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The Wonderfulosity of Cheese, Part 7: Bulgarian rhapsody

Today we embark in a new direction for our exploration of the world of tasty cheese.  Yes, we are talking about sour crumbly cheeses, of which there is but one
widely known type: feta.  But not just any feta: Bulgarian feta.

(This was actually intended for a couple of days ago, but I was having technical problems.)

I was alerted to the existence of Bulgarian feta cheese in a conversation with someone hailing from some obscure Eastern European principality.  I think it was called Bulg...ravia?  ...oria?  Can't remember the name of the country.  (Just kidding, M. P.)  Anyway, when I mentioned my love of cheese, we got down to discussion of eastern cheeses, and I mentioned Greek feta.  Now, up to this point, I had been conditioned to believe, perhaps by Greek propaganda, that the only correct feta was Greek feta, and the rest were inauthentic imitations of it.  After all, the European Union itself denies the existence of non-Greek feta.

Not so, apparently.  My friend waxed eloquent (just like one waxes cheese!) about the superior merits of Bulgarian cheese over its Greek equivalent.  And I resolved to see this for myself.  Alas, the only way to get Bulgarian cheese was to order it over the Internet.

Not so, again!  For I was shopping the other day at a local halal grocer, and I came upon imported Bulgarian cheese in one of the fridge cabinets.  Naturally, I immediately purchased a block of it (which is quite a bit). 

But now for the part you've all been waiting for: the taste.  It is quite unexpected.  I was used to Greek(-style) fetas, as I said.  And yes siree, this was QUITE a bit stronger, to say the least.  More sour and sharp, with a slight aftertaste of...bitterness, maybe.  Just a hint.  And in terms of texture, smoother, but still crumbly.  My friend from the mysterious "B" country claims that his people find foreign fetas to be surprisingly bland, comparatively.

It took a bit of getting used to.  But now I'm used to it, and I even think it's quite good.  With stronger cheeses, see, you often get more bang for your buck, and this was actually quite affordable in the first place, at least compared to a lot of the aged hard imported cheeses.

Anyway, I tried it on pizza and it worked well.  And I tried it in a salad.  Pretty good too.  Under the fold, I give a recipe for a very simple salad.  Quick and easy!

The Wonderfulosity of Cheese, Part 6: Homage to the humble curd

I am still high. 

High on what? you ask.  What else? I say.  I am high on poutine.  Not just any poutine, but one I ate on Monday. 

(Not the poutine I ate, but a picture I'm linking from Wikipedia.  Note the incorrect presentation---proper poutine is to be served in a styrofoam cup.)

My American readers in particular may wonder what this heavenly delight is.  Put simply, it is a french fry/cheese curd/gravy parfait.  It originates, as most interesting fatty food in Canada does, from Quebec, though it is now available all over Canada, apparently.  It is most properly bought from a truck or kiosk at the side of the street.  In correct poutine (ie, not MacDonald's poutine, which exists in parts of Canada), the fries are real think potato fries, deepfried until very crispy in days-old oil.

First a layer of fries is placed in a cup and tamped down.  Then some CHEESE CURDS are placed on top, and some boiling hot beef gravy.  Then the process is repeated---the parfait effect.  Optional is a sprinkling of pepper on top.

It is the cheese curds that make poutine what it is.  Heated by the boiling gravy, they melt and drip into the crispy think potato fries.  This makes one big sticky mass of cheesy gravy goodness of which the potatoes are merely the most appropriate texturizing and transmission medium.  And it must be cheese curds, not just any cheese.  The strange sticky irregular softness is perfectly correct for emulsion with the gravy. 

And so we have it.  My ode to the wonderfulness of the humble cheese curd, without which orthodox poutine would not be possible.  A treat I have about once or twice a year, because it is deliciously toxic.  When Canadians do deadly junk food, we do it in style, not like sissy "cheese fries" like they have in the US.

The Wonderfulosity of Cheese, Part 5: French Canadian vs. Canadian?

I have so far lately tasted a "French-Canadian" brie and a "Canadian" brie, and I can hardly tell the difference.  They're labelled differently by the Ottawa grocery store in which I got them.  I tasted another brie made in Canada (but not officially called "Canadian") at a friend's apartment on New Year's Eve, and it did, in fact, taste different from both of the former cheeses: much sharper.  The French-Canadian and Canadian bries are quite insipid.  I guess they aren't quite the same, though---Canadian one might be slightly sharper.  And by "insipid", I mean they still have the wonderfulosity that cheese should have; it's a relative thing.

In other cheese news, "Emmental" Swiss-style cheese from France (also bought in Ottawa before I arrived, from Loblaws I think) hardly tastes much different from the generic supermarket Swiss cheese I get in my local grocery store in the You Ess.  That's pretty damn good generic Swiss cheese, I must say!  However, grocery stores here, even little ones, are all cheese nirvana compared to their US equivalents in terms of selection.  I have practically made it halfway through the tiny cheese table at the large-scale local supermarket I frequent in Americky.   I don't bother to shop for specialty cheese at the smaller store.  Not very impressive, eh?

The Wonderfulosity of Cheese, Part 4: Bitter Herbs

This is just a quick bit of cheeseblogging.  I like Havarti cheese.  I even like Canadian-made Havarti cheese.  I really like it infused with dill weed.  But the Daneborg Havarti With Fine Herbs goes really too far.  First of all, the ingredients don't tell us what these herbs are in the first place, just "fine herbs flavour."  And secondly, some of them are bitter, apparently.  I don't really think that the taste of Havarti goes with a bitter flavouring, so I don't recommend this particular variation. 

Beef Stroganoff

Beef stroganoff by Mandos.  The butter on the side has nothing to do with it, honest!  The tartan possibly has something to do with the fact that I was at the home of a couple of Scots.  The rumours are correct: they are Scot free.

Since it is a holiday weekend, I am trying to have little important to say.  However, last night I went to a party and brought some beef stroganoff made par moi.   It was a success, so I thought I'd provide the recipe:

Ingredients:
A lot of beef, sliced into thin short strips
Some butter
A little olive oil
A couple of cans of beef broth
Three or four green onions, sliced
Three small onions, chopped coarsely
An entire garlic bulb, puréed
Four mushroom soup cans
500ml tub of sour cream
Three jalapeño peppers, cut into thirds and then the thirds quartered
One sweet green pepper
Egg noodles
Package of fresh chives, sliced into 1-2 cm strips
Salt to taste

(You'll note that I'm rather vague on quantities here.  I rarely measure anything when I cook, so I have no precise idea.)

Marinate the beef in the garlic for a few hours.  Then melt the butter at the bottom of a pot---a large pot with a flat bottom is desirably, preferably multi-ply stainless steel.  Sauté the beef in the butter.  Salt to taste. It should give up its water.  Let it evaporate, and then add half a can of beef broth.  Let it also reduce until the beef is quite dry.  The beef should also be cooked quite well by that point.  Remove the beef and set aside.

Pour a little olive oil at the bottom of the pan.  Sauté the onions and green onions and jalapeño peppers for a while.  Add another half can of beef broth.  Wait for it to evaporate. Again, salt to taste, although the beef broth is quite salty. Add a quarter of a can of beef broth and add the sweet green peppers.  Sauté it for a few more minutes, but let it remain a bit wet.

Add the cans of mushroom soup.  Heat through.  Then add the beef and remaining beef broth.  Let it again heat through until it is quite bubble.  Then add the entirety of the sour cream and stir in.  Again let it return to a bubble.  Then add the chives and stir.

Boil the egg noodles and serve with the sauce.  Serves a heckuva lotta people.  Not for people on low-sodium diets, unless you omit the salt and the beef broth.

The Wonderfulosity of Cheese, Part 3: Romano-Asiago Death Match

Once again, here at Politblogo, we confirm our dedication to bringing you important information on a life-changing subject: delicious cheese.  Today we compare two well-known members of the Parmesan-like grating cheese family, Asiago and Peccorino Romano. (In other news, both the Ottawa and the Jarlsberg cheeses are finished.)

The Wonderfulosity of Cheese, Part 2: Low Fat Fjords

This is the second installment of a series I'm doing, The Wonderfulosity of Cheese.  And cheese is truly wonderfulocious!  Last time we talked about Ottawa cheese.  This time, we remain in the frigid tundras of the North.  Yes, I am talking about Norway.  And yes, I am talking about Jarlsberg cheese.

My usual rule of thumb is that if something is Low Fat, it is probably not all that tasty.  This is simply a specific instance of the dictum that good-tasting things are usually bad for you.  Actually, this is not always true, as we shall see below.

This cheese is imported by the same company that imported the "Ottawa" cheese from Canada.  The wrapping, however, has no image on it.  That's because while the company thought that Ottawa was an uninhabited wilderness, they are not even certain that Jarlsberg exists.  I cannot blame them for that, since I myself am unconvinced that it exists. 

The Wonderfulosity of Cheese, Part 1: Ottawa Cheese

This is my first post in a series of short posts on one of my favorite subjects, cheese.  Recently I bought from the supermarket a kind of cheese I hadn't seen before: "Ottawa" cheese.  For those who haven't been following this blog, I used to live in Ottawa, but now I live in good ol' Americky.  Anyway, I was ticked pink to see Ottawa cheese around here, and I vaguely wondered whether it tasted like Ottawa, and so I bought it.  The supermarket's selection of cheese is OK for a US supermarket, but it's still pretty sparse, so I was surprised to see something like this.

Now, Ottawa cheese is so named because it's imported from Canada, apparently.  The picture on the cover happens to be of...an uninhabited wasteland, since that what the average USian might imagine Ottawa to be, assuming the given Merkin has ever even heard of Ottawa, which is in fact quite rare.  (By contrast most South Americans know pretty much where it is.)

I originally didn't get the greatest impression from it.  Sometimes the ends of a block are inferior.  But after a second try, it tastes like a reasonable (mediocre) old sharp white cheddar.  It's better than generic supermarket cheddar, though, but it's much more expensive, so I probably won't get it a second time.  Once melted on toast it tastes no different from supermarket cheddar.

The most disappointing aspect of the cheese was that it did not taste like Ottawa.  (Actually this is a feature, not a bug, but whatever.)   I therefore move a motion of non-confidence against it, since it lied on its campaign promises.  Lying, lying cheese.   I now await its campaign platform.  Aux urnes de fromage!

Junk Food Outrage

Ever since I moved to the US (from Canada, if my non-Canadian readers hadn't noticed), I've had to make do without Clamato juice, and, therefore, Caesars.  Bloody Mary Mix doesn't count, because not only is it way more expensive than Clamato juice, it doesn't have the fishy taste of clam juice, and it doesn't go down nearly as smoothly, and Marys are simply not the same.  (Virgin Caesars and Virgin Marys, I don't drink the Bloody kind on account of not drinking alcohol). 

But now I have discovered a new outrage: the Oh Henry bars are different.  It's been years since I had an Oh Henry bar, so I decided to get one from the office vending machine.  And what did I find!  A vague, in fact inferior, clone of the Snickers bar.  Yes, it has peanuts.  Yes, it has nougat.  But not only is the nougat not tough, it is diluted with caramel, and the peanuts are mixed with the nougat-thing.  The chocolate coating seems inferior too. 

Yeesh, not only is it hard to get fresh produce in the US (ironically, imported produce is fresher in cold Canada even in winter!), but it's also difficult to get good junk food.  Well, at least US Taco Bell's are superior to their Canadian equivalents.  But I think that Canadians just have more discerning palates*.

*Including poutine.  Yes, I know that poutine is a crime against nature, good health, and culinary sanity.  But Canadians know how to do this correctly and with style and flair.  So a truly awful food concept becomes a brilliant invention.  And it is oh, so satisfying in the winter.  I have it no more than twice a year, usually after a long winter walk, because that's the maximum I can take without incurring the terrible negative side effects.