Cheese, chiles and crackers
June 23rd, 2007
Asiago, Cowgirl Creamery Red Hawk (washed-rind cow’s milk cheese), pickled chiles, Carr’s Table Water Crackers, Grüner Veltliner.
Asiago, Cowgirl Creamery Red Hawk (washed-rind cow’s milk cheese), pickled chiles, Carr’s Table Water Crackers, Grüner Veltliner.
June 23rd, 2007 at 8:02 pm
The pickled chiles (prepped by Whole Foods) and cheese are delicious together, stacked on a cracker. Their acidity and heat intensify the cheese’s flavor and balance its richness.
June 24th, 2007 at 9:53 am
Brys: Nice work on the Red Hawk. Reminds of a story I heard (but have never confirmed as true) about the cheese. In 2003, Cowgirl Creamery submitted the cheese to the American Cheese Society competition. It was CC’s first washed-rind cheese and its first year to submit Red Hawk. CC wasn’t entirely confident in the cheese — washed-rind cheeses are notoriously tricky to age well, because you’re promoting bacterial growth around the cheese and when things go wrong, they go really wrong. So in addition to submitting the cheese for the competition, CC also stood in line for the “expert table,” a panel of microbiologists, cheese experts and dairy scientists who will look and taste your cheese, consider what you tell them about your methods, and then try to diagnose what the cause of the problem is. Anyway, the person who told me this story says he was standing behind Sue Conley, the head of Cowgirl Creamery, in line for the experts table. When it was CC’s turn, CC and her cheesemaker approached with Red Hawk and were basically told that they were doing so many things wrong that the cheese was a helpless mess, pretty much unredeemable in its current form. They would need to chuck everything and just start over. Later that weekend, Red Hawk won Best in Show.
June 24th, 2007 at 10:20 am
Brys: Elizabeth just reminded me of another Red Hawk story. A couple of years ago, we flew out to CA to go to Katherine and Duncan’s wedding. I hadn’t been to the new Cowgirl Creamery store in SF and, as this was in my full-time cheesemaking days and we were selling a lot of cheese to them, I felt like I should go by and check it out and say hello. I ended up getting a couple of cheeses to take with us for the weekend (the wedding was a few hours east), one of which was Red Hawk, which I had tried but not yet bought a whole round of. We picked up a small styrofoam cooler, packed everything in the trunk of my cousin’s car and set off. All was going well until we stopped at a taco stand near Sacramento. We opened the trunk to get something out, and the smell of the Red Hawk — sweat, junkyard, pig manure, dead animail — just overwhelmed the immediate area. By the time we got to our hotel, the car itself had started to smell a little. We were sharing a condo for the weekend with a handful of other people. My cousin made me ziploc the Red Hawk to try to contain it, but everything someone opened the refrigerator, the immediate area was contaminated by the smell. I think that, for the most part, the human nose can adjust to almost any smell. If you’ve worked in a fish market or restaurant, for example, you get used to the smell before too long. You don’t get used to Red Hawk. (The same applies to any intense washed-rind cheeses — my favorite is the buttermilk-washed Hooligan from Cato Corner.) I continued to fight for my right to keep Red Hawk around but eventually even Elizabeth turned on me. I didn’t want to throw it away, so I went down and asked at the front desk if anybody on the staff loved cheese. The guy working at the desk said that there was somebody who loved cheese and she was working today. We tracked her down and I told her about the Red Hawk. More specifically, I warned her about the Red Hawk. I wanted her to know what she was getting into. She said she’d loved to take it, and so I retrieved it and delivered it. She took a sniff and laughed and made a face but she seemed really happy to have it. I went about my day, happy to have made someone else happy and feeling good about having found the Red Hawk a good home. Later though, my cousin told me that when he’d gone down to check out, he’d seen the same woman in the lobby. She was holding the bag of Red Hawk. She was holding the bag of Red Hawk at arm’s length with her nose turned up and away. She was walking quickly, he said, almost jogging, and she was headed towards the trash can.
June 24th, 2007 at 6:38 pm
I recognize that plate.
June 27th, 2007 at 5:33 am
I recognize that glass.