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Holiday cheese mistakes
Nov. 14th, 2006 09:31 amThere are some odd cheeses out there. Usually I don’t refer to them as such, figuring every cheese has the right of self-determination. Food is subjective, after all. Who am I to say that one cheese is "weirder" than another?
It’s impossible to go through a holiday season without making a buying mistake. I can handle the regular stuff with ease at this point, though walking into the cooler today will scare the crap out of me when I realize we have 10 days to sell the huge amount of cheese that will be stacked up by the end of the day. Someday I should figure out how many tons of cheese that cooler can fit but I should have two tons arriving just today. And deliveries will come in daily until a week from tomorrow.
The week and a half before Thanksgiving it’s hard to keep track of the cases that go through the store: 20 cases Fromager D’Affinois (not including the goat, pepper or garlic and herb varieties), 20 cases Brillat Savarin, 15 cases Vacherin Du Jura,* 1000 lbs of assorted Gruyeres, ** 500 lbs. of Emmental. Mozzarellas: between the Italian Buffalo milk, the domestic buffalo milk, the fresh lactose-free, the fresh whole milk, the bocconcini, the cryovac "fresh" logs and the whole milk and part skim loaves, gotta be around 1000 lbs.
That’s easy enough, you just gotta stay on top of it. No, the mistakes I make always have to do with bringing in some "fun" cheese that we’ve never had before. It’s usually an after-thought, I’ll admit it. I’ll be making sure I’ve got the basics and the fancy regulars and vendors will sense weakness and pounce.
The first mistake I made this year was really the fault of a certain distributor. I pre-ordered, for a good price, multiple cases of a domestic goat cheese in three different sweet varieties: fig, cranberry and peppadew. Despite the fact that none of their other cheeses, which I carry year round, have preservatives, all came in with natamycin. We might make an occasional exception for a preservative on a hard, inedible rind but we won’t in a fresh cheese. Order refused! The same company also distributes a Belgian goat cheese with honey during the holidays that we’ve sold the last few years. This year it came in with potassium sorbate. Grrrrrrrr.
But I predict my biggest mistake this year will be the Toledo. I was doing a large order and this Portuguese cheese was the last one offered to me. It seemed easy enough: a self-contained, firm goat, sheep, and cow milk cheese topped with spicy paprika. People are always looking for cheese they haven’t tried before during the holidays. I figured the downside was that it might be mild or bland. How could I go wrong?
"It’ll be fun." My rep promised.
I should have known.
My first mistake was that I thought it was Spanish, not Portuguese. I make it a policy not to buy Portuguese cheese untasted because while some of it is my favorite cheese in the world, it is totally unpredictable. Only on the Iberian Peninsula can you get such intense combinations of rich, sour, and pungent in cheese. In the Serra Da Estrella it’s amazing and transcendent. In some others, whether from hard travelling or from design, it’s cheese I just won’t eat.
The Toledo is certainly for lovers of unusual cheese. First off, it’s spicy hot. Unexpectedly so. Don’t get me wrong, you’ve had hotter things, it’s just unusual for a cheese to be this intense. The cheese paste itself, though infused with paprika, is fairly mild but cloyingly sweet like the inside of a hot dog wrapper
I called up my rep when I tasted the Toledo and basically asked, "What the fuck did you just sell me? Is it supposed to taste like this?"
He did the usual East Coast dodge and responded, "Well the cheesemongers in New York love it." I tell him not to fuck with the West Coast and that if he doesn’t want to end up like Biggie, he better kick down some sampling allowance.*** We worked out a deal.
There’s something I like about it even if I’m not sure exactly what to do with it. I wouldn’t combine it with fruit, maybe a dark honey, but I would eat it with a sweet baguette in a big bread:cheese ratio. Ooooh, maybe with mustard it’d be good. I’d think I’d match it with a heavy-ish beer too.
My biggest mistake wasn’t buying it, hell we can sell a couple of cases of almost anything. No, it was buying 15 cases of it. I have a feeling this will haunt me until the new year. If you’re local, come in for a taste. My co-workers are cursing me.
*Alas, no real, raw milk Vacherin this year. Still, this is one of the best cheeses available in this country, pasteurized or not.
** I underbought the L’Etivaz. A group of farmers in the Swiss Alps decided that the Swiss government was selling out the name Gruyere in the 1930’s so they opted out of the program and began making a "new" cheese that they named after their home village. It’s basically a 19th century Gruyere, made in copper pots of raw "Alpage" summer milk when the cows are at their highest altitude and the milk is the richest. By the time you read this we will probably be out.
***No, I didn’t really say that, but we did work out a deal.
It’s impossible to go through a holiday season without making a buying mistake. I can handle the regular stuff with ease at this point, though walking into the cooler today will scare the crap out of me when I realize we have 10 days to sell the huge amount of cheese that will be stacked up by the end of the day. Someday I should figure out how many tons of cheese that cooler can fit but I should have two tons arriving just today. And deliveries will come in daily until a week from tomorrow.
The week and a half before Thanksgiving it’s hard to keep track of the cases that go through the store: 20 cases Fromager D’Affinois (not including the goat, pepper or garlic and herb varieties), 20 cases Brillat Savarin, 15 cases Vacherin Du Jura,* 1000 lbs of assorted Gruyeres, ** 500 lbs. of Emmental. Mozzarellas: between the Italian Buffalo milk, the domestic buffalo milk, the fresh lactose-free, the fresh whole milk, the bocconcini, the cryovac "fresh" logs and the whole milk and part skim loaves, gotta be around 1000 lbs.
That’s easy enough, you just gotta stay on top of it. No, the mistakes I make always have to do with bringing in some "fun" cheese that we’ve never had before. It’s usually an after-thought, I’ll admit it. I’ll be making sure I’ve got the basics and the fancy regulars and vendors will sense weakness and pounce.
The first mistake I made this year was really the fault of a certain distributor. I pre-ordered, for a good price, multiple cases of a domestic goat cheese in three different sweet varieties: fig, cranberry and peppadew. Despite the fact that none of their other cheeses, which I carry year round, have preservatives, all came in with natamycin. We might make an occasional exception for a preservative on a hard, inedible rind but we won’t in a fresh cheese. Order refused! The same company also distributes a Belgian goat cheese with honey during the holidays that we’ve sold the last few years. This year it came in with potassium sorbate. Grrrrrrrr.
But I predict my biggest mistake this year will be the Toledo. I was doing a large order and this Portuguese cheese was the last one offered to me. It seemed easy enough: a self-contained, firm goat, sheep, and cow milk cheese topped with spicy paprika. People are always looking for cheese they haven’t tried before during the holidays. I figured the downside was that it might be mild or bland. How could I go wrong?
"It’ll be fun." My rep promised.
I should have known.
My first mistake was that I thought it was Spanish, not Portuguese. I make it a policy not to buy Portuguese cheese untasted because while some of it is my favorite cheese in the world, it is totally unpredictable. Only on the Iberian Peninsula can you get such intense combinations of rich, sour, and pungent in cheese. In the Serra Da Estrella it’s amazing and transcendent. In some others, whether from hard travelling or from design, it’s cheese I just won’t eat.
The Toledo is certainly for lovers of unusual cheese. First off, it’s spicy hot. Unexpectedly so. Don’t get me wrong, you’ve had hotter things, it’s just unusual for a cheese to be this intense. The cheese paste itself, though infused with paprika, is fairly mild but cloyingly sweet like the inside of a hot dog wrapper
I called up my rep when I tasted the Toledo and basically asked, "What the fuck did you just sell me? Is it supposed to taste like this?"
He did the usual East Coast dodge and responded, "Well the cheesemongers in New York love it." I tell him not to fuck with the West Coast and that if he doesn’t want to end up like Biggie, he better kick down some sampling allowance.*** We worked out a deal.
There’s something I like about it even if I’m not sure exactly what to do with it. I wouldn’t combine it with fruit, maybe a dark honey, but I would eat it with a sweet baguette in a big bread:cheese ratio. Ooooh, maybe with mustard it’d be good. I’d think I’d match it with a heavy-ish beer too.
My biggest mistake wasn’t buying it, hell we can sell a couple of cases of almost anything. No, it was buying 15 cases of it. I have a feeling this will haunt me until the new year. If you’re local, come in for a taste. My co-workers are cursing me.
*Alas, no real, raw milk Vacherin this year. Still, this is one of the best cheeses available in this country, pasteurized or not.
** I underbought the L’Etivaz. A group of farmers in the Swiss Alps decided that the Swiss government was selling out the name Gruyere in the 1930’s so they opted out of the program and began making a "new" cheese that they named after their home village. It’s basically a 19th century Gruyere, made in copper pots of raw "Alpage" summer milk when the cows are at their highest altitude and the milk is the richest. By the time you read this we will probably be out.
***No, I didn’t really say that, but we did work out a deal.
