Cheese Party - IL Secondo Piatto

Now the big cheeses.

First aroma out of the oven is the crushed Sicilian olives in olive oil - Heated at 45 degrees.  A range of stronger cheese came out on their new wooden board.  On the boards were Sicilian olives and they were to accompany the provolone piqante.

Provolone Piquante, the strongest of the soft cheeses but the most delicate of the strong cheese.

Ann's Special Blue cheese is is next, a ripe Roquefort mould on a paler cheddar like cheese. Very strong Roquefort flavour and more pleasing and delicate than the traditional blue. (I think)

A triple decker from Southcape.  This one has three stripes top stripe filled with Sundried tomatoes, the second stripe, a vintage cheddar and the third, summer herbs.

Vintage Cheddar - A mainland extra aged cheddar, accompanied by spiced pears.  That is a match made in heaven

Blue Cheese - Traditional. Very robust  may also be accompanied by the spiced/pickled pears. Not for the fainthearted.

In the middle of the cheeseboard were matchsticks of pecorino.  A sheep's milk cheese, like a Parmesan, parmeggiano- reggiano, but milder and more pleasant eating, I think.  A provocative accompaniment  was a large deep purple shiso or perilla leaf. - just to scratch and sniff.  I was curious as to whether people could pick up the "umami" flavour in both the leaf and the pecorino.

The last big aroma from the oven.  at the very end of all the cheeses  was a warmed piece of dark chocolate. 70% proof. Just to smell, not to eat....
The bread  In keeping with the tenet of the day - mostly local and not too much processed junk. The bread was a beautiful sourdough, wholemeal baguette from the local baker.

Outside for a silly game.  We trooped outside and Don organized a game of Finska.  It is a kind of skittles with numbers.  Everyone stayed in their teams and there were lots of laughs.

The Elizabethan dessert was a kind of strawberry shortcake, but the pastry was Maggie Bier's sour cream pastry.  A very delicate flaky pastry topped with a baked ricotta and glazed strawberries which are at the peak of perfection right now.  Thanks, Elizabeth.
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Thanks for coming, everyone. Thanks for making the journey up the range and making your own cuppa'.  We had a ball putting this together and enjoyed your company.  So grateful for the good weather.  Today, it is raining and cold.

Cheese and Aromas - The cheese party

A beautiful clear day.  Hooray after the week of very bad weather.
The guests were happy to be here and had a reasonable drive up the range. We ushered them into the lounge where the fire was softly burning.  We started off with a sherry, remember sherry,  it has been a while.  We had small blue vein cheese biscuits with a toasted walnut on top.  Jill E. said she hadn't had sherry for 30 years.

Then the french onion soup which had been slowly cooked on the fireplace stove over many days, was served in the lounge.  We put a slice of  toasted baguette topped with runny emmental cheese. Onion soup is always surprisingly sweet.  One of the guests picked the star anise.  Well spotted, Liz. Then we stepped outside into the warm sunshine.

The First Cheese course -  Guests were arranged in teams of four.  Each team had their own cheeseboard and accompaniments pots honey, tamarillo chutney, bread and crackers

The perfume of spearmint is almost exactly like the taste of the childhood spearmint lolly - a most pleasant sweet minty-ness.  To kickoff the cheese guests were invited to smell the spearmint leaf and then to taste the super tangy yoghurt cheese.

Have you ever smelled clover flowers?  They are in  bloom right now.  It is the most beautifully- perfumed flower.  It has a super floral scent.
The fromage blanc has a little more sharpness than ricotta, and a finer texture.  It is made with rennet, buttermilk, and creme fraiche.  Sounds great, but it is very mild.  Guests were invited to mix some finely minced preserved lemon and or some crystallised sambal.  The accompanying aroma was the clover flowers with a spoon of local honey. This was warmed to only 45 degrees in the oven in a small porcelain pot. The warming of the pot really boosts the aroma. The honey from basil flowers. Beautiful honey.  Some people wanted to buy honey.

The next aroma out of the oven was lemon - lemongrass, lemon peel and lemon juice.  This accompanied the Jindi camembert and provolone piquante.
The provolone is a complex cheese, it has many flavours for such a pale form. It finishes with a kick.

Cheese Party Menu - Home, Home on the Range

Starter: 

Gorgonzola Wafers and sherry

Soup:  

French onion soup with Emmenthele 

Cheese platter with accompaniments and aroma aids

Vintage cheddar or blue vein with poached ginger pear – your choice

Salads and Palate cleansers

1. ·   Tomato Panzanelle salad
2. ·      Watermelon and Feta Salad
3. ·      Green salad, microgreens from the orto                                                                                      that’s Italian for backyard

Three home-made cheeses

1. ·      Fromage Blanc,
2. ·      special blue
3. ·      Labna – yoghurt cheese

Elizabethan Dessert

An interesting Book - "Cowgirl Creamery Cooks"

We are hosting a cheese tasting party.  For stimulation and motivation I am reading the "Cowgirl Creamery Cooks", a book from California about these two artisan cheesemakers.

They suggest aroma aids like from freshly mown spring hay and late harvest gold straw, slate, chocolate for even oyster shells! The idea is you put the aroma aid into a flask add a little water pass the flask around and sniff the aroma.  The fun is in trying to match the aromas to the notes in the cheeses.  I am thinking of playing around with Lemon grass, mint, straw, ginger.

It is the partnering here that matters.  The same for any accompaniment.  It is possible to accent cheese flavours with foods of similar note, or a contrasting flavoured food may accentuate the cheese's own characteristics.

Wish me luck.

The book details are

"Cowgirl Creamery Cooks".  Sue Conley & Peggy Smith.  Chronicle Books, San Francisco. California. 2013.

Climate Modelling Middle earth

Here is the link to the you tube -  part one of climate modelling Middle earth.  Climate Model of Middle earth part one

This is part of the mooc, (short course) I am doing.  How much fun.

Fun at the Cirque

Big day out at the Cirque du Soleil.  So much fun.  So much to see every second - and that is before the show starts.  There are clowns roaming through the crowd before the show, generally creating mayhem.   One of the clowns spoke entirely Italiano.  By the time I realized, he was standing right in front of us.  So, of course, I shouted "buona sera". He shot around. We had a lovely chat.  He wondered where I learnt Italian.  Right here.
Bravo Signora, la Maestra molto severa...Dalla scuola Giossue Carducci.

A short Course "Denial 101 X"

Why do smart people deny climate change?  This question has really bugged me.  So I heard John Cook on the local radio and I have enrolled in my first MOOC - (that is a free uni course on-line).  The course is - Denial 101x. Making Sense of Climate Change Denial. This means the course is concerned with the psychology, history and philosophy of climate change denial.  It discusses the various myths one by one and the techniques adopted by the anti-science brigade, like for instance, "Cherry Picking" evidence.

The course is comprised of a series of youtube videos. The course contributors are famous scientists from all over the world.  The course is very user-friendly and it does not lead to a qualification.  I am up to week three and the  course concludes 16th June.  I think you can still join.  Denial 101x

It is very entertaining, .  I think that it might just make a big difference to the world discussion on climate change..... there are now more than 15000 people enrolled in the course.  Oh and did I mention, it is free.

ps:  My friend, Dorothy, is doing an Economics course from Harvard.

She says she has never studied economics.... ha...