Cheers to Beer!

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If you think that beer is low brow and does not deserve to exist in the same sphere as gourmands, go tell that to the Oxford University Press!

This highly esteemed academic publisher, the smarty-pants folks behind the Oxford Latin Dictionary and the Oxford English Dictionary, also know a little something about fine food and drink. To brush up on your culinary facts, consult their Oxford Companion to Food, Oxford Companion to Wine, and the Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink. (Six years ago they were planning to compile the Oxford Companion to Cheese, for which I wrote six entries, but--alas--it looks like it’s never coming out. You’ll just have to come to the Sickles cheese department to get your fromage facts!)

With their recent publication of the Oxford Companion to Beer, edited by Garrett Oliver, the brewmaster at Brooklyn Brewery, this historic fermented beverage is finally getting the credit it deserves. There are over 900 pages in this encyclopedic tome to convince you that beer is something worth thinking about, as well as drinking. You’ll learn that it’s the third most popular beverage in the world after water and tea and its production predates the baking of bread.

Despite these credentials, an unfair perception of beer persists that it comes in only one style, the one that’s easy to drink at barbeque's (when those days return!), baseball games (those days are fast disappearing!), or on the sofa while watching football on Sundays and Mondays (lots of those days ahead!).

There is much to discover about beer. One hundred and seven distinct styles are covered in the Companion, ranging from abbey beer to ale, from dubbel to sour beer. That will keep your taste buds dancing. There are rich regional and seasonal differences, too. There is no reason, then, to keep picking up the same six-pack from your liquor store or to eschew beer because it’s one dimensional.

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Each style of beer, like wine, requires a different glass shape (but you certainly don’t have to, if you don’t want). Think beyond pint and pilsner glasses and steins and envision heavy goblets for heavy, Belgian ales. I first cued into the variations of beer glasses during a talk about the science of beer at the New York Academy of Science, by Professor Charles Bamforth, a small but enthusiastic English man who is the token beer guy at University of California-Davis, renown for its  esteemed wine program. He told a story about visiting a colleague in Belgium, a premiere beer country, who had a different glass for each style of beer, right in his own house. Beer is indeed a complex beverage, full of wide-ranging flavors.

Also enticing is that, like the cheese, there are a lot of exciting things going on in the beer world, as folks reclaim it from the insipid, homogenized industrial model. Craft beers, as the ones conscientiously produced by small breweries are called, are making such headway into the market that, according to Eric Asimov of the New York Times, sales of the mass-produced swill are stagnant and even on the decline. As an example, there’s the very local Carton Brewing in my hometown of Atlantic Highlands and the Twin Light Taphouse in nearby Highlands that is a showcase for local beers along the East Coast. There, you encounter passionate people but no snobbery, even if there’s the Oxford Companion to Beer lying about.

Enjoy beer!

Cheers!

Diana Pittet the beer-swilling cheesemonger

Like to Cook? Join the Club!

By Cheri Scolari

I’m actually not a Jersey girl.  For the last thirty years I have been slowly migrating east.  Originally a native to California, my husband’s work took us from Los Angeles to Chicago and eventually we wound up at the Jersey Shore, clear on the other side of the country.  The one thing that I noticed as I moved from place to place is that food just naturally brings people together. Whenever I moved into a new home I looked for other people who liked to eat, liked to cook and liked to talk about food as much as I did.  Before you knew it, we had a gourmet group assembled.  It’s a great way to make friends quickly!

If you have never been involved in a gourmet group or a cooking club, you may want to start your own!  There are a myriad of ways to put a group together, so it’s a good idea to put some thought into it ahead of time.  For example:  Will it be a couple’s affair, a mom’s (or dad’s) night out, or an eclectic mix of friends?  How many people do you want to include?  Do you want the event to be more structured or very casual?  We were in a more structured gourmet group in Chicago, where one person or couple hosted the event and was responsible for selecting the theme of the dinner, the menu and all of the recipes.   That host prepared the entrée and distributed the rest of the recipes to the other members.  The host duty rotated to someone else the following dinner.   In Los Angeles we were in a less structured setting, where an overall theme was chosen and then everyone found his or her own recipes.  With my current cooking circle, we are so laid back that we skip the theme and just pick our recipes and cook whatever we’re feeling that day!

Here are some other points to consider when you are organizing your gourmet group:

• Do you want to do both the cooking and the eating together or would you rather cook at home individually and then bring the finished product to the soiree?
• Do you want everyone to bring a copy of the recipe to share?
• Would you like to stay at one home all evening or have a progressive dinner where each course is eaten at a different house?  (My parents and their friends have had a progressive dinner every December for years and love it!)

If you decide to go with a theme, regional dinners are an excellent way to start.  Through the years my groups have chosen French, Mexican and North African, to name a few.  If you select a North African dinner, be sure to check out Les Moulins Mahjoub Collection which offers the finest products from Tunisia, such as hand rolled couscous that is dried in the sun, traditional harissa spread, preserved lemons and wild mountain capers packed in salt. If you are leaning towards a Mexican theme, try a recipe or two from chef and Mexican food expert Rick Bayless, like these Grill-Braised Short Ribs. Once you’ve decided on a particular theme for the food, you can get as creative as you’d like with the table décor, music, and even attire.

One of our more memorable gourmet groups was an event that we hosted in Chicago in the dead of winter.  The dinner was a Wild Game and Wine Tasting dinner with four couples.  Each couple brought a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon in a paper bag and we added a ringer for fun.  We tasted and graded the wines then dined on wild boar sausage, elk and venison.  Several people were surprised by the meats, not gamey, but rather rich and flavorful.  If you’d like to try a wild game dinner, Sickles butcher shop carries a variety of wild game products, from whole rabbits and venison medallions to buffalo patties and rabbit pork ginger sausages.  Venison medallions are one of my favorites, especially when prepared as Pan SearedVenison with Rosemary and Dried Cherries. You can also use ruby port to deglaze the pan instead of red wine for an even sweeter flavor.

If you have not experienced a cooking group yet, it’s time to take the leap! Find a few friends and set the date.   If you like to eat, like to cook and like to talk about food, you’ll have a great time, wherever you are.

Enjoy!

Cheri the Cheesemonger

Cheese "Cake"

Forget the butter cream and fondant flowers, how about a wedding cake made entirely of cheese?

The pièce de résistance at a friends’ joyous wedding celebration on a recent sunny Saturday in Boston was a tiered creation of four whole cheeses. The “cake” was decorated with grapes and their leaves and accompanied by Marcona almonds and three different fruit chutneys that the couple made themselves.

This wasn’t my first experience with a cheese wedding cake. A few years ago, I helped create one for a woman at Neal’s Yard Dairy, the renown cheese shop in London, when she came in the day before her wedding to buy a few wedges for the reception but ended up leaving with five entire wheels.

Darla, the bride, turned to me for initial consultation. By email, I recommended that she should think about the nature of her selection, e.g., all American, or different expressions of the same type of cheese (e.g., Cheddar or goat), or the classic variety of something soft, hard, stinky, and blue, and that her selection should include whole cheeses that diminished in size.

To buy the cheeses, Darla and Ben went to Formaggio Kitchen in Cambridge, Mass., which was one of the first shops in the country to construct a cheese cave for proper storage and aging. The owner Ihsan Gurdal's son sold them two goat’s milk cheeses and two sheep’s milk and suggested that they when they were ready to serve them, someone (read me!) should cut each wheel in half. One set of halves were for re-creating a cross section of  the cake, and the other halves were for eating. I sensed resistance in breaking down the cake since it was so visually impressive, but cheese is for eating so I committed myself to the task. The halved cake stood watch over individual portions that I replenished throughout the party. What a delicious and memorable treat!

Wouldn’t you like to make a cheese “cake” part of your wedding or big celebration? We at the Sickles Cheese Department can help you select a variety of cheeses and suggest how to display and serve them. If you opted for all soft cheeses and placed them on tiers, guests could just cut into them themselves, but it’s probably preferable to have someone in charge of cutting and portioning the whole wheels.

As for decorating your cake, grapes, grape leaves, dried and fresh fruit, and maybe some edible flowers are be ideal. Use them in moderation or go all out. Alongside the cheeses serve nuts, chutneys, and crackers or breads. Put all the components together on a table, gather your friends around, and you’ve got an edible centerpiece that you and your guests will remember for a lifetime.

Celebrate with cheese!

Diana Pittet the festive-loving cheesemonger

Energize with the Fantastic Five

Whenever September rolls around, it seems like time accelerates inexplicably, with days and hours hurtling past, before I’ve had a moment to stop and appreciate them. The holidays come next, tumbling over each other like circus clowns: Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s Eve. I feel like I’m in a three-ring circus myself, trying to juggle shopping, cleaning, errands, work, parties and events. And right when I need it the most, my energy level plummets and I resort to chocolate bars and afternoon cups of coffee. Fortunately, I recently came across an article at caring.com by Nikki Jong, called 5 Foods That Fight Fatigue. Although familiar with the nutrient-rich Super Foods -everyone-needs that protect and heal the body, I did not realize that five of these natural wonders are actually energy-boosting foods that we can count on during the day to give us long lasting, steady energy without that crash that usually comes after eating sugar or drinking caffeine.

The first fatigue-fighting food is oatmeal, which has already won high marks for being heart healthy and high in dietary fiber. Oatmeal is rich in vitamin B1, protein and magnesium, all important in energy production. I love starting off a crisp autumn morning with a steaming bowl of oatmeal, loaded with dried fruits and nuts or sliced bananas and a drizzle of honey. If you are looking for a quick and delicious option, try the Umpqua brand instant oatmeal. You just add hot water to these thick whole rolled oats and then eat right out of the individual container. This oatmeal is sweetened with Sucanat, made from crushed, freshly cut whole cane sugar, which adds a caramel-like flavor to the unbelievably rich tasting oatmeal. The flavors range from Kick Start with nuts, fruits and cinnamon to Old School with apples and cranberries.

Yogurt is another energy producer that your body can process quickly since it is such a soft, digestible food. Greek yogurt, which often has twice the protein of other yogurts, is a long lasting source of energy throughout the day. Yogurt is so easy to incorporate into any meal and it makes a great snack all on its own. Coat your chicken fillets with yogurt before rolling in bread or panko crumbs; add a dollop to a baked sweet potato; combine yogurt with a little honey, chopped crystallized ginger and a dash of curry powder for a flavorful topping for melon slices or fresh pineapple. Slow-Cooked Leg of Lamb with Spiced Yogurt and Herbs will energize any autumn evening!

Nuts and seeds are huge winners when it comes to nutrition and energy. Walnuts, in particular, are one of the Super Foods, although flaxseeds and almonds also contain omega-3 fatty acids and are a great source of long lasting energy. According to whfoods.org, magnesium plays an important role in combating muscle fatigue. Pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds and sunflower seeds are all excellent and tasty ways to add magnesium to your diet. Bissinger Chocolates offers their Naturals Collection, pumpkin, black sesame and sunflower seeds, walnuts and almonds enfolded in dark chocolate and formed into bite sized portions, perfect for a quick energy boost when you are on the go.

The last two energy boosting foods are spinach and beans. They are both loaded with fatigue- fighting minerals including magnesium, potassium and iron. Beans and spinach are also low in calories and high in fiber, making them a great addition to your menu. Fresh beans come in all shapes and sizes and make an attractive addition to an appetizer platter, such as this Mixed-Bean Crudites with Olive-Anchovy Aioli. Or cozy up to Jacques Pepin’s hardy specialty from Southwestern France, a garbure, or White-Bean-and-Ham Stew, when the busy day is done. Spinach is at home at every meal, whether in an omelet, salad, soup, or topping a pizza. It approaches heavenly when sautéed with garlic, figs and honey.

Now October is almost here, and life is already kicking into high gear. But armed with my arsenal of fatigue busters, I’m planning to enjoy and get energized this season. I hope that you will too!

Enjoy! Cheri the Cheesemonger