Beillevaire Cheese

Three by Beillevaire

by Austin Coe Butler

Beillevaire (bay-VAIR) is an exclusive distributor, dairy, cheesemaker, and affineur (cheese “finisher” or ager), named after Pascal Bellevaire and located in the Marais Vendéen on France’s paludal, southern coast outside Nantes. Bellevaire was raised on his parent’s dairy farm in Marais Vendéen, and his life’s work has been transforming that humble family dairy into an esteemed exporter and producer of some of France’s best cheeses. This week, we are promoting three remarkable cheeses by Beillevaire: Ossau-Iraty, Somport, and Marbré des Alpes.

Ossau-Iraty is an iconic, ancient ewe’s milk tomme made in the Basque Country of the Pyrenees. It is an ancestral cheese to the Basque people, who have been inhabiting Europe and making this cheese longer than any other living European peoples on a timescale where the rise and fall of empires is the passing of a shadow to them. (Some estimates date the origin of this cheese to over 4,000 years old). Ossau-Iraty’s flavor is rich and caramel-sweet like roasted chestnuts. It has just a snap of sheep tang without tasting gamey, making it an excellent gateway into the world of sheep cheeses. If you’ve spent any time with our mongers, they’ve undoubtedly sent you home with a wedge, as it is a staff favorite.

Somport is more of a rarity, and while often compared to Ossau-Iraty it is made from goat’s milk. Beillevaire sources their Somport from just four small fermier (farmhouse) producers in the Aquitaine, France’s southwestern corner. Its flavor is brashly goaty and deserving of those gregarious animals it descends from with an aroma of damp, rich soil and crimini mushrooms. While its texture can be firm, recently our wheels have been supple and yielding in texture, with a delightful semi-firm bounce. We paired Somport with Broc Cellars Got Grapes? a few months ago, and while that wine is sold out for the moment, any juicy red blend would pair beautifully with this cheese.

Marbré des Alpes is Beillevaire’s Morbier inspired cheese. While you may be unfamiliar with Morbier, you likely know the cheese it was born from–Comté. Morbier was traditionally made with what little curd was leftover from making Comté. It was not enough to make much of anything with, but cheesemakers are by necessity not ones to waste. They would scrape the soot from the bottom of the cauldrons the milk was heated in and sprinkle the soot over the curd to prevent it from forming a crust and protecting it from insects. In the morning, the cheese would be topped off with a bit of fresh curd, pressed, and then washed with brine. This delicacy was reserved by the cheesemakers for their own private consumption as the reward for their labors. Nowadays, cheesemakers create the wheels in one day and use vegetable ash as a nod to this cheese’s history, which continues to gives this cheese its distinctive “marbling.” Beillevaire’s Marbré des Alpes comes from Désaignes in the southeast Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region. While young wheels of Marbré are buttery and mild, the more mature wheels we have are surprising and delightfully piquant flavor and spicy aroma.

The Pairing: Bandaged Bismark

by Sophia Stern

Open the fridge in a typical American household and you’ll probably find cheddar in the cheese drawer. Most of us know cheddar as a rindless rectangle wrapped in plastic. However, cheddar’s original form is pretty unfamiliar to American cheese culture. Traditional English cheddar is made in huge cylinders and gets snugly wrapped in a cloth bandage. For this week’s pairing, we’ve chosen a domestic cheddar inspired by this tradition, but with several other distinct features. Not only is Bandaged Bismark clothbound and cave-aged, it is also made with raw sheep’s milk and aged beneath the streets of Brooklyn in New York City. 

In what was once a 19th century brewing cave, Benton Brown & Susan Boyle now run Crown Finish Caves. Crown Finish is a cheese aging facility operating 30 feet below Bergen Street in Brooklyn. The cave is loaded with wooden shelves, stacked to the brim with around 28,000 pounds of aging cheeses. Except for a few Italian cheeses made from water buffalo’s milk, most of the cheese at Crown Finish is made on farms in Vermont or Upstate New York. Experienced dairy farmers with land and facilities make fresh wheels of cheese, known as green cheese, and send the wheels down to Brooklyn where Brown, Boyle, and their small team attend to the laborious process of aging their collection of different cheeses. 

Bandaged Bismark is a reflection of the Northeast’s rich dairy traditions. This cheddar starts with sheep’s milk from an Amish dairy farm in Upstate New York, which is then sent to the cheesemakers at Grafton Village Cheese in Vermont. At Grafton, the accomplished cheddar makers turn the New York sheep’s milk into cheese. Once ready for aging, the young wheels are sent down to Crown Finish, where they descend below the streets to be clothbound and aged on wooden shelves for four to six months. The bandage introduces a complex flavor to the cheddar, capturing the microbiology of the cave and imparting flavors of earth and minerality. The sheep’s milk itself is buttery and floral, with distinct herbaceous notes and a slight tartness on the finish. 

Sheep’s milk can be tricky to pair, but the cheddar of it all offered a clue. Since chardonnay and cheddar are a classic pairing, we chose Beaune 'Clos du Foulot' Monopole from the Baptiste Guyot winery. This young wine, entirely made from chardonnay grapes, has a distinct green apple acidity, along with surprisingly strong notes of butter and oak for a 2020 vintage. As the cheese is more buttery than tart, the acid in the wine brightens the cheddar and draws out the cave-aged minerality from the rind. Although cheddar and chardonnay are both familiar faces, this pairing highlights the unique features in both the wine and cheese without compromising on their classic comfort. 

Roncadella Parmigiano Reggiano

by Austin Coe Butler

Between Reggio Emilia and Modena, in the lowlands of the Po River Valley where Parmigiano Reggiano came to be, the Caseificio di Gavasseto e Roncadella has been making Parmigiano Reggiano for generations. Despite the weight of tradition, this quiet caseificio does things their own way. To start with, they are led by the only female master cheesemaker, Marisa Verzelloni, who took over cheesemaking as the casaro in her 50s after he husband passed away. They make just 24 wheels a day, and they only sell their cheese and fresh butter out of their small retail shop. Roncadella turns the wheels in brine daily to ensure contact with the air, whereas most producers submerge the wheel in brine. They charge more in price than other producers, but still, people choose their cheese over others, and there’s still a line out the door before holiday shopping. And while people outside the little village have started to find out about Roncadella Parmigiano Reggiano, the coop still only sells primarily to local restaurants and vendors and never large consolidators and distributors. At the 2018 World’s Best Cheese Award, this little creamery snatched not just a silver and a gold medal, but the most prestigious prize, the Super Gold!

            Roncadella Parmigiano Reggiano has a lovely fruit aroma, a light caramel sweetness, brodo savoriness, and a touch of spice combined with milky tang to surprise you along its delightfully long finish. The sweetness of this Parmigiano Reggiano makes it especially suited for a simple pasta dish: pasta burro e parmigiano, pasta with butter and Parmigiano. Simply by adding al dente pasta to a saucepan with a knob of butter, a ladle of starchy pasta water, a generous handful of Roncadella Parmigiano Reggiano, and stirring together for several minutes, a gorgeous, glossy sauce will form for the ultimate Italian comfort food. This is actually the original fettuccine Alfredo before heavy cream was added to the dish in American kitchens. It’s important to use dried pasta when making this, as fresh pasta is too eggy for such a rich dish.

            While Parmigiano Reggiano is a fantastic culinary cheese, it is an equally glorious table cheese that deserves a crowning place on your next cheeseboard. We’ve previously paired the Cravero Parmigiano Reggiano with Flora Prosecco, and this or any other crisp, bubbly white would be exquisite with Roncadella’s Parmigiano Reggiano. Try serving it with a sliced Bosc pear and a streak of our staff’s favorite Olivewood balsamic for the perfect bite.

            If you have some of our Cravero Parmigiano Reggiano, try it side-by-side Roncadella to taste the difference. These side-by-side tastings are the best way to discover and explore the many differences, both subtle and explicit, in cheeses that are ostensibly the same. Cravero is made in the Emilian Apennine mountains by Massimo Libra and then matured by the Cravero family in Bra, which is located in Piedmont. Roncadella is made in the valley at the base of those mountains and matured the whole twenty-four months at the same location. The plants and people, animals and atmosphere, are what separate these cheeses, each expressing in its own unique way what we love about Parmigiano Reggiano.

The Pairing: Appenzeller

by Sophia Stern

January teased us with a forty degree day, but the below-double digit weeks are still long ahead of us. As a celebration of dark, cold winter nights, we’ve paired a staple cold-weather cheese with a dry Riesling from an unexpected location. This week, from the Swiss Alps, we have Appenzeller paired with a delicious Riesling from the Finger Lakes region in upstate New York. Appenzeller is as nutty and buttery as it is funky and bold. The Black Label Appenzeller featured in this week’s pairing is made of raw cow’s milk and has the distinct melt-in-your mouth feature of a classic Alpine cheese. At six months, this Appenzeller is flecked with small tyrosine crystals, offering a slight crunch throughout the cheese. 

Tradition and hard work are key to any cheesemaking process, but making cheese in the mountains takes cheesemaking to another level. Extreme cattle herding is integral to Alpine cheese. Herdsmen move the cows up the mountain, allowing them to graze pasture to pasture until they reach the peak in the summer and begin migrating the herd back down before the winter snow. Allowing the cows to feed on different pastures across a variety of altitudes gives their milk the dynamic, unique flavor that goes beyond the usual buttery, nuttiness of cow’s milk. The cow’s high variety diet, made of a multitude of grasses, herbs, flowers, and more, along with their high activity lifestyle, leads to healthy, happy cows with nutrient-dense, flavorful milk. 

As if the traditions of mountain dairy farming weren’t enough to produce a beautiful cheese, Appenzeller is treated to a laborious and highly secretive aging process. Once the curds have been stirred, drained and pressed into their eventual cheese shape, the fresh wheels are soaked in a salt bath. This bath imparts flavor and removes extra moisture content. Once dried and aging on their wooden shelves, each wheel of Appenzeller Black Label is tended to for six months. During the six month period, the wheels are treated with a secret smear made up of 25 vague herbs, an alcoholic secret spirit, and other undisclosed ingredients. There are only two people who know the full recipe of the smear, but the flavor imparted on Appenzeller is much of what makes the cheese so loved.

To my absolute delight, we’ve paired this flavorful cheese with a delicious Riesling from the Finger Lakes. Although I personally love a sweet Riesling too, Ravines Wine Cellars’ Dry Riesling is, as you would expect, dry, but also tart with juicy, fruity notes and a minerality that keeps the wine in balance. Enjoying these two together to be transported to a warm and beautiful Alpine resort or, at the very least, to make your evening a little cozier. 

To read more about Ravine Riesling, check out the liquor store’s blog post here.

The Pairing: Chabichou

After a hiatus over our busy holiday season, the pairing is back with a staff favorite- Chabichou du Patiou. This dense, creamy, bright little goat cheese comes from France’s western countryside. In the Loire Valley, among the rolling hills, thick grasses, and along the Vendée riverways, little goats roam their pastures and farmers produce some of the best goat cheese in the world. The Loire Valley, with its long history of farming and fertile, mineral rich land, holds a reputation as the gold standard for fresh goat cheeses and Chabichou shines bright among them. 

Nomadic people, usually from the Arabian Peninsula, introduced cheeses like Chabichou to France by migrating with their goats across Europe. Chabichou du Patiou comes from an Arab tradition of cheese making, introduced to the French countryside by the Saracen soldiers who set up camp during the Umayyad conquest of western Europe. The soldiers brought livestock with them to sustain them, but as the French expelled the Saracen from their camps, the goats and cheese recipes got left behind. The goats brought by the Saracen people thrived on the herbaceous, dynamic land of northwestern France and so begun the tradition of goat cheese in the Loire Valley.  

The anatomy of Chabichou is part of what makes the cheese so special and the flavors shine. The small, cylindrical goat cheese features a beautiful, bloomy rind. The ridges of the rind look like a topographical map of a mountain range and tastes amazingly piquant. Right under the rind is a dreamy line of cream. The cream line provides a rich, buttery quality to the cheese. At the center of Chabichou, the paste is fudgier and dense, and also provides the brightest and tangiest flavor. Chabichou is a cheese that completely coats your mouth with it’s rich texture and bold flavor. Tangy, gaminess is a given of good quality goat milk, but the goats used to make Chabichou eat a diverse diet of local grasses, grains, spouts and other plants which leads to the cheese’s complex flavor of citrus and herbs. These notes are balanced by a minerality in the milk, gained from the mineral rich limestone soil of the area. 

We’ve paired this beauty of a cheese with a Sauvignon Blanc from the costal, mountainous Marlborough region in New Zealand. Rain Sauvignon Blanc has tropical fruit notes and a great texture that stands up to the goat milk. The strong lychee fruit flavors are needed with this slightly mature batch of Chabichou. The wine’s texture also plays nicely with the goat’s creaminess, rather than simply washing it away. As always, enjoy your Chabichou at room temperature and don’t be surprised by the ample creamline in this older batch. It might be a little messy, but the flavor is perfect. 

Ask A Butcher: Reverse Sear

What is a reverse sear and when do I use it?

A reverse sear is a simple method of cooking larger pieces of meat, such as cuts like the bone-in ribeye, or double cut pork chops. Rather than sear the meat then put it in the oven to finish, you first bake the meat then you sear it at the end for a beautiful finishing crust. This method was first developed by Kenji Lopez-Alt in the mid 2000s, when he wrote for Cooks Illustrated.

How to Reverse Sear:

The reverse sear is our favorite way to cook any piece of meat bigger than about a pound. To execute successfully, you’ll need an instant read thermometer.

Preheat your oven. You can set your oven as low as 180° if you’re feeling patient; a temperature as high as 300° will still yield noticeable “reverse-sear” results.

Place the meat in a cast iron or oven-safe stainless steel pan and place in the oven. Temp the meat periodically and flip it each time you do.

For medium-rare, take the meat out of the oven at 115° and let it rest on a dinner plate or wire rack before searing.

Heat your pan on the stove until just smoking. For bigger pieces of meat, you can get your grill, broiler, or oven going at very high heat.

Sear the meat on all sides. You’re looking for a beautiful, brown Maillard reaction on the outside to add texture and flavor, and a final internal temperature of 130° for medium-rare.

Serve immediately, there’s no need to let it rest again.

Gruyere Alpage

by Austin Coe Butler

While we continue to celebrate the many exciting holiday cheeses and pairings we will have for the next month, we thought we would take a moment to celebrate another seasonal cheese that reminds us of the long, light days of summer, and how green our world can be: Gruyère Alpage. 

Gruyère Alpage takes its name from two very important places. The first is Gruyère, of course, a region that has now, in our administrative age, been strictly demarcated to a small region of Switzerland. But Gruyère itself takes its name from a people and moment in time. Back in the 13th century, yes, that far back, when Charlemagne was Holy Roman Emperor, he founded a corps of officiers gruyers to manage his forests, or gruyeries as they were called then. Cheesemakers in the region had to buy their fuel from these foresters to heat their milk and make cheese and, then as now, cheesemaking was not lucrative work, so a trade was agreed upon: fuel for cheese. This is how a name is attached to a place. 

And now for the Alpage. In many places where arable land is too scarce and precious to graze livestock on, shepherds have to take their herds up the mountain and from mid-May to mid-October they graze their cows in these Alpine meadows, these alpages, These alpages, are the result of glacial erosion, but they are also the result of clearing by gruyers, who, by chopping down impenetrable, evergreen pines and spruce allowed the sun to stream in and foster wildflowers and grasses to dominate. 

The centuries old tradition of pastoral transhumance, taking animals to and from pasturage seasonally, is one of the most remarkable celebrations of all those things entwined in cheese: the people, the animals, the places, the flavors, traditions, and cultures. When the cows descend from the mountains, often crowned with elaborate arrangements of spruce branches spangled with marigolds, sunflowers, and ribbons, hundreds gather to watch. The sound of their bells rings through the valley, echoing off the Alpine mountainsides, is stirring. When I first saw the tranzhumanza in Piedmont (or Désalpes in French / Alpabzug in Swiss-German), I was standing next to a German woman who whispered to herself again and again in wonderment, “Unglaublich, unglaublich….”—unbelievable, incredible, indescribable.

Our Gruyère Alpage is made by the Mauron family at Guedères north of Montreaux at over 4,000 feet. They still make Gruyère Alpage the way it has been for centuries. They still heat the milk in massive copper cauldrons over burning lumber. They still cut and strain the scalded curd through linens and into wooden forms to be tightened under presses twisted by hand. Their cows still look fabulous coming down the mountain during the Alpabzug.

Wheres our Gruyère 1655 tends to be more savory, beef brothy, and evocative of French onion soup that a broiled, blistered crown of Gruyère always sits atop, Gruyère Alpage is fruitier, more herbaceous, floral, and grassy. What immediately strikes you is the aroma of this cheese, which is reminiscent of juicy pears, sweet apples, and ripe Alpine strawberries. The initial fruity acidity gives way to bold, grassy waves of salt as you reach that allium savoriness and barnyard funkiness towards the rind. Gruyère Alpage reminds me of the best Comtés: bright, fruity, nutty, complex enough to find a kaleidoscopic array of flavors inside it.

Buffalo Mac-and-Artisan-Cheese

By Jared Kaufman

Serves 4

Few dishes celebrate the melty, gooey, comforting qualities of cheese quite like the classic macaroni. To turn the dial up a notch, this spicy stovetop recipe uses Barnburner, a smoky cheddar made at Grafton Village Cheese Company in Vermont and aged at Crown Finish Caves in Brooklyn, and Challerhocker, a double-cream alpine-style beaut from Switzerland with a fudgy, roasty flavor. 

And if you have never tasted our house-made ranch dressing, you’re missing out. It ranks among the best ranch dips I’ve tried, and it’s really what makes this recipe pop (no offense to the cheese, of course).

From France 44:

·         ½ lb. Barnburner

·         ½ lb. Challerhocker

·         1 pint F44 ranch dressing

From your pantry:

·         1 lb. large elbow macaroni (or your pasta of choice)

·         ½ cup unsalted butter

·         ½ cup all-purpose flour

·         1½ cups milk

·         ½ cup Frank’s RedHot (use more or less to your liking)

·         3 stalks celery

·         Scallions for garnish

·         Optional: Chicken, cooked + chopped or shredded

Instructions:

1.       Cook the pasta according to the package directions. Drain and set aside.

2.       Meanwhile… prep your ingredients. Remove the rinds from both cheeses and grate into a bowl. Chop the celery into small dice.

3.       Start the sauce. In the empty pasta pot (or another stock pot) over medium heat, melt the butter. Add the flour and immediately whisk to combine. Continue whisking for about 1 minute to let the mixture darken slightly.

4.       While still whisking, add the milk. (The mixture will suddenly tighten in texture; this is OK!) Add the ranch, hot sauce, and cheese, and fold together. Continue stirring until the cheese melts and the sauce is very smooth and well-combined.

5.       Finish the sauce. Remove from heat, and stir in the celery and chicken if using.

6. Combine the cooked pasta with the sauce. Garnish with finely chopped scallions and an extra drizzle of hot sauce if you so choose. Enjoy!

Moroccan-Inspired Kefta (Meatballs)

By Jared Kaufman

Serves 4

If you’ve read my recipes for this blog, you might gather that I’m obsessed with the New York Shuk line of Middle Eastern condiments and spices. They recently released their take on matbucha, a North African roasted tomato and pepper sauce, to which they’ve added olives and mint. It’s fantastic, and makes the perfect base for this Moroccan-inspired kefta (meatball) tagine dish.

I served this with Israeli couscous and honey-glazed carrots roasted with Moroccan spices. But you can get creative — we have a fantastic Tunisian couscous from Mahjoub in the shop, which you can prep with almonds and herbs to match the flavors of this dish. Or just grab one of our Rose Street Patisserie baguettes and dig right in!

From France 44:

·      1 lb. ground lamb

·      1 jar New York Shuk matbucha with olives and mint

From your pantry:

·      8 oz. can tomato sauce

·      ½ a yellow onion, minced

·      2 tbsp finely chopped parsley

·      1 tbsp finely chopped mint

·      1 tsp sweet (hungarian) paprika

·      1 tsp cumin

·      ½ tsp cinnamon

·      ½ tsp coriander

·      ½ garlic powder

·      Olive oil

·      Salt and pepper to taste

Instructions: 

1.     Start the tomato sauce. In a wide saucepan over medium heat, pour in the jar of matbucha. We’re cooking it down a little to concentrate the flavors. Stir occasionally. Meanwhile...

2.     Make the meatballs. In a large bowl, combine the lamb, onion, parsley, mint, and spices. Mix with your hand or a spatula just to blend, but do not overwork the meat or your meatballs will be tougher.

3.     Form small, quarter-sized meatballs.

4.     Meanwhile… into the pan with the matbucha, add the can of tomato sauce and stir well to combine. Drop the heat to low, so it sits at a nice simmer.

5.     Sear the meatballs. In a small saucepan over medium-high heat, pour in a little olive oil. Drop in the meatballs and briefly sear them. We’re not cooking them through yet — just getting a little texture and flavor. (You can sear them in batches while you’re forming them!)

6.     Poach! Remove the meatballs from the pan and drop them into the tomato sauce to finish cooking. Simmer together for 10 minutes. Enjoy!

Verano

by Austin Coe Butler

Cheesemongers sometimes speak of the “Trinity” when helping customers put together an assortment of cheeses. By this we mean selecting one cheese made from cow’s milk, one from goat’s milk, and one from sheep’s milk. While we are busy celebrating the arrival of the seasonal Comté Sagesse (cow’s milk) and Brabander Reserve goat milk gouda, there is a cheese equally worthy of celebration to complete this seasonal Trinity: Verano, the flag-ship cheese from Vermont Shepherd.

            Vermont Shepherd (formerly Major Farm) is located outside of Westminster West, Vermont, not far from the Connecticut River. David Major bought the farm from his parents in the 1990s and started producing, by all accounts, terrible sheep’s milk cheeses. Making sheep’s milk cheeses is not a tradition in the United States for a number of historical, cultural, and culinary reasons. Sheep have never taken hold here as a farm animal the way cows or even goats more recently have. (This lack of tradition is also why Vermont Shepherd, despite being founded in the 90s, is the oldest sheep dairy in the United States.) The Majors decided to apprentice with shepherds and cheesemakers in the French Pyrenees, and it was this formative period that inspired and informed the creation of Verano. Verano, as its name implies, is only made in the summer months when the ewes are lambing and grazing on fresh pasture. This raw sheep’s milk cheese is cooked and then pressed roughly into colander shaped molds (giving it its distinct UFO shape) before being brined for several days. The young wheels of cheese are then transported to the Majors’ own bespoke cheese caves where they will age for three to five months.

            While the United States doesn’t have a strong sheep’s milk tradition, you would never know it from eating Verano; the tomme has that beautiful rustic flavor evocative of ancient sheep’s milk cheese like Pecorino Toscano, Manchego, and Ossau-Iraty. It is well balanced with savory, nutty flavors and a sweetness reminiscent of summer’s red fruit with an aroma of grass and toasted rice, though some wheels can burst with the spice of mint or wild thyme. The texture is dense and surprisingly supple and smooth for a sheep’s milk cheese, which can often be granular. For this alone, Verano could be called one of the best cheeses in the country. Verano is excellent with the pears and apples that are in season at the moment, and maybe a drop of (the staff’s favorite) olivewood balsamic vinegar. It is also an excellent melter and culinary cheese (I used it as a substitute for Berkswell in this recipe from Neal’s Yard Dairy by Anna Tobias for a pea, ham, and Berkswell lasagna that is sure to get you through this cold week.) [link https://www.nealsyarddairy.co.uk/blogs/news/pea-ham-berkswell-lasagne-by-anna-tobias] This holiday season, when you’re looking for something to close out the Trinity on your holiday cheeseboard, try Verano.