Class Acts

A couple of quick announcements of upcoming classes that are guaranteed to be epic. How do I know? Because the women giving them are stunningly talented and never disappoint!

Cheesemaking with Mary Rosenblum, including Cheese Sampling and Lunch

Master cheesemaker and renowned science fiction author Mary Rosenblum teaches how to make your own Monterey jack cheese at home. Taught in Sasha Kaplan's "And She Cooks" home kitchen, you'll also sample some of Mary's feta cheese and have a late lunch prepared by Sasha of a pasta and salad dish using the cheese you create.

Details: Cheesemaking with Mary Rosenblum with Cheese Sampling and Lunch. Sat., April 9, 1-4 pm; $50, preregistration required. And She Cooks, 2335 NE 41st Ave. 503-288-8196 or 503-317-4823.

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Superb Spring Holiday Dinner with Chef Kathryn LaSusa Yeomans

Find out how easy it is to prepare an astonishing spring holiday meal with ingredients bought at the farmers' market. The class starts with a tour of the Hillsdale Farmers' Market where you'll meet many of the market's farmers, ranchers and producers as you gather the ingredients for the meal. Then it's a short walk to Sweetwares kitchen in the Hillsdale Shopping Center where Chef Kathryn will demonstrate how to stuff and tie a lamb leg roast, complement it with savory sauces, condiments and seasonal market vegetable side dishes. A tasting will follow the demonstration and include suggested wine pairings and a dessert recipe.

Details: Superb Spring Holiday Dinner with Chef Kathryn LaSusa Yeomans. Sun., April 17, 9:30 am-12:30 pm; $60, reservation required. Sign up on the market website.

Photo of Mary Rosenblum by Sarah Gilbert. Farmers' market photo by Kathryn LaSusa Yeomans. 

Livin' in the Blurbs: The Gift of Good Food

DIY, as in Do It Yourself, has been the new black here in the Northwest since waaaaaaay before the current economic climate had folks putting up preserves and sewing their own clothes (though that does account for the odd costumes I've seen out and about lately…yikes!). One of the first on the bandwagon was Luan Schooler at Foster & Dobbs, who started a DIY Cheesemaking Group at her store a couple of years ago. Yes, I said cheesemaking, as in people getting it from somewhere other than the dairy case at the store. The group is meeting again on Nov. 4 and will feature Gayle Starbuck, who will demonstrate basic soft fresh cheesemaking techniques using direct set cultures. She’ll discuss equipment, sources, and using herbs and flowers to decorate and flavor fresh cheeses, along with using cultures to make Fromage Blanc, crème fraiche, Fromagina, mascarpone and more. Can you say the perfect holiday hostess gift?

Details: DIY Cheesemaking Group meeting. Wed., Nov. 4, 6:30 pm; free. Foster & Dobbs Authentic Foods, 2518 NE 15th Ave. Phone 503-284-1157.

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Pie is one of those simple pleasures of life that scares the daylights out of people. Maybe your mother was a terrific pie baker and you'll know you'll never measure up. Maybe you tried once and had a leathery, leaden mess on your hands. But now's your chance to change all that just in time for the holidays. Culinary Artistry, the catering wing of well-reviewed Lincoln Restaurant, is starting a series of small, affordable cooking classes, beginning with Pie Dough 101. In the one-hour class you'll learn to make dough by hand and with a machine, plus you'll take home the dough you make and recipes on how to use it. Everyone at your holiday table (not to mention at the family dinner table) will be so glad you did!

Details: Pie Dough 101. Sun., Nov. 8, 11 am; $60, reservations required. Culinary Artistry, 3808 N Williams, #128. 503-232-4675.

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Everyone knows they can subscribe to magazines. More people are finding out about Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) subscriptions. But subscribing to a bagel service? Such an innovative, some might say crazy-ass idea could only come from the mind of baker-cum-mad scientist Mark Doxtader, farmers' market brick-oven maven and owner of Tastebud Farm. With a minimum order of two dozen (in increments of six) and a choice of mouthwatering selections like poppy, sesame or plain, plus salt, pepper and whatever nutty combo Mark decides to offer, you can go in with friends and neighbors or your co-workers. Cream cheese and sandwich platter options are also available. And if you've got a bagel addict on your holiday gift list, what could be more perfect?

Details: Bagel Subscriptions from Tastebud Farm. E-mail for more information or download the subscription form here.

Vermont Vacation: Twig on a Branch

As part of my diligent information-gathering tour of the cheesemaking community in Vermont, Luan of Foster & Dobbs insisted I must, if at all possible, visit Michael and Emily Lee of Twig Farm in West Cornwall, just outside Middlebury. So I called, hoping for the best, and they were more than happy to have me stop in for a tour and a chat.

They built their home and barn and graze their goats on combined acreage they bought from Emily's family and a neighbor, and designed the buildings specifically for their cheese production business. From their herd of 25 Alpine goats, they make three types of cheese, a Goat Tomme, a Square Cheese and a Soft Wheel. When I arrived, Michael ("He does everything," according to Emily) was just heading down to his cheese cellar to wash the rinds of the Soft Wheels and turn the others. As he sat on a large blue picnic cooler and methodically washed the rinds with a salt brine solution, we talked about how he got into making cheese and what's it's like raising goats and making cheese in Vermont.

A former cheese buyer for Formaggio Kitchen in the Boston area, Michael said that since he was young he had wanted to start a farm even though there was no history of farming in his family. As a young adult he worked as a pruner at an orchard, oddly enough, on Sauvie Island in Oregon, and had also done harvesting on a vegetable farm. Those experiences and his own inclinations convinced him he wanted to raise animals, so he went to work for Ann and Bob Works at Peaked Mountain Farm in Townshend, Vermont, where he learned to make cheese.

As for how he got started on his own cheeses, he says, "They had sheep [at Peaked Mountain] and I bought some goat milk from a farmer around here [West Cornwall], and brought it down there and mixed it with the sheep milk and made a couple of batches of the cheese that way. It worked out fine and I said, well, hey, I can make a cheese like that. I can do it consistently and well and have a salable product without a lot of loss. It makes it lot easier to get established."

As for the dual duty of having animals and making cheese, something many cheesemakers avoid by buying their milk from area farmers, Michaels says, "The only way I'm going to know if I've got the milk quality that I want is to have my own animals." He does supplement his herd's milk with milk from a neighboring farmer, but knows how the farmer treats his animals and what he feeds them.

And it's what they eat that makes all the difference at the end of the day. In the Soft Wheel "the variables are much more in play affecting what you can taste of the milk. With the Tomme there are variables but you can almost always see through them to see what the milk is all about. And that can make for a cheese that's sublime or a cheese that's boring. I like it from the summer but I love it from the fall. That's my favorite cheese from the tomme, starting about late summer, end of August until [the goats] come off pasture. You can taste the warmth of a September afternoon." And isn't that what artisan cheese is all about?

Read the rest of the posts in this series: Da Big Cheese!, Burlington and Environs, My First Time, Muddling Through Middlebury and Cheese and Community.