but in essence these are the same cheeses – interchangeably so. They are also nearly the same price. These are all customer favorites.
Asiago d’Allevo
June 7, 2009
Country and region of origin: Italy, Venetto
Milk: Pasteurized Cow’s Milk
Age: 10 months minimum
Rind: Brushed, inedible rind
Creamery: Agriform
Creamery website: Agriform Website
Properties: We carry the vecchio or older version of this cheese and it is dry and mildly salty. Light beige paste with small holes throughout. Quite hard. It has actually very little in common with the domestic cheese that bears the same name, which is saltier and less subject to seasonality.
Uses: A fine though relatively mild grating cheese and a good pair with salami and antipasti.
Wine Pairings: Fruity light reds as well as bigger, chewier Italian reds (Barolo or Chianti)
Production Notes: From the Agriform website: “This is a semi-fat cheese with semi-cooked paste produced in the province of Vicenza, Trento and some areas around Padua and Treviso.” In the middle ages this was a sheep’s milk cheese. Like Parmigiano Reggianno this is made with skim milk. It is sometimes aged as long as 2 years. Nutrition Data
Applewood
June 7, 2009
Country and region of origin: England, Sommerset
Milk: Pasteurized Cow’s Milk
Age: 60 Days
Rind: None – Paste is rubbed with Paprika
Creamery: Ilchester Creamery
Creamery website: Ilchester Website
Properties: Semi-soft cheddar, flavored with smoke flavoring. This one is very popular with flavored cheese afficionados.
Uses: Will likely be devoured off your cheese plate. Ilchester offers that it’s good in grilled sandwiches and mashed potatoes. They also suggest using it in cheese sauces – and risotto (!).
Wine Pairings: Ilchester suggests a Shiraz or a Merlot.
Production Notes: This cheese was, once, actually a smoked cheese. They switched from smoking the cheese to using smoke flavoring at least 6 or 7 years ago, however. Most consumers don’t seem to mind one bit. This is still a very pretty cheese on the cheese plate. Nutrition Data
Testimonials:
Abbeydale
May 19, 2008
Country and region of origin:England – Sommerset
Milk: Pasteurized cow’s milk
Age: 4 months
Rind: none
Creamery: Ilchester
Creamery website: Ilchester Website
Properties: It’s a fine, pleasant Cotswold – Double Cheshire with chives and onions. Unlike a lot of them it isn’t rubbery.
Uses: Munching, sandwiches, cooking. Cheddar straws would be lovely with this cheese.
Wine Pairings: The ilchester site doesn’t pair Abbeydale with wine and I’m not sure I would, either. A good, strong beer would be totally natural though.
Production Notes: Ilchester uses vegetarian rennet in their Abbeydale.Nutrition Information
Testimonials:
Well… our customers like it. This is one of those cheeses that people love and that cheese writers make a show of disdaining. The Cheese Primer (amazingly) doesn’t even mention Cotswold, not even in passing.
Parmigiano-Reggiano
May 15, 2008
Country and region of origin: Italy; Emilia-Romagna
Milk: partly skimmed cow’s milk
Age: Varies; PFI typically stocks wheels that are at least two years of age. The staff can easily tell how old the current wheel is – typically we carry a three-year cheese.
Rind: Brushed and oiled – quite hard
Creamery: Agriform
Creamery website: Parmigiano-Reggiano Page
Properties: Parmigiano-Reggiano is hard, rich and complex. Its interior texture is grainy or flakey – in fact crystaline. Because of its unique texture, there are special tools used for cutting this cheese that respect the structure of the cheese. Reggiano is very much affected by the seasons. The milk changes significantly depending upon what the cattle feed on and that changes significantly with the seasons. Again, ask our staff which season we currently are selling.
Uses: This is the real thing. Use it in cooking, grate it on pasta, eat it on its own. There is no substitute, even if there are many cheeses that trade under similar names. No knockoff has ever acheived the flavor or the texture of this cheese and it seems unlikely, at this late date, that any shall.
Wine Pairings: Any big, fat Italian red would be right for this cheese. Barolo is my favorite, but Chianti Riserva is choice as are Barbaresco or Barbera.
Production Notes: The manufacture of Parmigiano-Reggiano is tightly controlled by legislative fiat and careful scrutiny.There are a lot of sources that detail the creation of this cheese. Here are two of them:
- This is a detailed description of the production of Parmigiano-Reggiano
- And this is a detailed, well-written (by Marian Burros in the New York Times) treatise on the seasons of Parmigiano-Reggiano.
Testimonials:
Steven Jenkins in the Cheese Primer: “the world’s greatest cheese”
Juliet Harbutt in The World Encyclopedia of Cheese: “It is one of the finest cheeses in the world.”
Vivienne Marquis & Patricia Haskell in The Cheese Book: “Without doubt those macaroni makers would have insisted that only one cheese was fit for their pasta: the true Parmesan, the great Parmesan that must be counted among the half-dozen best cheeses of the world; the Parmesan that can be made only in Italy, and there made only in a certain small section in the north. Delicately grained and subtly flavored, it is the cornerstone of Italian cuisine and the necessity of cooks the world over. For Parmesan is the only true seasoning cheese we have – a cheese that has something in common with the truffle whose essence seems to bring every other ingredient into its own. There is no cooking cheese like it, nor for that matter any table cheese better than Parmesan that is freshly cut and still moist.”
Fromager D’Affinois
February 20, 2008
Country and region of origin: France
Milk: Pasteurized Cow’s Milk
Age: Ripened 2 weeks
Rind: Soft, bloomy rind.
Creamery: Fromagerie Guilloteau
Creamery website: www.fromagerdaffinois.com
Properties: Fromager D’affinois is a rich, surprisingly smooth and creamy double cream. It weighs a little over two pounds (2 kilograms) and is almost nine inches across and almost 2 inches tall. It isn’t Brie, actually, or Camembert. It is as spreadable as a triple cream such as Delice D’Bourgogne – nearly like room temperature butter at room temperature. It is still delicious even when slightly overripe (at which point it is fairly liquid at center).
Uses: This is pretty much a cracker cheese. Any application of heat to this cheese would result in a liquid.
Wine Pairings: This would be perfect with a sparkling wine such as Champagne, Cava or Spumante.
Production Notes: According to the Guilloteau website, the milk for Fromager D’Affinois is ultra-filtered before rennet coagulation. This results in the extreme smoothness of the cheese. This is a fairly new cheese.
