Rose Veal

by Benjamin Roberts

A number of years ago a local farmer named Tom Hunter approached us about selling veal he was raising. Up until meeting Tom, we had not considered selling veal, as it didn’t fit our model of ethically raised meat. No need to recount the horrors of commercial veal production in this space, the internet will be happy to inform you of the unconscionable treatment of calves raised for veal.

Tom presented a much different idea of veal—a traditional method which allows the calf access to pasture in addition to its mother’s milk. Rose veals presents much more like grass fed beef than the ultra white confinement veal that most folks are used to. We covet this protein for it’s deep, complex flavor as well as it’s beautiful tenderness.

Each year Tom’s retirement project weighs on him a little more and he suggests this year might be the last. We will enjoy this incredible treat for as long as possible, as it really is one of the truest expressions of care for an animal that we can provide to our customers.

If you’re interested in learning much, much more about rose veal, click HERE for a wonderful, in depth exploration.

The Pairing: Brabander Reserve + Adelsheim Pinot Noir

by Sophia Stern

Why we love the cheese 

A fan favorite for a reason. Brabander goat gouda is tangy, creamy, savory, and sweet making it the perfect cheese for a crowd. Aged for over 24 months, Brabander Reserve boasts a creamy paste that’s chock full of those desirable crunchy crystals. Fromagerie l’Amuse has done it again, crafting another successful batch of this holiday exclusive. 

Why we love the wine 

A genre defying Willamette Valley Pinot Noir from a legendary, founding Willamette Valley vineyard. This wine is the epitome of what we love in our Oregon Pinots, bursting with juicy raspberries and warm cinnamon. It drinks fresh and smooth. Try serving it with a 30-minute chill to amplify the flavors.  

Why we love the pairing 

The Pinot Noir invigorates the Brabander Reserve. This delicious gouda is rich and intense, but the Adelsheim makes the cheese’s texture far less dense. The wine brings playful acidity and draws out the sweetness from the gouda's creamy paste. The tang of cream from the cheese rounds out the earthier notes of the pinot, without covering them at all. 

What else you should do with it   

If you’re looking for a festive appetizer to serve at a holiday gathering, this pairing would lend itself perfectly to a mushroom toast. Toast some darker bread (like Baker’s Field Table Loaf), cover in sautéed mixed mushrooms seasoned with salt, pepper, and thyme, and grate Brabander Reserve over the top. The earthy, savory, tangy notes of the toast will go perfectly with a bottle of the Adelsheim Pinot Noir.  

Cook like a Cheesemonger: Rush Creek Reserve Bake

by Austin Coe Butler

Rush Creek Reserve is a highly coveted, seasonal cheese made from the raw, autumn milk of cows at the precise moment they transition from fresh pasture to cured hay. This decadent, custard-like cheese is girdled in a band of spruce, which imparts a woodsiness at home in the winter kitchen and at holiday meals. Cheesemaker Andy Hatch was inspired to make Rush Creek Reserve by his time as an apprentice cheesemaker in the Jura region of France where he made Vacherin Mont d’Or, another coveted, seasonal, and spruce wrapped soft cheese. While often compared to Mont d’Or, Rush Creek Reserve is a unique and incredible cheese in its own right.

I’ve written previously about baking your Rush Creek and its place on my Thanksgiving table, but here is a nod to the traditional Mont d’Or bake you’d find people enjoying in the Jura on a special occasion or winter’s night. It’s bound to leave you scraping the last of your Rush Creek from its bark.

1 Rush Creek Reserve

1 garlic clove, minced

3 or 4 springs of hearty, winter herbs like rosemary, thyme, sage, marjoram, or savory, minced

3 teaspoons dry white wine 

1 lb/450 g fingerling potatoes

An assortment of charcuterie like speck, France 44’s house made summer sausage, or Lowry Hill Provisions salami 

Cornichons or other pickles

Good bread like Patisserie 46 Baguette or Baker’s Field Table Loaf, both available at France 44

Preheat your oven to 375º F.

Cut the top off the Rush Creek Reserve and set it aside. Add the garlic and herbs before mixing. Add the wine and cover with the top. Place the Rush Creek on a sheet of tinfoil and wrap the foil around the sides of the cheese. You can make this look as elegant as you’d like. Bake the Rush Creek for 15-20 minutes until hot, but not overcooked and split.

Meanwhile, place the whole, unpeeled potatoes in a pot of cold, salted water and bring to a boil. Drop the heat to a simmer and cook for 10 minutes or until tender. Drain and reserve in the hot pot.

While the Rush Creek bakes, assemble your spread. Slice the bread or tear it apart with your hands. Shingle the speck. Slice the salami. Shake the brine from the cornichons. Serve the potatoes piping hot. Pour yourself a glass of wine.

Once the Rush Creek is ready, serve it immediately with small plates and a single spoon. This is a meal best enjoyed with your hands. There’s nothing quite like the snap of a potato split in two and dipped into bubbling cheese.

The Roast Quartet

by Nick Mangigian

With Thanksgiving only a week away, it's official: we're in feast season. There is no better balance between abundance, deliciousness, and sneaky economy than putting an awesome roast in the oven for your guests.

The holy quartet of roasts, in our opinion, is as follows: 

Prime Rib: The most decadent of them all. We recommend about one pound per person if opting for bone-in, and we are always happy to take the bones off and tie them back on (a process known as "Chicago-ing") if you ask. The absolute best way to cook this is a reverse sear, which takes time but is foolproof if you have an instant read thermometer. Our dedicated meatmongers would love to talk you through this. The important thing to remember is that medium rare, or even medium, beats rare on prime rib-- you want that fat to render!

Filet Mignon: The king of steaks, and deceptively easy. If you have a gas grill, there is no better way to cook one of those, although the oven/broiler combination is a good one too. 8oz of meat per person is a good rule of thumb, and you can either reverse sear this, or start it off hot to get nice color and then finish at lower heat until you've reached a final temp of 130 for medium rare.

Chicken: For three adults, or two adults and two kids, a roast chicken is a wonderful, comforting meal, and you can move mountains with two chickens. About an hour and 10 minutes in the oven at 450 is a bulletproof way to get crispy, golden skin and succulent meat that temps at 160.

Turkey: Everybody fears the biggest, baddest bird of them all (it was almost our national bird!), but turkey is really just a massive chicken. You'll want to treat it more gently to get it up to temp, and then blast it at the end to brown the skin.

The three biggest favors you can do with yourself on any roast, though, are the following:

• An instant-read thermometer is your friend! If you have one of these, and the internet, there is never any doubt about what temp you want to cook your beautiful piece of meat to.

• A preparatory dry brine makes a MASSIVE difference on how juicy and delicious your roast will turn out. As a rule of thumb: ¾ tsp of salt per pound of meat, and half that amount of black pepper, will lead to a memorably awesome roast.

• Let the roast rest! The bigger the piece of meat, the longer the rest, but generally speaking 10 minutes is a good amount to keep things juicy. You get about 7 or 8 degrees of carryover cooking during the rest period, so it's important to pull your roast off the heat before it's reached your goal temperature, and to let it rest far away from the heat source (ie, not on the grill or in a turned-off oven).

Roast easy, friends, and as always-- we are glad to help talk you through your next cooking adventure!

The Pairing: Rush Creek + Voirin-Jumel Champagne

by Sophia Stern

Why we love the cheese 

Showstopping, festive, satisfying and delicious, Rush Creek Reserve is what holiday dreams are made of. A spruce-wrapped, raw milk cheese that’s divinely custardy and fascinatingly savory. We’ve waxed poetically about this cheese so many times. If you don’t believe us, you’re just going to have to try it for yourself.  

Why we love the wine 

An incredible wine with amazing flavor at a frankly unbelievable price. True, delicious Champagne from a small producer focusing on the big three Champagne grapes: Pinot Noir, Chardonay, and Pinot Meunier. Roasty toasty notes of hazelnut, fresh almonds, and just baked pastry jump out of the glass. This sparkler is everything you want out of Champagne and perfect for celebrations and casual indulgences alike.  

Why we love the pairing 

Texture, texture, texture.  The liveliness of the bubble structure in the Champagne is an excellent partner to the dense, rich, enveloping Rush Creek. It offers some relief, but the bubbles also invigorate the cheese, opening the texture up and allowing more nuanced flavors to break through the richness.  

What else you should do with it   

Rush Creek doesn’t need any twists; just embrace the ritual of enjoying this once-a-year-icon. Share it with your people (maybe at Thanksgiving or Christmas), set the Rush Creek out of the fridge six or more hours before serving so it’s fully room temperature, slice the top off, and dive in. Pour everyone a glass of the Voirin-Jumel and watch the cheese disappear.  

Meet the Monger: Sara

So how’d you find yourself working at France 44?

Many years ago, I worked in restaurants. I always worked front of house — serving, hosting. Then I joined the corporate world for six years working in project management and software development. The corporate life just wasn’t for me, and I wanted to get back into the food scene in some way. I saw that France 44 was hiring and was excited by the opportunities to learn here. I knew about France 44 because I frequented the St. Paul Cheese Shop when I was a student at Macalester.

What have you learned working here? What has surprised you?

I’ve been so impressed with the size and scope of the operation here. When you just walk in the door, you don’t see how many people work to make this place possible every day — the kitchen staff, the mongers, there are so many moving pieces. I’ve loved learning more about the sourcing of cheese & eat, the grocery buying, all the thought put into what we decide to put on our shelves.

Favorite cheese so far?

Brabander Goat Gouda.

Favorite sandwich?

The Spicy Monger has been my favorite ever since my days getting sandwiches at the St. Paul Cheese Shop.

What do you like to do when you’re not at work?

I love to be outside, walk my dog, bike around the likes, read, cook, daydream about home improvement projects…

Ok last question - It’s your day off and you’re going out to eat. Where are you going?

For breakfast, definitely Our Kitchen. For dinner or drinks, Petit Leon. And I also do love Good Times pizza.

Cook Like a Monger: Pan Seared Duck Breast with Couscous

by Matt Gruber

Quack quack, quack quack quack honk... Ahem, excuse me I forget sometimes not everyone can read duck - but duck is exactly what we are cooking this week. Never in my adult life did I think I'd return to duck. It was a dish served to a young me, beer can style, shotgun pellets on the side. Absolutely horrified and having an immature palate I had no idea what I was consuming. This was all just normal cabin life at the time; you know, ants in the syrup are just added protein vibes. I always tell this story and it is funny to look back on, but I figured duck was spoiled for me forever.

Flash forward to a little local butcher shop sourcing humanely raised, locally sourced, delicious duck (hold the shotgun pellets) - my mind was changed.

It's speculated that long before everyone's favorite dinner option was chicken, duck was the real star. The Chinese domesticated ducks some 4000 years ago and started the legacy of this delicious dinner option which now offers so many different directions, spins, and takes on countless dishes. Trying to not do duck à l'orange as a tired cliché of the 1960's, I wanted to still incorporate orange, but add a little rosemary and make a nice finishing sauce to add on top while keeping the duck simple with salt and pepper. To accompany this, I've also whipped up a side of Les Moulins Mahjoub hand rolled couscous with almonds and cranberry. A perfect dish for a perfect fall day.

1 Duck breast
1 knob of butter
1/2 cup Dried almonds
1/2 cup Dried cranberries
1 cup couscous
1 1/2 cup chicken stock for couscous
3/4 cup chicken stock for sauce
1 tbsp cumin
1 tbsp cinnamon
1 orange plus zest
2 sprigs rosemary
1 tbsp onion, minced

Sauce
Add 3/4 cup chicken stock, knob of butter, juice of one large orange plus zest, and rosemary sprigs to the saucepan and bring to a boil. Once a rolling boil is reached, reduce heat and simmer until thick. (should thicken out by the end of all the cooking)

Couscous

Lightly toast almonds, cranberries, and onions prior to adding in chicken stock and bringing to a boil. Add in 1 cup couscous, slightly cover and reduce heat- wait until couscous has absorbed all the chicken stock.

Duck Breast

Start your duck breast skin side down on a cold cast iron or your favorite heavy bottom pan, heat set to medium/medium-low. Cook for 5-6 minutes or until golden crispy skin. Flip over and cook for 2 minutes, remove from pan and let rest for another 3 minutes.

Plate and enjoy!

Gotthelf Slow Food Emmentaler

By Austin Coe Butler

Weighing in at a truly colossal 225 pounds, the Gotthelf Slow Food Emmentaler is by far the biggest cheese to have graced our shop. That’s almost three times as heavy as a wheel of Parmigiano Reggiano or Gruyère. It rightfully deserves its stately place in our cheese vault that you can see upon entering the shop. But what’s even more impressive than its stature is its fidelity to traditional practices that make it a delicious piece of living history.

One of the immediate distinguishing features of the cheese is the gorgeous silhouette on top that recounts the tale Die Käserei der Vehfreude, or “The Cheese Factory in Vehfreude,” by Jeremias Gotthelf, a Swiss pastor and writer, whose name the cheese bears in his honor. In the story, the fictional village of Vehfreude is badly in need of a school, but instead constructs a cheese factory to compete economically with its neighboring villages. Vehfreude is set in the Emmen valley (Emmentaler literally means to “someone or something from the Emmen valley) and the cheese the villagers make is, naturally, Emmentaler. Among the comic episodes are market riots over the price of milk, a young woman who believes she is practicing witchcraft being scared straight by a villager dressed as Beelzebub, and the story Felix and Änneli, two star crossed lovers of differing classes. It’s a tale of the greed of man and the triumph of love. And also cheese! The wheel also carries details of the heraldic bear of Bern, Edelweisses, and the Swiss cross at the base of a Blockbau, a traditional Emmental farmhouse. Circling the wheel is a line of cows being led by a cowherd symbolizing the transhumance to the Alpine dairy.

Husband and wife Bernard Meier and Marlies Zaugg make Gotthelf Emmentaler just like the villagers of Vehfreude did back in the 17th century. Isolated in the mountains of their small village, Hüpfenboden, they make just two wheels of cheese a day. That 225 pounds of cheese is condensed from more than 1,100 liters of milk(!). It’s made using kettle whey cultures, wherein the whey from the previous day’s batch of cheese is added to the present day’s milk, carrying over the cultures (like a sourdough starter). Once the cheese is made, it’s taken to Gourmino’s cellars to age under the watchful eyes of the affineurs, tending to the wheels by washing and flipping them. In recognition of the traditional practices this cheese follows, the Slow Food Presidia bestowed an award on traditional Emmentaler.

The struggle to open a 225 pound wheel of cheese is one of the greatest a cheesemonger can face. Certain exigencies immediately presented themselves and could not be ignored. First of all, the cheese was too large to store in any of our refrigerators, which meant that after a day of tempering, we needed to break it into more manageable pieces. The weight meant that this cheese had to be handled by three people, which was further complicated when we realized we could not get it through the door to the cheese shop! Instead we had to right the wheel up on its rounded edge, precariously balancing it on a flatbed to pull it into the shop, and during our first attempt to do this it stubbornly rolled to the floor with a colossal thud. Cutting a cheese this big is also tricky. Driving a chisel knife through the cheese require my full weight, and, normally, after this initial cut a wire could be dragged through it to easily split it. However, we were out of our larger, longer wires, so it had to be cut with the chisel knife all the way through, a more “historic” way to cut a historic cheese. But as soon as the cheese was cracked an incredible smell rose up and the “eyes” or holes in the cheese begins to “cry.”

What does a two hundred pound wheel of cheese taste like? Rich brown butter, toasted cashew, wheat bread, a fresh potato loaf. Even for those that dislike Emmentaler, Gotthelf lacks that distinct “Swiss-y” flavor that is imparted by the Proprionibacteria, the bacteria responsible for producing the signature “eyes” or holes in Emmentaler. Many of us have been exposed to bad “Swiss” cheese as a result of the nefarious business practices of the Swiss cheese Cartels, and the imagine of a deli slice of pallid, plasticine “Swiss” cheese comes to mind. It’s pleasantly surprising then that Gotthelf Emmental is dense, with a cashew-like creaminess and studded with tyrosine crystals while still having the pliability that makes it a phenomenal melter. It is one of the finest expressions of Emmentaler, and an urgent reminder of what makes real Emmentaler such a special cheese whose traditions are worth preserving in the era of globalization.

This promotion couldn’t come at a better time—last week, Gotthelf Emmentaler won a Super Gold at the World Champion Cheese Competition in Trondheim! Stop into the shop to try the best “Swiss” cheese in the world!