Auld Lang Syne

For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne,
We'll take a cup o' kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.-- Robert Burns

For Auld Lang Syne.  For days of long ago. That’s how it translates from the old Scottish. It never ceases to bring a tear when I hear it on New Year’s Eve.  I think about the old days and the old folks gone by.  But, I’ll raise my cup this New Year’s eve in honor of my clan, the snow, and my beautiful garden--in great anticipation of it coming back again.

Hard to believe the garden will return when it is buried under 22 inches of snow! What a gorgeous sight! My apologies to all that had to venture out, or close businesses, but I still have the kid in me, and I love it.  The world shuts down and we all get to be together at home. When old WJLK radio station on the Jersey shore used to include the name of Monmouth Regional High School as one of the school closings in the stormy 1960’s, my brother and I would dance around the house like idiots. Whatever a huge, annoying, back-breaking, car-stalling snowstorm means to you, you’ve got to admit it’s beautiful.

There’s a whole new world that opens up in the garden during a snowstorm, and feeding the birds is one of the greatest pleasures there is. The birds are hungry and thirsty, and when they need shelter and water, they’ll practically run into you if you provide them with a little seed and water.

The more thick shrubs you have, the better.  I have an overgrown rambler rose that always gets covered in a tent of insulating snow and the birds flock there in the hundreds for protection.  Birds will eat snow, but it takes much more energy for them to melt it. Having warm water readily available saves them time and precious calories. If you can’t access your bird feeders over the massive snow drifts, throw the seed directly on the snow.  A cage of suet cakes will also be welcomed by woodpeckers and chickadees. Since the birds fly miles a day looking for food and water, they’ll see your little oasis and swoop down to partake.  You never know what rare bird you’ll see during a snowstorm.  Don’t fret if you see that big old Red-Tailed Hawk aiming for the dark body of a bird perched on the white snow.  It’s their job. They need to eat too.  Not a real pleasant sight, but, part of the scheme of things.

Did you know you can plant in the snow? If you have a leftover bag of grass seed in the garage, get it out and throw the seed around right on top of the snow.  It’s the best way to start a lush, green lawn for the summer. The seed soaks up some moisture, settles into the surface of the soil when the snow melts, and doesn’t sprout until the warm weather sets in.  It works like a charm, and you’ve got a head start on spring.

There’s no end to what you don’t know about snow! It actually insulates plants and protects them. Snow keeps the plants in the garden and landscape at a steady temperature without the frequent thaws and freezes that heave plants right out of the ground.  Snow provides a protective layer that locks in moisture underground. Bulbs, and perennials resting under the soil have a better chance of survival with a good coating of snow above.  In fact, our gardens would be tremendously happy if we had a good snow covering all winter long.

You might want to gently brush the snow from some of your newly planted shrubs and trees.  If the branches bend down under the extreme weight of the snow, they can break. But, easy does it.  Just a little fluffing will do.  It’s the blowing wind and freezes that wreak havoc on our plants, not the snow.  If you feel you just need to do something to those trees, prune them after the snow melts from the branches. Winter dormancy is the perfect time to cut and shape.

Along with the snow come the inevitable melting salts.  If you throw a lot of salt around your steps and driveways, it can leech into the soil around your precious landscaping.  Try to keep salting to a minimum if you can.  The sodium chloride pellets are much better than the old rock salt. When used as directed, they won’t harm trees or shrubs.  For totally organic slip-proofing, there’s nothing like sand or kitty litter to create some good traction without giving the soil around your plants and shrubs a high dose of salt. The sand is a perfectly natural mixer with the soil, and the kitty litter is a natural clay.

If you’ve planted a winter vegetable garden that includes cold weather plants such as kale, bok choy, radicchio, swiss chard, parsley and mustard greens, you’ll see that the cold snowy weather suits them just fine. In fact, these greens actually increase their sugar content in the cold —creating a natural antifreeze which keeps the plants alive and well over a long winter.  Growing the winter greens under a makeshift greenhouse covering over the winter works even better.  A plastic sheet held down with bricks and propped with a few sticks like a tent can give you a whole winter’s worth of greens in the kitchen.

When you look out on your perennial beds, don’t worry when you see that big, thick blanket of snow. Ruth Kirk, author of a book entitled Snow, has gathered a fine appreciation of snow as the wife of a park ranger in Olympic National Park in Washington. In her book she writes of the beauty of snow:

Snow not only insulates against low minimum temperatures but also against fluctuations.  A bare soil surface may be heated by direct sunshine, then cooled in seconds as clouds pass overhead, and its temperatures often surge drastically from day to night.  Snow moderates these swings and that can be a crucial advantage.

Kirk also calls snow “the poor farmer’s fertilizer”-- as the moisture in snow draws from the ions in the upper atmosphere, adding nitrates, calcium, potassium and sulfates to the soil below when it melts.

So, take that all you snow haters! No more bah humbugging!  Sit back, and watch the snowflakes in a totally new way.  Look at the birds, shovel a little, and flip through some garden catalogs.  Remember, snow is here for a reason. It may be a mixed blessing, but, it’s the stuff that dreams are made of too—and missing work and school is one of them. Oh yeah!

Happy New Year to all! See you outdoors at Sickles Market when the forsythia blooms again.

By
Pat Dumas

Stimulating Conversation

There are two kinds of people in the world. There are those who take a sip of the steaming hot, dark, sumptuous liquid delight called coffee, and are instantly transported to another dimension, a place of sheer sensory contentment. And then there are the rest, who think that coffee is just a beverage, and sometimes, even worse, don’t drink it at all. You may have guessed which category I fall into! A good cup of coffee inspires a passionate response and is worth the time and energy it takes to create. Europeans have traditionally been the ones to take their coffee seriously. In France or Italy you can linger for hours over a café au lait or espresso as the world hurries by your table at the sidewalk cafe. Coffee is meant to be savored and appreciated, not slurped down quickly on the way to work. When my French relatives came to visit not too long ago, they were astounded when they observed me drinking coffee in the car, as they had never seen a travel mug!


The quality of American coffee was fairly mediocre before the gourmet coffee revolution of the 1970’s hit like a tidal wave and got us all hooked on espresso and the wondrous variety of related coffee drinks. We got a bit carried away in our enthusiasm (if you remember Steve Martin in the movie L.A. Story: “I’ll have a half double decaffeinated half-caf, with a twist of lemon”). Today, although still quite popular, espresso is no longer on the front burner. Brewed coffee is what’s brewing these days! Brewing methods, as well as the source, roast, and blend of the coffee beans have become essential components to consider.

There are divided opinions on creating the perfect cup of coffee. The major gourmet coffee vendors have traditionally identified their beans by region or country. Today’s new coffee purveyors, such as Counter Culture and Intelligentsia, travel around the globe to offer us single origin beans, coffee that comes from individual farmers or specific hillsides, much the way wine is purchased from a single vineyard. The beans reflect the unique characteristics of a particular region and are often the result of centuries of tradition. You will often see the words “fair trade” associated with coffee beans as well. Coffee is a world commodity and is traded in the marketplace. As a result the prices fluctuate wildly at times and the farmers do not always get enough money for their product. Fair trade co-ops insure that the farmers receive a consistent and fair price for their coffee beans and maintain product quality and good environmental practices.

Roasting is also a hot item in the world of coffee. For years, darker roasts from the northwestern United States have been at the forefront of the coffee revolution. Even today, many coffee producers seek the ultra roast: the darkest, sweetest, richest flavor possible. The new coffee aficionados are looking for the superlight roast to create more complex, brighter coffee flavors and to preserve the integrity of the bean. And even our traditional coffee grinders are under the microscope in this coffee revolution. The Conical Burr Grinder is the newest piece of essential home equipment in the brewing process. It crushes the bean with metal plates or cones, instead of blades. As far as the actual coffee maker goes, the French press makes an excellent cup of brewed coffee, as does the old-fashioned Melitta. And there are all kinds of automated brewing machines on the market, including the Clover and the Trifecta, which run up into the thousands of dollars.

So how exactly do you go about brewing that elusive cup of perfection? After reading a number of publications on the topic, I had a case of the jitters, and I hadn’t even consumed any caffeine yet! If you are going to take the matter seriously, I would recommend thumbing through The Coffee Brewing Handbook by Ted Lingle. You will soon learn that there are a myriad of things that can go wrong, such as too hot of water, or over or under dissolving the bean. But don’t let this discourage you! With a little trial and error you will soon find the balance you are looking for. To keep it simple, remember these few important steps: Start with a high quality fresh bean, grind as much as you need for that brewing only, choose the correct grind for your coffee maker, use two tablespoons per 6 oz. cup, and use cold filtered water. You can experiment with different beans and roasts to see what appeals most to you. When choosing your bean, read the description on the package and see if that sounds like what you are looking for. The beans with higher acidity may be described as sharp, piquant or lively. Full bodied beans are buttery, oily, rich or chewy.  I often buy Sickles Own Coffee Beans and make my own combinations. I like to blend Kenya AA Dark Roast, which has an almost winey flavor with Decaf Sumatra Mandheling, a dark roasted bean with a nutty aroma and heavier body. Together they harmonize and the combination is rich and intense. If you don’t want to blend your own beans, try Bob’s Blend, one of our most popular combinations. Green Mountain Coffee is another company that offers delicious whole bean coffee, including lighter and darker roasts, single origin, fair trade and intriguing blends. Green Mountain also carries the K-cups for those who prefer to pop a cup into the Keurig machine and not deal with the filters, beans and grinders. They have an excellent website with a lot of information on coffee beans worth checking out at Green Mountain Coffee.

Of course, if you would rather forget the whole coffee brewing thing and go out for a delicious cup of joe, there are plenty of cafes and coffeehouses to choose from. If you are in the city, you might want to check out Abraco in the East Village, where they serve individually dripped coffees made with Counter Culture beans. Or head over to Café Grumpy in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, where they have one of the only Trifecta coffee machines in commercial operation in the world (which is basically a vertical automated French press). Or grab a friend and grab a cup of our delicious brewed coffee at Sickles and stroll around the greenhouse, which is all decked out for the holidays. As someone once said: “A cup of coffee shared with a friend is happiness tasted and time well spent.”

Enjoy!

Cheri The Cheesemonger

Festive Fromage: The Perfect Gift

I have a basket of Christmas books sitting in the corner of my family room and every now and then I pause in my busy day and pull a book from the burgeoning stack. Today I reread the story, The Gift of the Magi by O. Henry, the classic tale of a man and a woman in love, who sacrificed their most precious treasures to buy each other a Christmas gift. The man sold his father’s watch to buy his dear wife beautiful tortoise shell combs for her long, silky hair, and the woman cut off her flowing locks and sold them to purchase a silver watch chain. Alas, neither one could enjoy the other’s gift, but they loved each other for the compassionate thought behind it.

The Gift of the Magi is one of my favorite Christmas stories, but I am hoping that my own selections this holiday season will be a bit more useful to the recipient. And that is why I am looking in the cheese department to solve my more difficult gift giving quandaries. There are plenty of cheeses to choose from: a chunk of aged Parmigiano-Reggiano with a microplane cheese grater for the table, a mini Raclette machine accompanied by a wedge of the aromatic French melting cheese, or a fondue pot with Swiss Gruyere and Emmenthaler. The Tete de Moine, or “Monk’s Head” cheese from Switzerland has an ancient history and makes a fascinating and delectable gift when presented with a girolle, a specially designed scraping knife fixed onto a round board. The girolle blade thinly shaves the top of this intense, nutty cheese and creates beautiful edible rosettes.

For corporate gift giving, large wedges or smaller whole wheels of cheese are excellent choices. The smaller version of the renowned Colston Bassett Stilton, aged at Neals Yard Dairy in London, is available this time of year, either whole or in half cylinders. This creamy, blue veined cheese is traditional Christmas fare and is especially delicious when paired with a glass of tawny port. Aged cheddars are also well received, such as the Cabot Clothbound from Vermont and Keen’s Cheddar, a superb English farmhouse cheese.

The Cheese of the Month Club is a fun, original idea for someone who enjoys cheese. Once a month, a collection of three cheeses and an accompaniment are carefully selected by our Sickles cheese department manager, Meghan, and are shipped to the most fortunate recipient (or picked up at the cheese counter). Detailed descriptions of the cheeses are also included in the package. If Santa is reading this, I would love one of the memberships myself!

With all of these wonderful options for gift giving, there’s no need to resort to French hens, turtle doves or partridges in pear trees. So, I tinkered around a bit and came up with a new cheese version to the traditional Christmas Carol: “The Twelve Days of Christmas.”

Enjoy and Merry Christmas!
Cheri the Cheesemonger

On the twelve days of Christmas my true love sent to me:

Twelve Fetas crumbling,

Eleven Cheddars aging,

Ten Munsters stinking,

Nine Blues a’molding,

Eight Gruyeres melting,

Seven Robiolas,

Six Gorgonzolas,

Five Chevre logs…

Four Triple Crèmes,

Three Crème Fraiches,

Two Camemberts,

And a large slice of runny French Brie!

By Cheri Scolari

Stilton: A King at the Holiday Table

What’s your iconic food for the winter holidays?

Latkes? Lussekatter? Lutefisk? Gingerbread? Bûche de Noël? Stollen? Tamales? Roast duck? Panforte? Pierogi? Bacalhau? Shrimp on the barbie? Mince pies? Eggnog?

Whichever dish you name, it will probably be different from what your fellow shoppers at Sickles enjoy at the holidays. Even though we hail from the Jersey shore, we come from diverse backgrounds, with distinct culinary traditions. It would be hard, therefore, for us to agree upon a single food that represents the yuletide season.

If we were living in England, however, we would probably agree that Stilton is a sine qua non at Christmas. The English go to great lengths to ensure that this creamy, blue-veined cheese concludes the holiday meal. When I was working at Neal’s Yard Dairy in London during the hectic weeks leading up to Christmas, customers would endure the crowded confines of the pungent-smelling shop and wait in queues outside on the sidewalk during the dark days of winter to get their wedges of Stilton. At the height of the holiday rush, up to eighty whole cylinders of Stilton, weighing between fourteen and sixteen pounds, are sold from each of Neal’s Yard Dairy’s two retail locations. That’s a whole lot of Stilton!

How did Stilton get bound up with Christmas like a present with a bow?

One of the major reasons that Stilton is associated with the winter months is because it tastes its best at that time. The batches eaten in late December were made during the summer, when cows are munching lush grass. Good cheese comes from good grass. (Note that each wedge of Stilton has three distinct flavor components-- the nutty rind (yes, you can eat it!), the savory white, and the spicy blue.)

The other reason that Stilton has an assured spot at the holiday table is because it is considered the king of British cheeses. It achieved this status back in the eighteenth century when the British made their way around their island by carriage. The town of Stilton is located seventy miles north of London on an old Roman road. This was a reasonable, if uncomfortable distance to travel in a day, so the town was a favorable place to stop for the night. Something to be enjoyed at the end of a long day of travel was the rich, unpressed blue cheese made in the surrounding villages. Even though no cheese was actually made in Stilton, the king of cheeses got its name from its association with this old market town.

Stilton may be the king, but it has had a rocky tenure on the thrown. Connoisseurs lament that it doesn’t taste as good as it used to, chiefly because it is no longer made with unpasteurized milk and because the curd is no longer ladled by hand, a shortcut which compromises its distinctive creamy texture (this isn’t true of the Colston Bassett Stilton that Sickles carries). In an attempt to revive its

Hand-ladling Stichelton

complex taste before mandatory pasteurization in 1989 by the Stilton Cheesemakers Association, the indefatigable owner of Neal’s Yard Dairy has recently started making an unpasteurized and organic Stilton-like cheese in Nottinghamshire (Stilton can be made only in the three counties of Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, and Leicestershire in the English Midlands). He calls its Stichelton, which is the earliest recorded name for the village of Stilton. Despite its being made in Nottinghamshire and its following a traditional recipe, Stichelton can’t be called Stilton because of the raw milk. Nevertheless it captures the fantastically complex flavors of the Stilton of yore when it was made by hand with raw milk.

Whether you enjoy kugel, cranberry sauce, or ravioli in December, welcome some Stilton or Stichelton to your holiday table (Sickles has both to try and buy). Maybe that’s something we can all agree upon!

Happy Holidays!

Diana the Cheesemonger

An Appetizing December

It never ceases to amaze me how shocked I am every year when I turn the calendar page and see the word “December” staring back at me. How can it possibly be December already? I have barely cleared the withered mums and gnawed pumpkins from my porch and I still have Thanksgiving leftovers lodged in the recesses of my refrigerator. There are so many things to do in December that I feel like one of the squirrels that are busy scampering to and fro outside my window. I have cards to write, cookies to bake, a tree to trim, mantels to decorate, gifts to wrap, and festivities to attend. The holiday season is also the time of year when friends and family come to call, and that means having a well-stocked kitchen as well. I try to fill my pantry with foods that create easy but delicious entertaining options. I find that a few well chosen items allow me to spend less time on preparing appetizers and more time enjoying my guests and the spirit of the season.

One of the holiday essentials I like to have on hand when company comes to call is a box of phyllo cups. These little flaky cups thaw in minutes on the counter or heat quickly in the oven. They look very festive and have a myriad of uses. Here are some ideas for appetizer fillings: Stilton with sliced fig, warm Brie with cherry preserves, smoked salmon or caviar with crème fraiche, sautéed mushrooms and shallots with thyme, or D’Artagnan foie gras medallions with black truffle. I also love to fill the cups with an Armenian cheese berag filling: Combine 1 lb. shredded Monterey jack cheese, ½ 1b. crumbled feta, 1/3 cup. minced parsley, and 1 egg slightly beaten. Fill the phyllo cups and bake at 350 degrees for 15- 20 minutes until lightly browned and puffed.

Another special treat for the holidays is truffle honey. A little truffle honey drizzled over fresh ricotta makes a simple yet delicious spread with baguette slices or bruschetta. Try serving this flavorful honey with a wedge of aged Reggiano Parmigiano or perhaps paired with a sheep’s milk cheese like Spanish Ombra or Abbaye de Belloc from the Basque region of France. These cheeses as well as the honey keep for weeks so you can have them available at moment’s notice for unexpected guests. Dried fruits and nuts are long-lasting as well and make dependable accompaniments. Keep a variety on hand, such as Medjool dates, dried Bing cherries, Marcona almonds and Roman hazelnuts. Harvest Song Preserves makes a product worth stashing in your fridge for future festivities: whole young walnuts preserved in syrup. Serve a wedge of your favorite blue cheese with these walnuts on the side and everyone will be dazzled!

If you are looking for a particular theme, you can put together a very attractive appetizer plate in minutes; just stock your pantry in advance with a few special items. For a platter with a Middle Eastern flair, keep some Greek olives, dolma (stuffed grape leaves), string cheese, and hummus or eggplant babaganoush in your refrigerator. If you prefer, you can make your own babaganoush with this easy recipe. For a quick Italian spread, you can use Busseto’s Antipasto selection of sliced meats, cubed aged provolone, Sicilian olives and fresh caponata. For a creative accompaniment to cured meats and pates, try large caperberries, cheery red peppadews, and the bright green Matiz piparras. These long, thin, tartly sweet peppers from the Spanish Basque region may become one of your favorite appetizers. They are very addicting!

With a little forethought and planning, your pantry and mine will be in great shape for the holiday season! If only the rest of my December would go so smoothly! And now for the shopping, wrapping, baking, decorating….

Enjoy!

Cheri The Cheesemonger