Parmigiano-Reggiano

When most people think of Parmigiano-Reggiano they think of it as a cheese from grating onto pasta or salad. While we love the "king of cheeses" on top of a nice bowl of gnocchi or in a Cesar salad it's also fantastic as a snacking cheese.


Our cheese comes from the world-famous Cravero family affineurs in the cradle of the slow food movement in Bra, Italy. The cheese is made using raw milk from cows fed a strict diet of local forage. The cheese is made with a mix of evening and morning milks. The cream from the evening milk rises to the surface during the night and is skimmed off to make butter and ricotta. The cheese is then matured at the creamery for thirteen months. While still at the creamery Giorgio Cravero selects the wheels that he will transfer to his own maturing facility where the wheels will stay until they reach the age of at least 24 months.


Our Parmigiano-Reggiano has a softer texture than most and has a fantastic fruitiness and slight sweetness. Notes of pineapple, dried papaya, fresh baked bread and a lovely green grassiness are shown in the aroma and the flavor.


For the wine we've chosen the Ocone Falanghina del Taburno from Campania, Italy. The Ocone family has been cultivating and making wine in the Campania Region of Italy for 100 years. The Falanghina grape is an ancient white variety that is cultivated just north of Naples. This fuller bodied white wine has aromas of apricot and melon with rich, enveloping honeydew notes. The present acidity flows nicely with the lingering apricot and mango finish.


Usually consumed along the southern shores of Italy with seafood, this wine will pair nicely with the cheese due tot he cheese's saltiness and its subtle herbal nuances. While this wine is now sweet it certainly has vibrant fruit flavors that will create the fantastic salty-sweet paradigm that we all go crazy for. Come into any of our stores this weekend to get a taste of both!

For more on this fantastic cheese, it's history and why that stuff in the green can just can't compare, take a look at Cesar's informative post . Can't come to the shop? We

A Fromage-filled visit to Alsace

When I first mentioned to my chef friend Andrew that I wanted to come visit him in Luzern, he said “Oh, perhaps we could drive to Alsace and visit my affineur…” Perhaps we could drive to Alsace and visit your affineur? I booked my plane ticket pronto and asked him to arrange that visit.

We hopped in the car at 10 am on a Monday morning and after yet another scenic drive through Western Switzerland, by Noon we were in Vieux-Ferrette, a tiny Alsatian town that is the home of Maitre Antony

http://fromagerieantony.pagesperso-orange.fr/

We were given a tour of the incredible aging caves by Bernard Antony's son, Jean Francois.

The cheeses, all from France, were separated by type, from bloomy rinds

and washed rinds, to tommes, cooked curds, pressed curds, and blues. They are aged to perfection and sold to restaurants all over Europe.

He also showed off his immaculate cheese truck, a Peugeot. They use it to sell cheese at market. I want one, Uncle Ken.

After the behind the scenes tour, we admired the Antony cheese case, which is open to the public. I bought a 3 year aged Beaufort that made me weak in the knees.

Then Jean Francois invited us into the tasting room where he presented this:

and this:

This lovely Domaine Albert Boxler riesling is made just an hour away in Niedermorschwir, and we loved it so much that Jean Francois called the winemaker for us and we arranged an impromptu tasting in this quaint old town with a view of the steeply pitched vineyards of Sommerberg.

But I digress. For all you cheese geeks out there I will list the cheeses on our tasting plate.

For the rest of you, I bid you adieu, with the recommendation to visit Maitre Antony and Son if you ever find yourself in the Haut Rhins region of Alsace.

Clockwise starting at bottom:

Tomme d'Augine, a fresh chevre from the Auvergne

a Vacherin Mont d'Or from Savoie

Ardi Gasna

Tomme Girassou, a 6 month aged goat

Chaource, from Champagne of course

A raw farmstead Pont l'Eveque from Normandy

That Beaufort from the Alpes Savoie

and the blue, Fourme d'Ambert

Please forgive my spellings--as you can see the case has no signage and I had to go by the verbal descriptions.

-Lisa Futterman

Cheese Lover’s Dream Day in Switzerland

On the Sunday afternoon of my recent vacation visit to Luzern Switzerland, my hosts packed me and the kids in the car and drove 30 minutes to the postcard-worthy town at the base of Mount Titlis, a beautiful resort called Engelberg. We passed para-gliders and senior citizens frolicking in the glorious September sunshine. Our destination: the Cheese Factory at Engelberg Monastery. Now, I have visited a lot of cheese-makers, and in fact, I’ve visited a lot of monasteries. As we entered the factory, I thought to myself, this place reminds me of the Mars Cheese Castle. But my first impression was wrong. What struck me about Engelberg was that there was a man actually making cheese, taking us through the process from start to finish, in a glass enclosure in the middle of this touristy looking souvenir shop.

Step by step, live and in person, he warmed the local cow's milk, added the cultures and rennet, set and cut the curd, and hand ladled the curds into molds. A tiny temperature controlled demo cave showed the bloomy rind developing on the Engelberger Klosterglocke (a brie style cheese shaped like a bell) cheese at one, three and five days of age.

(For a great explanation of how they make soft-ripened cheese, visit this link:

http://www.schaukaeserei-engelberg.ch/texte/milch-en.html)

Thus inspired, we sought fortification up the hill on the sundeck at the 200 year old Alpenclub, an old-school Swiss chalet serving local specialties like fondue, buendnerfleisch (air-dried beef) and speck overlooking the ski lifts.

Our next stop was 10 km up the mountain on a winding, single lane road that switchbacked through the Alpine pastures. As the big brown cows lifted their heads to see who was passing, the bells around their necks would clang. I thought Julie Andrews would run out singing at any moment. But instead we stopped when we saw this sign

on the side of a barn. Translation “Cheese for sale. Please ring the bell.” Yes. Inside, we tasted 3 year old Sbrinz, an Alpine version of Parmesan, and several other mountain style cheeses (Alpenkase) of various ages made on the farm.

Seeing that we were not just your average tourists, the frau showed us the cheese-making facility

and the aging rooms while the kids chased the uninterested cows.

When we got back to the apartment in Luzern, Andrew plugged in the raclette machine and cut huge slabs of Rolf Beeler’s Swiss Raclette, and we melted and scraped and ate cheese until sunset. A mountain cheese lover’s dream day.

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Posted by Lisa Futterman. I run the wholesale cheese program at Pastoral. We sell artisan cheeses to over 40 Chicagoland area restaurants and retailers.