A Vegetarian's Guide to the Cheese Shop // Part II
Meet Eliza, our cheese shops’ resident vegetarian! She’ll be showing you around the shop from an herbivore’s point of view. This is the first in a multi-part series.
This past month I turned 24, marking a decade-long abstinence from meat consumption. Eating vegetarian has become a deeply ingrained habit for me and when I started working at the France 44 Cheese Shop last September, I made it my job to carve a vegetable-shaped path through my experience.
Despite the presence of countless delicious (allegedly) meat-centric products, the France 44 and St. Paul Cheese Shops have a bounty of vegetarian options. Back in June, I shared a few tips to following an herbivore's lifestyle and here I am again to bestow some more knowledge upon you vegetable lovers. This time I’ll focus more on home cooking and the great products you can buy at our cheese shops to create delectable meals of your own.
1.Whole Milk Ricotta, the single best-kept secret of the Cheese Shop Our Ricotta comes from Calabro Cheese Corporation, in my beloved home state of Connecticut. This fluffy, luscious, smooth ricotta was originally distributed out of New Haven—home to the country’s best pizzeria and Mecca for delicious Italian fare—so you know it’s good. Though we don’t sell this cheese directly out of our case, we almost always have it, so please ask us to package some up for you!
Ricotta is versatile. You can bake it in lasagna, put it on pizza, eat it for breakfast on toast with honey, or have us smear it all over your favorite sandwich. Calabro ricotta is fresh and delicious and if you are anything like me, you will steal a bite whenever you can.
2. Pasta! So all this talk of Italian food has you hungry for pasta. Well you’re in luck because we sell pasta in every shape and size! Trust me, I have a new appreciation for our selection after having recently rearranged the shelves. We have a lot of pasta and it's all impeccably made. From buccatini to ringlets to shells, we’ve got it. And you can also always ask a monger if you need a recommendation. Pick up pasta with some delicious Scarpetta sauce or our house-made Smoked Paprika Parmesan and you are good to go. Mix in some grilled vegetables from our deli case for that extra wow factor.
3. Soup Though it’s only August, fall is right around the corner and that means soup. We offer a smattering of delicious vegetarian soups in the grab-and-go case. Here are some of my favorites:
• Carrot Fennel: Oh man, it is simple and delicious and it’s so healthy it’s almost like you went for a run just by eating it. Shave some of our Cravero Parmigiano-Reggiano right on top and invite me over for dinner. And don’t forget to dip one of our freshly baked baguettes in that bowl of golden soup!
• Gazpacho: I know I know, I’m getting hasty thinking about fall and not even savoring summer, the absolute best season of the year. Gazpacho is basically synonymous with summer soup so eat some chilled deliciousness on your next picnic at the beach.
• Tomato Soup: Let the tomatoes speak for themselves! They are delicious and so is this soup, which truly highlights all the natural sweetness and deliciousness of everyone’s favorite summer vegetable.
4. Melts
In my last post, I told you all about the different vegetarian sandwiches you can order at the cheese shop. What I failed to mention is that every once and a while it’s important to switch it up. Regular sandwiches are great, but you know what can be even better? Melts. Offered exclusively at our St. Paul Cheese Shop, our savory Melts are decadent, oozy grilled cheese sandwiches that are oh so vegetarian-friendly! Unlike our cold sandwich menu, which skews to the meaty side of things, more than half of our St. Paul shop's Melts are meat free. Check out these mouth-watering options:
• Barber’s English Cheddar and house-made harrissa • Melodie Comté with caramelized onions and whole grain mustard • Calabro whole milk mozzarella with house-made tomato-garlic confit • Double cream brie with cranberry chutney
And the best part? Each Melt is served with a shot of the tomato soup I mentioned above. Perfect!
I’m happy to say, after working at the Cheese Shop for nearly a year, I am still discovering new vegetarian indulgences. Remember, you can always ask your cheese monger for vegetarian options or alternatives. Enjoy that meat-free lifestyle!
A Vegetarian's Guide to the Cheese Shop // Part I
Meet Eliza, our cheese shops' resident vegetarian! She'll be showing you around the shop from an herbivore's point of view. This is the first in a multi-part series.
We’ve entered a new era of ethical eating here in Minneapolis. From Wise Acre’s locally-sourced produce, poultry, and meat to our friends at Red Table Meat Co. in Northeast Minneapolis, the Artisanal Meat Renaissance is upon us. Heck, we just opened a brand new nose-to-tail butcher shop in St. Paul! And while I am totally down with these conscientious consumption practices, I find my once thriving cohort of vegetarians quickly dwindling. So this blog post is for you, my fellow vegetable lovers. This is your Vegetarian’s Guide to the Cheese Shop.
As the sole vegetarian among a staff of carnivorous cheesemongers, I’ve come to learn a few tricks about eating at the France 44-St. Paul Cheese Shops. Though it may seem like we have many meat-filled treats, there is always a vegetarian-sized loophole.
1. Vegetarian Surprise With the recent renovation of our sandwich menu, you might have noticed that your go-to veggie sandwiches are now missing. Before you mourn their loss, recognize that this is an opportunity for you to get something totally crazy and new. Order a veggie surprise! From our sweet and spicy pepper onion relish to harissa to garlic pickles, there are lots of ingredients that you’ve probably never had before. Find new frontiers! Explore your palette! Order that veggie surprise!
2. You’re Not That Into Surprises? Well, the vegetarian sandwiches you loved (and a few new ones) are still available on the Unofficial Secret Vegetarian Menu. All you have to do is ask.
Classic Mozz Veg: Oozing with tomato-garlic confit goodness paired perfectly with some refreshing mozzarella and topped off with crunchy greens. I bet you miss this guy, but you know what? He’s still there. Our sandwich line is stocked with the ingredients, so you can order it anytime. Substitute the mozzarella with chèvre or brie depending on your mood.
RGC: This delicious sandwich is spread with creamy house-made roasted garlic chèvre (a.k.a. RGC), dusted with smoky paprika and banyuls, enhanced with caramelized onions, and completed with greens. YUM.
Pear Brie: Yep, I just coined a new sandwich. It's a combination of double-cream Fromage D’Affinois with lots of sweet and savory house-made pear mostarda, a drizzle of honey, and some greens. This is one of my favorite go-to sandwiches and it never disappoints. Try it on a baguette if you feel like getting fancy. [pictured at top]
3. Salad! A little known cheese shop fact--we make lots of awesome salads. Let us put our creative forces to good work and whip up something new and exciting for you! Just order a surprise salad, we’ll know what you mean.
4. The Untapped Land of the Deli Case It’s summertime and that means the deli case at our Minneapolis shop is bursting with lots of fresh fruits and vegetables. It’s the best season to be a vegetarian! Now is your chance to capitalize. Check out a few of my favorite items:
Polenta Cakes: These crisped, corn-based cakes are perfect warmed and topped with your favorite cheese, Mexican mole, or salsa. Garnish with cilantro if you’re really feeling fresh.
Snap Pea and Ginger Slaw: Refreshing AND beautiful. Enjoy it as a snack, down it is as a palette cleanser, eat it as a meal. Just make sure you eat it.
Strawberry Kale Salad: Strawberries, cashews, roasted red peppers, hearty kale massaged by hand. Does it get any better?
Song’s Pasta Salad: Tomatoes + Feta + Orzo Pasta + Dill X A hint of olive oil = One perfect summer pasta salad
Okay, have I convinced you yet? The cheese shop is practically a vegetarian’s mecca! Don’t let the meaty facade fool you. There is so much to enjoy. I haven’t even mentioned the bounty of delicious grocery items (hellooooo INNA Jam) or the sweet treats or that refreshing gazpacho. Stay tuned for future blogs posts from your favorite (and only) vegetarian cheesemonger.
--Eliza Summerlin
Diary of a Meat Shop // III
We’re opening up a third location–this time, a butcher shop on Grand Ave in St. Paul. Our Cheesemonger-In-Chief will be chronicling the adventure here on the blog. Look for our shop in June!
Of course, our new butcher shop will have sandwiches. Of course! It's one of our favorite things to champion at the Cheese Shops. But because the Meat Shop is just a 5-minute walk from our cheese shop on Grand Ave, we knew the Meat Shop sandwiches would have to be their own thing--a brand new army of lunchtime goodies.
I love a great sandwich, but I'm consistently frustrated by the choices here in the Twin Cities. I never seem to find exactly what I'm craving. So when we started messing around with the sandwich menu for the Meat Shop, my first inclination was towards the killer pastrami sandwich I've been dreaming of. It’s a bit of an obsession and really difficult to get right. But I figured a new butcher shop would be the perfect excuse to give it a shot!
Our team members are big fans of composed sandwiches, as opposed to the Subway-like choose-your-own-adventure style. On a composed sandwich, each ingredient is purposeful and doesn't compete with the rest of its friends in between the bread. We've been working for months now on a set of composed sandwiches--including that fabled pastrami--that will wow our Meat Shop patrons.
As of this blog post, we are still working on the pastrami. And if it isn’t exactly right by the time we open, then we’ll just have to open without it. But that's because recipe testing for every aspect of this new business has been exhaustive. Recipe testing is a funny thing because it's like working in a vacuum. We know what we think is delicious and we just have to hope that our customers will enjoy what we come up with. In the past, our team has obsessed over a detail at one of our shops for hours, only to realize that the idea wasn’t quite right in the first place. To combat this, I’ve eaten countless iterations of sandwiches, cookies, spice rubs, marinades, and more. Tough work, I know. And this testing doesn’t even include the 15 different NY Strips our team has consumed from every meat counter in town. But I'm hoping this attention to detail will equal a menu that satisfies some of the other latent sandwich cravings floating around the Twin Cities and keep our customers coming back for a sandwich they can count on.
Want a preview of the menu? See it here >>
--Benjamin Roberts, Cheesemonger-In-Chief
Diary of a Meat Shop // Part II
We’re opening up a third location–this time, a butcher shop on Grand Ave in St. Paul. Our Cheesemonger-In-Chief will be chronicling the adventure here on the blog.
A butcher shop had been on our radar for several years. Partly because we feel the Twin Cities are underserved by specialty meat providers, but mostly because we feel passionately that selling humanely-raised meat is a natural extension of what we already do. We ask lots questions before a cheese finds a home in our case, to make sure it's something we adore and can stand behind. This level of examination is the starting point for our butcher shop.
Our food landscape is crowded with buzzwords: “local”, “natural”, “artisan” are just a few of the descriptors thrown at food. It's hard to know what to do with these words. Which is why we hope that shopping at one of our cheese (and soon meat) shops is a conversation. We will tell you why we find something delicious or why a product exists in our shop, and then you can make the informed decision whether or not to enjoy it.
I know that I want to know where my food is coming from, so I hope that most of our customers wish the same. Our team has spent many hours researching Minnesota farms and farmers, and then tasting their goods to be sure that flavor also aligns with ethical practices. We truly hope that all of that investigation and diligence will result in delicious meat from people who are just as passionate as we are.
We'll be opening in June, featuring meats from these venerable local producers. Can't wait!:
Lamb Shoppe | Hutchinson, MN Yker Acres | Wrenshall, MN Kadejan | Glenwood, MN Hidden Stream Farm | Elgin, MN --Benjamin Roberts, Cheesemonger-In-Chief