#3 to #5: Cowgirl Creamery, Point Reyes Station, California)

We found Cowgirl Creamery just down the road from our campsite after heading North along the coast from San Francisco the previous afternoon.  Surrounded by rolling hills, farms and lots of green grass (it is winter) is the little town of Point Reyes Station.  Here you can find a small supermarket, a mechanic, a gas station, a post office, and another shop ”Toby’s” that seems to do everything else.  As we sat outside drinking our coffee from Toby’s, locals called across the street to each other about their car troubles, enquired of each other’s health, and debated about the new bus schedule to the main town inland. Cowgirl Creamery started in this location.  They have now expanded and moved most of their operations inland to Petaluma, and also have two shops in San Francisco.  But here we visited their original location and the site where they still make their washed rind Redhawk cheese. 

#3:  Redhawk.  This is a triple cream washed rind cheese made Jersey cow milk, aged 3-4 weeks. It is around 250-300g, basket shaped with a light orange rind and only a small amount of white mould in surface depressions.  The rind has a light brevi/smear aroma, but the flavour is a little stronger and slightly bitter, but this seemed in balance with the rest of the cheese.  The rind was quite firm but not too thick, with a slight crunch.  They appear to use an adventitious smear culture from the factory environment, and we were told they had tried to move production to their larger factory in Petaluma, but couldn’t achieve the same product so moved production of the Redhawk back to the original factory in Point Reyes. 

#4.  Mt Tam.  We also tried Mt Tam, a traditional style white mould cheese with a very soft paste under a firm rind and a smooth, soft but unripened centre.

#5.  Wagon Wheel.  This is Cowgirl Creamery’s newest cheese, aged for 60 days.  It is European in style, based on Asiago, and matured in 10-12kg wheels.  It is pale yellow in colour and has a soft-medium firmness and a floral, fruity flavour.

 

#2: Flagship (Beechers Handmade Cheese, Seattle)

 The Beechers shop/factory is in a great location opposite the Pike Place Market in Seattle.  Glass on three sides of the small cheese making room allow both shop customers and those on the sidewalk to see what is going on in the vats.  At one end of the shop visitors can also view into a small controlled environment ripening chamber where a small number of cloth bound wheels are ripening.  These are the “Flagship Reserve” cheeses, and there are not many of them – most of the cheese appears to be made into 40lb blocks.

Flagship appears to be true to its namesake – the flagship of the Beechers factory – but they also sell a variety of other styles sourced from their own factory as well as others in California, USA and Europe.  Flagship is essentially a Cheddar style, but has slightly fruity and nutty notes, and is less sharp than we were expecting from a 12 month old Cheddar.  We learnt afterwards that they use thermophilic cultures for this cheese – or as they put it “we use cultures from Emmental and Gruyere”.

 A really good use for this cheese is in macaroni cheese – as they expertly demonstrate in the “famous mac’n’cheese” available from the cheese bar.  In this they use Flagship as well as another of their own cheeses, and I’m pretty sure some cayenne pepper.  It really is quite delicious – not the sort of package made, “American Cheddar” type of mac’n’cheese I was expecting in the US.   

Beechers location and view across Puget Sound

Flagship Reserve maturing

Mac'n'cheese with the raw ingredient being made in the background

Poutine

This is not technically a cheese, but a dish containing cheese, so it doesn't get the honor of #2. But Poutine was on our list of things we had to experience in Canada.  We found an East Coast Canada diner "Frenchies" which specialised in the stuff.  As the picture shows, it is simply potato fries with gravy and fresh cheese curds on top.  We had the most simple version (the one shown is the serving for two, but we couldn't finish it). Other dishes had extra toppings like bacon, brisket, smoked fish, you name it they had it.  It was pretty tasty, but to be honest it was pretty much what it looks like - a big pile of fries, gravy and curd.  And not very healthy.  But definitely glad we gave it a try.

The same evening, seeing as it was our 2nd wedding anniversary, we visited the Oakwood Canadian Bistro in Kitsilano for dinner.  These guys make everything (including bread, sauces, pasta etc) from scratch in the kitchen and source everything from within 100km of Vancouver.  I had the Dungeness Crab tortellini with burnt butter sauce (delicious) and Sandi had the pork belly, which was cooked properly and just fell apart without the need for a knife.  But the star of the show was dessert.  The "Nanaimo custard" was in fact a delicious egg custard made with milk from Nanaimo (a town on Vancouver Island) inside a Mason jar, and on top was a ganache with pecans and coconut thread.  So yum.

Poutine from Frenchies

#1. Armstrong Cheddar, Canada

#1 is not particularly exciting, but it's the first cheese we have tasted since leaving New Zealand.  It was Armstrong mature Cheddar which we purchased in the IGA supermarket at Whistler. 

This cheese is made by Saputo, sort of the Canadian Fonterra, but we suspect most Canadians would not have much of an opinion about Saputo given the relative proportion of dairy income in this country compared to NZ (where everyone seems to have an opinion about Fonterra, whether they know much about it or not).  But anyway, back to the cheese.  Typical Cheddar flavour, similar to a young Tasty cheese in New Zealand but with less grassy/oceanic note, quite well balanced although a hint of bitterness.  Interestingly, the packaging said the moisture content was 39% and the fat content 31%, so to us this didn't really seem like a true Cheddar.  When we melted it in some quesadillas it behaved more like an Edam/Gouda style which, as its composition would have suggested. 

Packaging was pretty simple (no picture sorry) being a clear flow-wrapped sleeve for this 250g block.  The cheese was quite hard to get back into the sleeve when we wanted to put it back in the fridge, but once we managed to poke it back in, the loose wrapping could be folded over to sort of prevent it drying out. 

Hoping #2 is a bit more exotic! 

Our mission

OK, we'll admit it, we are cheese geeks.  We know there are some fantastic cheeses made in New Zealand, but we are on a mission to discover more about traditional/artisinal cheeses from other parts of the world.  As we experience these cheeses and the culture that goes with it, we will post them on this blog for everyone to share.