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This week's cheese offerings and the joys of farmstead cheese
Posted 5/28/2010 11:53am by Leslie Cooperband or Wes Jarrell.
This week we have a limited repertoire of cheeses available for you at the farmers' markets. Our other cheeses are ripening away, and we should have more diversity next week. We will be attending Urbana, Bloomington, Green City and Oak Park Farmers' Markets.
We have:
Fresh chevre (plain, herbs de Provence, cracked pepper)
Angel Food --nice and gooey
Ewe Bloom--tastes great right now!
Limited amount of Roxanne-raw sheep milk brebis style
Mollisol Pecorino-our raw sheep milk Pecorino Romano style--sharp, slightly salty--great for grating over some roasted veggies or a beet salad.
A little insight about farmstead cheese and seasonality: milk and cheese are affected by the weather and the environment. Take our Ewe Bloom, for example. We are having an explosion of wild blue mold on these cheeses right now. It turns out that sheep on pasture produce milk that is friendly to the growth of this wild blue mold. It also turns out that when farmers' plow their fields and plant their crops this time of year, that lots of blue mold spores are cast into the air and make their way into our cheeserie. This mold is natural, it is not harmful to people, it has a mild and slightly earthy, almost non-detectable taste, yet its appearance is jarring to the human eye. Most people think that blue mold on cheese means it's spoiled. I assure you we wouldn't bring these cheeses to market if they were spoiled. I encourage you to not judge this cheese by the color of it's "skin." Rather, close your eyes and take a taste. If then you're not convinced, you can pass it by.
As spring fades into summer, I encourage you to be adventurous--eat some moldy cheese today!
Happy Local Food Eating!
We have:
Fresh chevre (plain, herbs de Provence, cracked pepper)
Angel Food --nice and gooey
Ewe Bloom--tastes great right now!
Limited amount of Roxanne-raw sheep milk brebis style
Mollisol Pecorino-our raw sheep milk Pecorino Romano style--sharp, slightly salty--great for grating over some roasted veggies or a beet salad.
A little insight about farmstead cheese and seasonality: milk and cheese are affected by the weather and the environment. Take our Ewe Bloom, for example. We are having an explosion of wild blue mold on these cheeses right now. It turns out that sheep on pasture produce milk that is friendly to the growth of this wild blue mold. It also turns out that when farmers' plow their fields and plant their crops this time of year, that lots of blue mold spores are cast into the air and make their way into our cheeserie. This mold is natural, it is not harmful to people, it has a mild and slightly earthy, almost non-detectable taste, yet its appearance is jarring to the human eye. Most people think that blue mold on cheese means it's spoiled. I assure you we wouldn't bring these cheeses to market if they were spoiled. I encourage you to not judge this cheese by the color of it's "skin." Rather, close your eyes and take a taste. If then you're not convinced, you can pass it by.
As spring fades into summer, I encourage you to be adventurous--eat some moldy cheese today!
Happy Local Food Eating!
