Cook like a Cheesemonger: Pork Chops with Rhubarb Agrodolce

by Erin Gilliland

I’m excited to revisit a series that gives our customers an opportunity to connect with our staff, that also additionally highlights products that we love. 

We have access to some of the best pork (from our partners at Pork & Plants) I’ve honestly ever had. Their soy-free pigs are housed in deep-bedded straw and fed grains are that are grown on their farm using sustainable and regenerative principles.

I hadn’t enjoyed a bone-in pork chop for awhile, and IT JUST SEEMED RIGHT! What pairs well with a perfectly cooked, melt in your mouth piece of meat? A tangy, sweet and sour sauce that will cut through all the richness of the pork.

Agrodolce is Italian for “sour” (agro) and “sweet” (dolce). A classic agrodolce recipe contains reduced honey or sugar, vinegar, pine nuts, and a mixture of dried fruits and veggies, such as golden raisins, red onion, or currants, but it varies. (Is ketchup secretly an agrodolce? 👀 Chew on that one for a minute…)

This is where it gets weird. I had a bunch of rhubarb in my fridge I was planning on making a tart with, it really needed to go. Everything has a savory side, right!? 

It turned out beautiful. 

Stop in and grab some pork chops! Slather them in a bright and beautiful sauce, serve with fluffy couscous, veggies, or a pasta salad from our deli. You won’t regret it. 

INGREDIENTS 

1-2 tablespoons oil of your choice 

1-2 Bone-in pork chops ( or T-Bones ) 

Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper

1/2 medium red onion, sliced thin

2 tablespoons brown sugar

2 tablespoons red-wine or sherry vinegar

1 pound rhubarb stalks, sliced into 2-inch pieces

RHUBARB AGRODOLCE

Heat the oil, onion and cook, stirring, until softened, about 2 minutes. Stir in sugar, vinegar and rhubarb. Cook, partially covered and tossing occasionally, until rhubarb is tender and the juices in the pan are thickened, 3 to 5 minutes. It goes fast! 

PORK

Pat the pork dry, and generously season with salt and pepper, and I mean generously. 

Cook them however you’d like, honestly. One of our meatmongers can gladly give you some advice! Grill ‘em! Sear them hard in a cast iron to get a crust, render off some of the fat (the best part IMO) and finish in the oven to your temperature preference. 

(Pro tip: save all those pan juices!!) 

God Save the Cheese: Cheeses of the British Isles

Austin Coe Butler

 British cheeses are (loosely) defined by a backbone of acidity. In the cooler, wetter lowlands of the British Isles, it is difficult to dry hay for winter consumption compared to the sun-drenched southern climes of Spain or Italy. British farmers adapted by fermenting silage instead. However, spoilage bacteria present in soil and in fermented silage produce a gas in cheese which can build over maturation and explode or “heave” a wheel of cheese. British cheesemakers found that if they allowed more acidity to develop during the make of the cheese by allowing naturally present lactic bacteria convert lactose into lactic acid and then add salt to the cheese before moulding it, they could effectively prevent “hoven” cheeses, and thus, as Bronwen and Francis Percival elegantly write, “the entire panoply of British territorial styles, from Cheddar to Stilton, is a response to the question posed by a maritime climate.” (A curious aside: the Dutch faced a similar problem but found a different solution that lead to the development of Gouda.)

At France 44, all our cheeses from the British Isles come from the esteemed Neal’s Yard Dairy in London. In many ways our shop thrives because of the pioneers at Neal’s Yard. Originally founded in 1979 as an eclectic co-op by Randolph Hodgson and Nicholas Saunders at a time when when factory produced Cheddar reigned and traditional foods were lost in the wake of industrialization, Neal’s Yard unabashedly championed traditional farmstead cheeses. Along with concurrent food movements like the Campaign for Real Ale, the Real Bread Campaign, and eccentrics such as Patrick Rance, they led a food revolution whose benefits we eat.

As a general rule, our case will be well stocked with the following British cheeses: a Cheddar, a British territorial (traditional regional cheese), Ogleshield, Coolea, Cornish Kern, Stilton, and Stichelton. We cycle through Cheddars territorials, so you may come in one week to find a half wheel of Montgomery’s Cheddar sitting stoutly in the case only to be greeted by the petite Hafod the next, or the sunset glow of Cheshire replaced with pale Caerphilly. Stop by often to see our variety. Farmstead and artisanal cheeses—those cheeses made by hand and of exceptional milk from a single farm or local farms in the immediate vicinity respectively—are variable by nature, and wheels of ostensibly the same cheese can often have delightfully beguiling differences from one to the next. These are the joys of cheesemakers, mongers, and eaters to savor.

Our outstanding offerings at the moment include:

Cheddar

 Montgomery’s Cheddar is one of the archetypical West Country English Cheddars. It is rich, robust, and grassy with well balanced acidity. Our monger’s have certainly sent you home with a wedge of this. We also sell Montgomery’s Ogleshield, a Raclette-inspired cheese made of Jersey cow milk with a supple, fudgey paste and savory notes of fried, salted peanuts and chicken stock. When melted, the salinity comes to the fore and this cheese shines.

Territorials 

Gorwyd Caerphilly is a Welsh cheese made by the Trethowan brothers, who also produce Pitchfork Cheddar. Pronounced “GOR-with CARE-philly,” the velveteen, mushroomy rind on this cheese gives way to a rich cream line and a crumbly, citrusy center. A minerally, yogurty brightness blends with flavors of earth, grass, and moss. It was popular among coalminers and farmers as the natural rind was ideal to hold with hands dirty from hard work.

Cornish Kern is a contemporary classic that stands out in the British pantheon of cheeses—it is a cooked, pressed Alpine-style cheese, with flavors that are by turns sweet and winey or savory like caramelized garlic. Owing to its make, it is matured sixteen months, much longer than traditional English cheeses. “Kern” means round in Cornish. 

Coolea is an Irish gouda of Dutch extraction. It tends to be nutty not just in flavor but in texture, with the richness of macadamia nuts, hazelnuts, and almond meal that compliments the delicate brown butter sweetness.

The Blues

Colston Bassett Stilton is remarkably balanced blue owing to its delicate, handmade care and longer  maturation period before being pierced to allow blue mold (Penicilium roqueforti) to bloom. Colston Bassett Stilton has a luxuriant, silky taste of sweet cream that can sometimes astonish with a bubblegum flavor. Skip the port and savor this with a brown ale.

Stichelton, an arguably more traditional form of Stilton has a bright, buttermilk feral funk to it owing to the raw milk.

Meet your Monger: Annie

What’s the best unexpected perk of working at the Cheese Shop?

Definitely getting to try all the food. There are so many high quality, unique products that I would never think to try on my own. But working here has broadened my curiosity and I’ve stocked my fridge with some tasty stuff. The discount is also nice:)

Word on the street is that you’re a lead singer in a local band? Give us the juice!

We’re a six piece rock band (that label is pretty loose, though. We’re kind of all over the place in terms of genre). I’m the singer but we’ve got drums, bass, guitars and a synth player as well. We released our first album April 2021 called “Unravel” on all streaming platforms. We’re releasing another album, “Ethereal” July 29th, 2022 so watch for that! We just had our album preview show at the Amsterdam on St. Paul and it was a big success! We’ll be playing all over the cities this summer so follow us on Instagram (@killedbykiwis) for all the info!

How do you feel about pineapple on pizza?

Delicious

What’s something that might surprise us about you?

I majored in theatre, so maybe I’ll really surprise everyone and give a pop-up performance during the lunch rush.

How did you end up working at the Cheese Shop?

I worked in the liquor store during the summer of 2020 taking phone orders for curbside pickup. I moved back to the cities this summer after graduating and saw France 44 was hiring again and thought I would apply. I thought it would be cool to learn about cheese as well so it seemed like a lovely opportunity. I was right.

If you were stranded on a desert island, with a never ending supply of ONE cheese, which would you choose?

CHEVRE, especially the house one we sell in the shop with the cranberries and figs.

Meet Your Monger: Sam H

You used to work in the beer industry—how did you end up defecting to the cheese world?

At the start of the pandemic I took a few months off of work at LTD Brewing Co., inherited a crappy electric smoker, & got addicted to smoking meat & other things. Now I have a 55 gallon drum smoker that is in use anytime I’m not in the cheese shop. I still love beer, I always will, but it’s safe to say that my passion has changed to good food. Therefore, the cheese shop was a natural fit.

BLT or Lobster Roll?

I will always go BLT. It’s so simple, but so effective. It doesn’t help that I’m addict for a good heirloom tomato. That being said, we can’t discount the bacon, our butchers do such a wonderful job with it.

You were actually a F44 member before joining the Cheese Shop staff—what would you splurge on given $100 in points right now?

I’m going to very “Argentinian” with this answer. I would grab a whole Picanha to smoke & pair it with a big, bold red wine from the wine shop.

 What’s the best bite in the Cheese Shop?

Vermont Shepherd’s Invierno & F44 Summer Sausage on garlic crostini. 

Lobster Rolls and Rosé

by Karina Roe

We're debuting an extra-special, extra-delicious Pairing to celebrate the 4th of July! This weekend, we're pairing one of the tastiest things we produce in the Cheese Shop--our incredible Lobster Roll--with one of the tastiest rosés we sell in the wine shop: Clos Cibonne 'Tentations' from Provence, France. Clos Cibonne is well-known for utilizing an old, nearly-forgotten grape variety called Tibouren, which makes up about 15% of the blend in this particular rosé. Grenache is the star of the show with its perfectly ripe strawberry notes and friendly nature, and is supported by Cinsault and Syrah, along with the Tibouren. This elegant rosé is carefully pressed to give just a hint of ballerina-pink color to the wine, then fermented in stainless steel tanks to preserve its fresh and fruit-driven character.

This unpretentious rosé has long been a staff and customer favorite at France 44 and proves to be a perfect match alongside our Lobster Roll. Sweet, juicy lobster claw meat is folded in with celery, apple chunks, fresh tarragon and chives, and mayo, then piled into a delicious Rose Street Bakery bun. Rosé and lobster are a classic pairing: the fruitiness of the wine meets up with the sweetness of the lobster, but the wine's crisp acidity also cuts through the richness of the lobster. The tanginess of the apple and celery, matched up against the creamy mayo, make this an unforgettable pairing that fires on all cylinders.

In short, we think this is one of the best beverage and food combos we've happened across in a long time. Stop by this weekend to see for yourself--your taste buds will thank you!

Meet Your Monger: Sophia

How did you end up working at the Cheese Shop?

I worked at my local cheese shop, Stinky Bklyn (rip), as my summer job during college. I had so much fun and learned a lot. With family careers in wine, bread, and kitchens, it felt natural to keep going post-grad. Since I was looking to move to Minneapolis, the France 44 Cheese Shop seemed like the right spot and Peter graciously hired me sight unseen while I was stuck in my college town in the middle of Iowa. 

You help curate the Pairing each week; which Pairing has been your favorite?

Blakesville Lake Effect & Le Havre de Paix was pretty stinking good. I also loved the Appenzeller & Ravines 2017 Dry Riesling and the Stilton & Bugey-Cerdon sparkling Gamay Rosé. Sorry, I guess that's top three. 

You grew up in Brooklyn—what are your essential food stops when you visit home?

Definitely anywhere in Chinatown for dim sum and Peking duck. Other than that, I don't care what I eat and drink as long as it's with my friends and family! But also, lots of seafood and oysters oysters oysters. 

If you could only eat cheese from one country for the rest of your life…?

Geez. I think probably Italian cheese since I can't really picture my life without Parmesan. 

Cato Corner Cheeses

Cato Corner

Austin Coe Butler

Cato Corner Farm is an artisan farmstead cheese producer in Colchester, Connecticut, run by the mother-son team of Elizabeth (Liz) MacAlister and Mark Gillman. Liz had kept animals on the family farm since the 70s–goats, sheep, chickens, the odd beef cow—but turned to cheesemaking in 1997 as a way to add value and sustainability to the farm as her full time job. Liz’s father was a cheese lover, and as a child she often accompanied him to cheese shops in Providence, Rhode Island. Mark was teaching 7th grade English in Baltimore when Liz turned to cheesemaking, and he quickly returned to the farm where he “put his books in the attic” and studied under his mother. Now Mark tends to the cheesemaking and aging while Elizabeth tends to the cows and pasture with their handful of dedicated staff. They are “cheese farmers,” real farmstead cheesemakers that watch over the whole process from the land to the animals and from the milk to the cheese.

Cato Corner produces an impressive array of cheeses for such a small farm with a heard of only 45 Jersey cows—the Trappist-style Brigid’s Abbey, the Manchego inspired cow’s milk Womanchego, the Alpine Dairyere, and Jeremy River Cheddar, and so on. This roster of cheeses isn’t merely to dazzle, but is practical. Mark makes different cheeses depending on the seasons and qualities of the milk. While the cows are out pasture grazing from May to October and the milk is rich with sweet flavors of alfalfa or clover, Mark might make Cornerstone or Bloomsday. Other cheeses like Brigid’s Abbey are made only during the winter months when the milk is richest in butter fat and protein. You can taste the nuances in flavor throughout the seasons.

We currently offer their Black Ledge Blue, Drunken Hooligan, and Brigid’s Abbey. Black Ledge Blue is a creamy and mild blue cheese that has delicate sweet cream notes often found in a good wheel of Stilton. It has a delicate crumble that melts instantly on the tongue and is a great cheese for blue lovers and skeptics alike. Drunken Hooligan is a take on Cato Corner’s signature Hooligan, a small, stinky, washed-rind cheese with a briny, meaty savoriness and a dense, fudgey texture. Drunken Hooligan is washed in grape must, which gives it the curious appearance of a blueberry muffin and an added level of fruity funk. It’s exceptional smeared on crusty bread or melted. Brigid’s Abbey has clean, bright lactic notes and a nice minerally rind. Its friable paste is delicate and milky. It is the ideal breakfast cheese—a common practice we should adopt from Europe. It’s the oldest recipe Cato Corner uses, dating back to Liz’s first ventures into cheesemaking with a Belgian cheesemaker in the late 90s.

Small artisans making thoughtful food like Liz and Mark are the backbone of our cheese case. We’ve been selling their cheese for years, and undoubtedly we’ve sent you home with a wedge of their cheese. Stop by this weekend and celebrate 25 years of Cato Corner with us!

Meet Your Monger: Scott

Is it true that you eat 60 eggs per week? ​I would tell you but then I would have to kill you. (Editor’s note: It absolutely is.)

We heard you have a mean growler collection…? ​Yes I do, I am up to 270ish. It keeps my garage walls full.

If your kids would pick up one good kitchen habit from you, what would you like it to be? ​Hard work and always be prepared, and yes I know that's two things. You need both no matter where life takes you.

What’s your favorite cut of meat to take home on a weeknight, and how do you prepare it? ​Hanger steak. I cook it in a cast iron pan, and make tacos.

How did you learn the art of making charcuterie? ​Asking a lot of questions to people who know way more than me, as well as lots of testing.

What do you want for Father’s Day? ​A long walk on short green grass.

Il Bel Formaggi: A Cheese Monger’s Guide to Italy

Left to right: Pecorino Foglie di Noce, Bufarolo, Bocconcino di Capra, Camembert di Bufala, Fontina Valle d’Aosta, Furmai di Suna, Robiola Bosina, Pecorino Marzolino, La Granda

by Austin Coe Butler

What I love most about Italian cheeses is how playful and varied they are. Each region, valley, and village has their own distinct cheese they’ve made for centuries, if not millennia. They are too vast and many for me to praise all of them, so instead I’d like to take you on a sprint through Italy, from the north to the south, while mentioning a few cheeses we carry in the shop that will tell us something about the country and you can try along the way.

Much of Italy’s cheese culture and variety stems from the north, and so much of the cheese in our case comes from here: Piedmont, Lombardy, Valle d’Aosta. Girdled by the Alps and flanked by the Tyrrhenian and Adriatic Seas, the immense climatic and geographic diversity of northern Italy offers endless opportunities for locals to create both large wheels of hearty mountain cheese and delicate soft bloomy-rinded cheeses. Formaggi alpeggio, or cow’s milk alpine cheeses, like Fontina, Asiago, and Furmai de Suna reflect the millennia old tradition of transhumance or transumanza, the practice of taking livestock up into the high altitude meadows to graze freely on fresh grasses and flowers.

Furmai de Suna, a new addition to the case, is a style of cheese known as Bitto and is a true formaggi alpeggio. It’s made at over 6,500 feet between mid-June and mid-September by the Bongiovatti family in their calec or malghe, a squat, stone shelter that serves as a seasonal dairy. They make only four wheels of cheese a day in a copper cauldron over a wood fire from the fresh, raw milk of their forty-five cows. The cheese has a remarkable flavor like dry cured salame and pepper reminiscent of soppressata.

Fontina Valle d’Aosta is unrecognizable from the cheap, mass-produced Fontina, Fontinella, and Fontal sold in supermarkets and all billed as “Fontina.” Real Valdoastan Fontina is earthy, mushroomy, and tastes of rich, raw milk with a fudgey, pliant texture. It is as good on your cheeseboard as it is melted in hot-dish or fonduta. Another cheese from the north, Toma La Granda with its bright, buttery flavor and elastic paste has won the Slow Food Master of Taste Award five years in a row.

The cool, damp climate provided by the Alps created the perfect environment for delicate, moist cheeses like Taleggio and Robiolas to thrive in caves and cellars. This environment invites molds and funghi to colonize the rinds of cheeses like Robiola Bosina or Camembert di Bufala or bloom within blue cheeses like Gorgonzola. It also encourages the bacteria that give salty, meaty washed-rind cheeses like Taleggio and Nababbo, a goat’s milk play on Taleggio, their characteristic funk.

As the Alps recede and the lush Po River valley opens into the northern plain of Emiglia-Romagna, we enter the kingdom of grana cheeses like Grana Padano and the King of Cheese, Parmigiano Reggiano. These enormous, nutty cheeses share the legacy of alpine cheesemaking techniques (cooking, pressing, brining, aging) blended with their monastic roots of Cistercian monks who used the abundant salt of the brackish marshes of the Po Valley to create a cheese which could easily be aged two, three, four, or even more years in their monasteries, which yield the nutty, crystally, complex cheese we love. Our Parmigiano Reggiano is given the highest distinction of produtti di montagni (made in the Appenine mountains) in Emilia-Romagna and aged by Giorgio Cravero in Bra, Piedmont. And while Giorgio’s Parmigiano Reggiano is fabulous grated onto pasta, we implore you to savor a hunk of it on your cheese board with a flute of Prosecco.

Near the heart of Italy, the story changes. The drier hills and valleys of the Apennine mountains come into view and the Tuscan sun and Mediterranean climate takes hold. Here we see traditions based on pastoralism or shepherding, and the classic Pecorinos (sheep’s milk cheeses) of Italy with their rustic, intense, aromatic, and full-bodied flavors are king. Pecorinos should not be thought of as identical, but as territorials–each region and village has their own distinct style. The saltier, spicier Pecorino Romano, favored by Roman legionaries, lacks the more mature, nuanced, and nutty flavors of Pecorino Foglie di Noce, which are wrapped in young walnut leaves that impart an herbaceous, earthy quality; the firm, tenacious Pecorino Toscano of the elusive and inscrutable Etruscans differs from the velvety, lemony tang of Pecorino Marzolino, a younger cheese that is made only in March (Marzo) and rubbed with olive oil and tomatoes to give its rind a distinctive red glow.

Further south, the pasta filata or “spun paste” cheeses like mozzarella are found. These cheeses are made by melting the curd with boiling water until a single mass coalesces that can be stretched and shaped. Pasta filata cheeses include not just fresh cheeses like Buffalo Mozzarella, Fior di Latte (cow’s milk mozzarella), or Burrata, but also firmer, aged cheeses such as Caciocavallo, Scamorza, and Provolone. Burrata, which was only invented in the 1950s in Puglia, is one of the younger arrivals to Italy. And here we arrive again at our shop in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where we make both fresh Fior di Latte and Burrata on Friday and Saturday mornings.

Stop by this weekend to celebrate Italian cheeses with us. If you’ve read this whole post and would like to learn more about Italian cheeses, you may be interested in our upcoming class on northern Italian cheese and wine at the Harriet Place on July 7th!

Manchego y Más: A Tour of Spain’s Cheeses

Clockwise starting top left: Garrotxa, Rey Silo Rojo, Magaya de Sidra, Pasamontes Manchego, Moncedillo Pimenton, Mahon Semicurado, Cabezuela

by Austin Coe Butler

Spanish cheeses have been historically maligned. English travelers in the 19th century found them dry, dank, and inedible, comparing them to rusks of bread. It didn’t help when decades of brutal dictatorship by Generalissimo Francisco Franco isolated Spain as a pariah state while French and Italian cheese and culture entered international renown. Only in the 90s, after a successful marketing campaign, did Manchego become internationally recognized as and synonymous with Spanish cheese. Spain however has an incredible cheese culture that is more than just Manchego, with well over two-hundred varieties, and despite its obscurity it has thrived in recent years.

Spain’s remarkable cheese culture was saved by the persistence of cheese black markets. Under the Franco regime, dairies producing more than 10,000 liters of milk were required by law to send it to centralized factories that produced Manchego–a cheese which could be easily mass produced–and it became illegal to sell artisan cheese. These cheese black markets would appear in village streets before the sun rose, artisans would sell their cheeses made with purloined milk, and then vanish before any government official could arrive, preserving these traditions into the present moment.

This weekend, we are celebrating Spanish cheeses, so stop by to taste and discover the amazing variety of Spanish cheeses we offer.

Manchego

Manchego is one of the most iconic, sheep’s milk cheeses in the world. Our Manchego comes from the Pasamontes family, who have been making Manchego for five generations. They have consistently been recognized as one of Spain’s best Manchego producers and consistent DOP winners of Premio Gran Selección, Spain’s most prestigious food and wine awards. We sell their 3 month (creamy, nutty, mild), 12 month (firm, salty, tangy), and Romero, which is coated with rosemary from the pasture the sheep graze on, perfuming the cheese.

Garrotxa

I wrote a post on Garrotxa back in September which you can read here. Garrotxa has a remarkable story, and with its mild flavor and semi-firm, smooth texture it is the perfect gateway to goat cheese for the uninitiated.

Mahón

Named after the port city and capitol of the island of Menorca, Mahón is the second most consumed cheese in Spain and one of the oldest cheeses in history. Ancient Greek seafarers praised the cheeses made on the Balearic Islands and often imported it to their colonies. Mahón is a firm cow’s milk cheese that is rubbed with olive oil and paprika while curing. It has a brittle texture with a pleasant Sherry vinegar-like acidity and a briny, mineral flavor befitting of its sun-drenched island home.

La Finca Pascualete Retorta

Torta or retorta style cheeses are one of the most distinct styles of Spanish cheese. These are sheep’s milk cheese that have been coagulated with thistle rennet, which causes the cheese to undergo proteolysis, the process by which proteins in cheese breakdown, in a way that gives it a custardy texture. Cut the top off the crusty rind and scoop out the custardy filling with a spoon for an incomparable experience. It’s been theorized that this cheese descends from the legacy of Sephardic Jews who once lived in Spain before their expulsion from Spain in the 15th century. Kosher law prohibits the mixing of dairy and meat, and if traditional rennet, which is derived from the stomach of a young ruminant, it violates Kosher law.

Moncedillo Red

Similar to torta styles, this is another sheep’s milk cheese coagulated with thistle rennet. Its rind is coated in pimentón, smoked Spanish paprika, that brings a fruity, smoky flavor to the cheese. While the texture is not as custardy as the retorta, it does have a delightfully pliable fudgy texture.

La Cabezuela Tradicional Semi-curado

This semi-firm, goat’s cheese is made from the milk of Guadarrama goats, an endangered breed that only lives in the foothills surrounding the Madrid basin. Juan Luis Royuela fell in love with these goats and their milk and dedicated his quesería La Cabezuela to making cheese solely from their milk, bringing them back from the brink of extinction. The natural bloomy rind tastes of button mushrooms, while the cream line is buttery and mild with a cakey, crumbly center that has all the classic herbaceous, lemony notes one expects from a goat cheese. A definite staff favorite.

Magaya di Sidra

Perhaps the most unique cheese we have in our case at the moment. This firm cow’s milk cheese is packed into barrels and cured with the pulp (magaya) from apple cider pressings—you can see the apple skins and pips on this cheese’s rind. Curing the cheese gives it a delightfully fruity, yeasty flavor and a tartness reminiscent of a dry, unfiltered apple cider.

Rey Silo Rojo

This petite button of cow’s milk cheese has paprika added to the curd which brings them a beautiful sunset glow and a playful, lingering spice. Its flavor bright, tart, tangy, and intense in with a texture that clings to the palate like another famous Spanish cheese, Afeuga’l pitu.

Castanya

Our newest and rarest addition to our Spanish selection. This soft goat’s milk cheese has chestnut flour and chestnut liqueur added to the curd, it is topped with a whole roasted chestnut, and then wrapped in chestnut leaves. The result is a remarkably soft and creamy goat cheese that is by turns spicy, feral, funky, and sweet, which pairs perfectly with a Madeira.