Abbaye de Tamié, or The Good Life

What does the good life mean to you? As any good student of political philosophy will tell you, the very definition of the ‘good life’ is such a bedevilling concept that it fouls most any attempts to create a universally acceptable form of government, what with so many different understandings of the phrase going around.

These Trappist monk guys, though, they have got a clear idea of the good life. Worship, serve, and know God. Make delicious cheese. Surely something more, but at least those two basic steps. If it weren’t for my very much decided dedication to this whole marriage thing, I’d say that sounds like a real winner of a life plan! I mean, some Trappists even throw in making the best beer. in. the. world*. What a daily routine! 

Origin: Savoie, France

Milk: Cow, unpasteurized

Affinage: 4-8 weeks

Notes:

Favorite cheese for people who like to say “heeyyyabooooooott!!”

Thoughts:

The tang and funk of the raw milk hits you on the front end, but all in all a mild and unassuming cheese befitting the style. It has a clean and neutral aftertaste, like water that has run over mountain grasses. This is a creamy textured cheese, but airy and light. Similar mouth feel to Taleggio, without the punch. Smells nutty, and slightly of hay. Very light notes of wild garlic. 

*Send all hate mail to keepyourtrashIPAs@hipster.barf 

Voralberger Kristallkäse, or The Stink King of Austria

Dear reader,

Usually I’d say avoid products sold to you by the gram and beginning with the word “kristal..”. If you have a trustworthy cheese guy, though, and it’s on sale… I mean… if it’s on sale. For today’s post I take the plunge and you can read from the safety of your couch. Or wherever you’re reading this from. Bathroom, probably. 

Origin: Bregenzer Wald, Voralberg, Austira

Rennet: ?

Milk: cow… raw?!

Affinage: 12 months

Notes: 

Who has time for notes?! Lets do this!

Thoughts:

New York’s hottest club is SPICY!!!!! 

The first bite hits the nose hairs like a fireball. This is sharp, harsh, and aggressive. I get a lot of garlic, hot and firey like eating raw garlic. The front end is like hitting the sweet spot on an aged cheddar, but then it all builds and overpowers you. The flavor lingers all down the back of your throat. Buttefat blends into garlic, which then just stays. This will get into your pores, and it stays like an unwelcome guest. The odd calcium crystal is a treat, but the texture is generally totally overshadowed by the flavor. Could be substituted for smelling salts for bringing the dead back to life. This is a rare cheese, in that I had a hard time finishing it. The second and third bite were just the same, the second day of eating it just the same. This is seriously the funkiest and stinkiest cheese I’ve had since… since Gamalost. It may not take that crown (perhaps nothing ever will) but this is a contender. 

This cheese easily makes the top 5 stinkiest list. Be ready for your whole refrigerator to smell like this cheese and nothing else. Stinky cheese lovers rejoice! 

Ricotta Fresca de Parma, San Salvatore, or The Dirtbag Grand Tour Pt. 2

Ricotta. How is it that the world is not just raving about ricotta? I mean, if you were to believe the news, avocados are effectively the only thing that ‘irresponsible’ millennials are allowed to spread on toast, cover with salt and balsamic vinegar, and crush into their mouths to drown out their sorrow at the economy, political system, and environment having been left in ruins by previous generations.

But the news is wrong! There’s also ricotta. And ricotta toast. And it's one of my favorite cheeses/meals. It doesn’t do much to stop the privatization and degradation of irreplaceable public lands, it doesn’t help in the fight to ‘throw the bums out’ and restore credibility to a representative democracy, and it doesn’t look likely to bring the average wage into sync with this decade(century)…. oh guys. But it tastes good.

I’m not advocating for gastronomic escapism. Maybe I just need a little lift today in light of the realization that all the relative stability we take for granted is in fact an incredibly fragile and delicate dance that, if history is to be relied on even a little, will surely collapse under the fatigue and strain, and that this will likely happen in our lifetimes. I don’t mean to cry wolf here on this forum usually dedicated to the pure pursuit of the ultimate curd, I just wonder if the Viennese born into the twilight of the 19th century ever thought things could ever fall apart so badly so quickly. 

Origin: Parma, Italy

Rennet: Animal

Milk: Cow

Affinage: fresh!!!

Notes: 

I’ll try to stay on topic here. Ricotta is, of course, not a cheese at all. Much in the way that Geitost ist a tricky and delicious repurposing of whey, the main byproduct of cheesemaking, Ricotta is actually a result of a further heating and handling of whey. This is great news for us, as it is generally well priced and almost universally delicious and adaptable. Even your supermarket brand will be good in recipes or dressed up with toppings, but a few special producers make a product so clean, so pure you will want to eat this right from the container. Today’s example is one such product. We picked this little number up at the Caseificio Sociale S. Salvatore when we stopped by for the Parmigiano Reggiano I wrote of recently. We had been sleeping in tents and cooking our meals over camp stoves for a few days at that point, just soaking in the absolute beauty of northern Italy's lakes. Our friends are masters of the camp stove gourmet meal, but we all agreed the short pit stop we made eating this container of Ricotta was a highlight meal of the trip. We bought it more as an afterthought after getting our requisite half kilo of 3 year Parm. I won’t torture you by telling you how little all this cost when buying it from the actual guy who stirs the milk vats…. but let’s just say the economics make a man start considering the costs of annual plane tickets compared to the relative savings on supermarket prices. But Ricotta! Best impulse buy of my life. I mean, if you are working with the same cows that make the milk for Parmigiano Reggiano… well would you want to let one drop of that white gold go to waste? Me neither. 

Thoughts:

Do you know those nature programs, where you see a snowy hillside and on that hillside there is actually a snowshoe hare or a snowy owl? This cheese tastes as fresh and as light as that new snow, quiet and smooth. It is rich. It is silky. It is everything Ricotta fresca should be, a delicate but indulgent bite that works as well savory with tomato and balsamic as it does sweet with honey or jam. The velvety texture begs to be heaped generously on bread or crackers and gives a mouthfeel that deserves its own blog post. Never has so little money purchased so much luxury. 

Seriously. #RicottaToastRevolution. 

On an unrelated note, avocados in Germany are 1) absurdly expensive and b) usually awful. Didn't know avocados could be awful? Neither did I. But I hate it. You know what doesn't let me down here? You guessed it: ricotta.  

Zillertaler Bergkäse, or Bergkäse for Bergpeople

How far are you willing to go for cheese? To what lengths would you strive to satisfy a craving for the best bite, the king of curd, the champion of cheese? Cheese is, after all, not for the faint of heart, for those content to know nothing but marble cheddar and mild gouda. The pursuit of cheese will take one far beyond the safe harbors of cheese sticks and ‘mexican four blend’ and lead him into alien and unknown seas with nothing but wits and the audacity to dare to guide him. And maybe also this blog. This blog would probably also be a decent guide. 

This summer I posed myself this very question, as a trail map betrayed a dairy up and away from the beaten path. I was on a hiking trip in the Zillertal in Austria, and although I had not planned on any particular culinary diversions life sometimes surprises you in the most charming way. So it was that, on a cold, rainy, utterly cloud-bound day my companions and I set off up a dirt road following signs for “Stoankaser’n”. 

Would it be open? 
Would it be closed? 
What awaited us at the end of the trail?

The sound of our boots was all we could hear over the gently falling rain, visibility came and went as we broke into and out of one fog bank after another. As we climbed higher and higher spirits began to falter, we had been hiking for 5 days already through snow and rain and intense heat. As we rounded a hillside we caught sight of some fellow travelers we’d been smelling for the last kilometer or so; a great herd of dairy cows. This was a good sign. Like the sirens of the Odyssey, they managed to derail a number of our group from the task at hand to take obligatory cow selfies. The rest of us pushed forward, our eyes searching longingly for a gently puffing chimney and the lighted windows of a cozy ‘Alm’. 

The well kept forest that had originally made up our surroundings gradually gave way to low shrubs and pasture grasses rolling up the hillsides and out of sight into the clouds. Now and then great and violent rocky outcroppings would tower over us only to sink away into the grass a few steps up the road. We came to one building that looked promising, just beyond a cattle gate, but were let down to see there was no one home. The road continued on, though, and so did we. 

Finally, near the top of this narrow valley we’d been tracing, just as the two sides met and began their steep final climb to the ridge above, we saw it: The Stoankaser’n. What does ‘stoankaser’n’ mean? I have been learning and speaking German now for ten years and I hesitate to answer. My German friends who were with me that day couldn’t do much better. In this context, though, it meant ‘victory’. The finish line in sight, our spirits soared and we strove on with a new warmth in our wet and weary bones. 

Upon poking our heads through the door and out of the rain and into the warmth of the Alm, we knew the journey up had been worth it. A few other brave adventurers were gathered around their tables laughing and talking about their hikes, but our party of 10 easily found seats; the weather had kept the more timid away that day. A family operation, using milk exclusively from the dairy cows we had passed on our walk up, this dairy/alm combination was something from a fairy tale. Not just because it was warm and had a large ceramic oven to dry our clothing on. Not just because you can peek in to the one-room, one-man dairy and see the monumental Bergkäse forms that the husband fills every morning. The menu was traditional Alm fare, including an egg-noodle and cheese dish called Spätzle and great big slices of cured pork belly. The coffee drinks and hot chocolate were made with the raw milk from the local cows and tasted decadent and one of a kind. The service was friendly and food was filling. 

And you could buy cheese there, too. So naturally I did. That is the story of how I came to be in possession, if only for a short time, of a true jewel of a Bergkäse, a testimony to its title, Stoankaser’n Zillertaler Bergkäse.  

Origin: Junsbachtal, Zillertal, Austria

Rennet: Animal

Milk: Cow, unpasteurized

Affinage: 8-12 months

Notes:

Looks like Bergkäse. Is Bergkäse. These are not cheeses to be daintily put on a pedestal or made up with garnish. They call for honest beer and plain talk. The dairy cooperative in the valley is remote enough that the family usually doesn’t even overnight at the Alm but travels in from home to help with the patrons. 

Thoughts:

This rich and full fat cheese welcomes you with notes of mushrooms and sweet grass, not so much caramel as the greener sweetness of sugarcane. Towards the end hints of garlic rise and fall and overall you get a complex but perfectly blended cheese, delicious and full bodied. There is no drama to this cheese, but it is truly a stand-alone and worthy example of the style.

The photos don't even do it justice, this was truly the tastiest Kasspatzen in the most delightful setting, and all you had to do was hike uphill (bothways?) through the rain and fog. So worth it. Never have I been more glad to own rain pants and a rain jacket. I also had the buttermilk and a raw milk hot chocolate. So choice. Mouth currently watering.