Make Your Cheese Plate Stand Out

With the variety of fresh fruits and vegetables that become available in the summer, meals become famous for the variety of exquisite entrees and delectable desserts that fill the table. To stand up to the barbecues and fruit pies, you'll need a cheese platter full-flavored enough to leave enthusiastic palates wanting more.

1. Beecher's Flagship Cheese
COW / SEMI-HARD / PASTEURIZED
We haven't met a cheese lover yet who didn't crave more of our signature Flagship cheese. Robust and nutty, Flagship pairs well with wines and food alike.

2. Mt. Townsend Sea Stack
COW / BLOOMY RIND / PASTEURIZED
The rind is soft, the paste is smooth and rich. To add to this, Seastack has a dusting of sea salt that gives it a bit of bite. Considered to be Mt. Townsend's best cheese.

3. Rogue Creamery Oregonzola
COW / BLUE / RAW
We use this cheese for cream sauces, salad dressings, and as a stand-alone on a cheese plate. As the name implies, Oregonzola is a gorgonzola-style cow’s milk cheese that's sharp, tangy and fruity with a lush, buttery texture.

4. Sally Jackson Sheep
SHEEP / SEMI-SOFT / RAW
Washington's own Sally Jackson - one of the most respected cheesemakers in the world - wraps her cheeses in chestnut leaves, adding a sweet, earthy character. Be sure to taste the leaves with the cheese to get the full, delicious effect!

5. Juniper Grove Tumalo Tomme
GOAT / SEMI-HARD / RAW
Considered to be one of the best cheeses made in the northwest, Tumalo Tomme is a semi-hard washed rind cheese that is nutty and creamy with a subtle, musty pungency that washed rinds are famous for.

Sound good enough to eat? If you would like to sample any of the above, visit our Beecher's shop or call (206) 956-1964 to place an order.

Producer Profile: Mt. Townsend Creamery

Located in Port Townsend on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington, Mt. Townsend Creamery is a relative fledgling to the artisan cheese world - and yet they're already well-known for their delicious and beautiful cheeses.

Mt. Townsend opened its doors in March 2006 with a focus on French-style cheeses. From their camembert-style Cirrus to the soft-ripened Seastack to the semi-hard, nutty Trailhead, Mt. Townsend cheeses have already garnered a devoted following.

Like Beecher's, the Creamery believes that making excellent cheese begins with having high-quality milk. They source their milk from two dairies located just 30 miles from their cheesemaking facility. The milk has no added growth hormones and the cows feed in grassy pastures, allowing the flavors of the cheeses to fluctuate with the seasonal nuances of the land.

The “Stinky” Cheese

Have you ever run across a cheese that you thought smelled more like old shoes than edible food?  Well, next time you’re faced with an offensive cheese odor, don’t look away – try it!  What you think smells bad, might actually be a delicious cheese in hiding.

We are always amazed by the varying opinions attached to “stinky” cheeses.  Beecher’s has a Cheese 101 class where, at one point in the class, we pull out the washed rind cheese – the ultimate in ‘stinky’ cheese.  As soon as that cheese comes out, half the class makes a face – and not a happy one – while the other half is intrigued by the earthy odor.  After much encouragement, even the participants who swore they’d never eat that cheese, taste it and are surprised to find a robust, creamy flavor more like an intense brie than a rotten apple.

Personally, this cheeseblogger loves the smell of “stinky” cheeses, as they often deliver on a rich, buttery flavor. Need a second opinion? Ask Wallace, of Wallace & Gromit fame, who loves the Stinking Bishop, a washed rind cheese which is said to live up to its name.

Some of our favorites? Bingham Hill’s Harvest Moon or Cowgirl Creamery’s Red Hawk .

Eating Cheese When You’re Lactose Intolerant

There’s an ongoing debate regarding lactose intolerance and cheese.  We wanted to get to the bottom of this, so we did a little digging and here’s what we came up with. 

Generally, when a person eats cheese and then doesn’t feel well, they claim lactose intolerance which is the inability to digest lactose, the primary sugar found in milk.  Through a little bit of sleuthing, we found that this isn’t actually the case. Luckily for cheese lovers, the majority of the lactose in milk is removed with the whey during the manufacturing process.  In fact, most aged, hard cheeses contain almost no lactose, making them safe to eat.

If you’re still unsure but want to give cheese another try, another rule of thumb when looking for low lactose cheeses is to watch the fat content. The higher the fat, the less lactose there is.

Ever Wonder Where Cheese Comes From?

We’ve often asked ourselves, “How did it all begin?” We could not have known this was going to be such a tricky question. As it turns out, the true origin of cheese is based around much guesswork. Was it 7,500 years ago or 4,000 years ago? Should we thank the Sumerians or the Greek?

The most compelling and most commonly told story on the origin of cheese is based on a mysterious Arabian merchant who discovered cheese around 3500 B.C. by complete accident. Apparently, he was carrying his cheese in a saddlebag made from the stomach of a young animal. While traveling in the hot sun, the milk reacted with the rennet in the lining of the stomach, causing the milk to curdle – and thus, cheese was born.

The story must continue, however, as the Middle East is not often considered to be the foremost expert on cheesemaking. More plausible as the original King of Cheese would be Europe – and particularly, France. So how did the cheese get from the bag of this Arabian merchant into the hands of European monasteries? Again, a little guesswork. It’s suspected that cheese crossed into Europe via travelers from Asia.

Our conclusion? Though we may never really know how it all began, we’re just glad the curd did not go unnoticed.

Cooking With Cheese

Wondering why your cheese separates when you cook it? Looking for new ways to add cheese to your meal? We’ve done a lot of experimenting and have discovered a few things along the way that we’ll gladly share with anyone who is interested.

First off, a word to the wise – use heat sensibly when melting down your cheese or cooking it in your favorite dish. Cheese that is cooked on high or heated for too long will separate. Suddenly your cheesy entree can become an oily, clumpy mess. To avoid this:

• Cook cheese over low to medium heat.
• If microwaving your cheese, cook at lower power settings.
• When your favorite casserole calls for a topping of cheese, add it at the very end of the cooking cycle. In some cases, add the cheese after removing it from the oven and let it melt naturally on the hot dish.
• Check the fat content! Higher fat cheeses handle the heat better than low fat or reduced fat cheeses.

Note: Sharper flavored cheeses mellow when melted. What tastes too strong now may be perfect when melted over vegetables.

And, by the way, we discovered that you can freeze your leftover cheese. Grated or shredded dry cheeses, as well as goat and sheep milk cheeses, can be easily frozen in a tightly sealed bag and saved for later.

We suspect this is just the tip of the iceberg and would love to learn about what others have discovered on their own personal cooking-with-cheese learning journey!

What's All the Ash About?

Have you ever encountered a bloomy rind cheese with a dark, powdery layer on the outside or inside of the cheese?

If you’re unfamiliar with eating artisan cheeses, the dark shade of a bloomy rind can appear a bit intimidating – even inedible. Is it some foreign mold that isn’t supposed to be there? An indication of a cheese gone bad?

Actually, it’s ash, and it’s there to keep unwanted molds from growing. During the cheesemaking process, a cheesemaker will often coat the cheese in ash to change the pH of the surface, effectively neutralizing the shell of the cheese and preventing the growth of ‘bad’ molds.

Not surprisingly, there’s more than one type of ash used for this purpose. Some are made from vegetables, others from wood or dried leaves. How these different ashes affect the flavor of the cheese is debatable. Some say a certain ash will make the cheese sharper while others claim a milder tasting result. Most will agree that the purpose of ash is to act as a moisture barrier and NOT to distract from the flavor of the cheese.

What do you think – does ash enhance the flavor of cheese or does it just make you think twice before you put that little morsel in your mouth?