Holy Smokes!!…

Hello Cheese Enthusiasts!

The inspiration for this week’s blog came from the photo roll of my camera. I found a series of photos that I had taken last year of the smoky skies near my home in Northern California, due to the horrible fires that we had experienced. The day the photo was taken, the smoke was so thick that there was only about 1,000 feet of visibility and the local schools were closed due to the air quality. 

Seeing this smoke, I commented to a neighbor that I had planned on hanging some cheddar on the clothesline outside to see if I could smoke it….Not too far from the truth, as cheesemakers have been doing just that same step for years.

The photo of the copper cheese kettle was taken in Switzerland at the Emmentaler Schaukäserei (Show Cheese Dairy). The Show Dairy had two areas where you could view Emmentaler cheese being made – one in a modern facility, the other was in a small enclosed building where they heated the milk over an open fire…and there in the rafters of the building hung sausages from a local butcher, so really this building served as two purposes – a historic cheese room, and a smoke house.

Today’s entry is part of a long series of stories that helps to illustrate how cheesemakers used nature (and natural methods) for their cheese preservation, both past and present. Marinating, Binding with Wood (in order to hold the soft cheese curd together), and Wrapping with Leaves ties in perfectly with today’s blog about Smoked Cheeses.

Let’s start with some background…

Smoking food products has been around for a long time. It started by hanging meats in the smoke from the fire. This would not only remove the moisture, but it would keep insects away, all the while adding flavor. So in the case of meat products, smoke can preserve, as well as add flavor.

In the case of smoking cheeses, it is mostly about the flavor, as cheeses do not have the same make up as raw meats. I am sure that smoke could naturally reduce the moisture on the surface of the cheese, therefore making it harder to mold.

Turning to my friend Pat Polowsky, and his Cheese Science Toolkit website. Pat describes smoke as “an aerosol produced by burning wood.” He goes on further to explain, “We call smoke an aerosol because there are solid bits distributed within a gaseous medium. Those smoke components are what make it unique and useful for food flavoring/preservation. Things like temperature, moisture content of the wood, and all sorts of other things can influence the types and amounts of components.”

Today, smoke flavor is added to cheese in two ways – Cold Smoking, and Liquid Smoke. We will not be talking about liquid smoke in this story…other than to say that many of the processed cheeses of the world use liquid smoke – enough said.

The remainder of today’s blog is dedicated to those cheesemakers who take the extra time and effort to gently add a smoky, meaty flavor to cheese the old fashioned way using real wood smoke.

Before I introduce you to today’s cheese rock stars that are smokin’…Let me explain the “Cold Smoke” process. Cold smoking is typically done at a temperature range of 20 to 30 °C (68 to 86 °F). In this temperature range, foods take on a smoked flavor, but remain relatively moist. Hard woods such as hickory, mesquite, oak, pecan, alder, maple, and fruit-tree woods, such as apple, and cherry tend to be some of the most popular.

When selecting the cheeses that I wanted to feature today, I avoided anything processed, cheddars, and mozzarellas. Don’t get me wrong…there is a time and place for them, I just wanted to share some really unique ones with you…I hope that you agree – These are special!

UP NORTH Applewood Cold Smoked Ricotta – By Crooked Face Creamery©

Talking with cheesemaker and founder of Crooked Face Creamery, Amy Rowbottom was like catching up with an old friend. She is a cheesemaker that got into the business for all of the right reasons…Growing up on her family’s dairy farm gave her a grounded foundation; she attended college and moved away to the big city…but when it was time to start thinking of an environment to raise a family, those heartstrings pulled her home to the family farm in Skowhegan, Maine (just West of Bangor). 

Wanting to be more than just a dairy farm, Amy knew that she could do more and bring more value to the milk than just selling it as fluid milk, so she tried making several different types of cheeses and asked her friends and family their thoughts and more importantly, if it were available, would they buy it??

What came out of those early working sessions directly relates to the cheese line up that they produce today, a line-up of fresh and aged cheeses. The one that I want to focus on today is their Applewood Cold Smoked Ricotta…Now, I am not sure how Ricotta Cheese is used in your corner of the world, but on the West Coast, Ricotta is mostly used for Lasagnas, or as a filling in Cannolis, but the Italians discovered long ago that Ricotta goes way beyond a cooking cheese, in fact it is used as a high-protein breakfast, slightly dried and pressed it makes a wonderfully delicate table cheese, and heavily pressed and dried, it can be called Ricotta Salata, aged for 90 days, it can be sliced, grated, or crumbled. Today’s Applewood Smoked Ricotta is drier than the tubs of Ricotta that you might find in the local market, but not as dry as a Ricotta Salata. The Italians call Smoked Ricotta, Ricotta Affumicata, and it is considered a specialty cheese of Southern Italy in Calabria. It took many, many trials from Amy at Crooked Face Creamery until she perfected that recipe using an old wood burning stove. Today, she uses state-of-the-art smokers, using Applewood from Coastal Maine to transform this beautiful whole milk from her Jersey cows into an ivory, smoky jewel. Enjoy it by the spoonful, as a spread, mixed with fresh greens, atop wood fired pizza, accompanying any type of pasta, or drizzle a little olive oil or if you like, to send your taste buds to heaven.

Crooked Face Creamery is a proud member of the Maine Cheese Guild.

Rogue Creamery© Smokey Blue – Rogue Creamery has the distinction of being the first blue cheese made on the West coast (read their story here) and the first blue cheese anywhere to be smoked...better known as Smokey Blue. 

Smokey Blue starts as a classic Oregon Blue made from pasteurized, organic whole cow’s milk, then is cold smoked for 16 hours with Oregon hazelnut shells. The smoking process creates a cheese that is at once sweet, creamy, and smoky. The smoke flavor is not overpowering and pairs beautifully to give it a savory, meaty, and “umami” flavor. The smoking mellows the “bite” that is normally associated with blues, while adding a hint of nuttiness.

It has been awarded 2005’s Best New Product at the National Association for the Specialty Food Trade’s (NASFT) Summer Fancy Food Show in New York City. In 2004, Smokey Blue took first place in the Other Smoked category at the World Cheese Awards in London, where it was also named the Best American Cheese. 

Idiazabal D.O.P. – Not familiar with this Spanish cheese?...It’s okay, as many people are only familiar with Spanish Manchego, which is a dry, sheep’s milk cheese that comes from the center of Spain. Idiazabal may also be a sheep’s milk cheese from (Northern) Spain, but that is where the similarities end. Idiazabal is named for a village in the País Vasco region and is considered one of the traditional Basque cheeses. The D.O.P. protection dictates that it be made with the ultra-rich, raw milk of the Latxa sheep, which produce no more than 1 liter of milk per day. The cheese aged a minimum of 6 months and is smoked over Hawthorne and Cherry woods, which reflects the history of shepherds storing the cheese in the chimneys of their mountain huts. The smoke adds additional character to this sharp, fruity cheese. 

A very similar cheese, produced in the same region as Idiazabal, is known as Etxegarai Larrun Gazta. The name Etxegarai refers to the old farmhouses located high up in the mountains of the Basque country. Shepherds used to store cheese near their nighttime fires, giving the wheels their characteristic smoky flavor; Larrun is a mountain in the Pyrenees on the border of Spain and France; and Gazta means cheese in the Basque language. This is made much the same way as Idiazabal, but the milk collection zone is a much larger area than the protected Idiazabal D.O.P. cheese. It also may be made from a mixture of milks, where the Idiazabal D.O.P. cannot. 

To finish today’s story, I wanted to include a smoked Brie cheese, but could not find one in time for this post….So I decided to make my own!...Except it was hard to keep the cheese lit! (Sorry, bad Dad joke).

But seriously, it was fun, easy and a great appetizer as I warmed up the barbeque for tonight’s dinner. 

While you can read the full recipe here, I should include a few notes for making this recipe…

I used Président® Triple Crème Brie and let it come to room temperature before starting the recipe. Next, I do not have a smoker, so I had to follow the recipe using a gas grill which made it challenging to keep the temperatures low, while still keeping the wood chips smoking. I ended up using Hickory wood chips, as I had already covered Apple, Chestnut, Cherry, and Hawthorne woods previously in this story.

These made for a beautiful and smoky board for my guests…

I may have ended my night smelling like I had been sitting in front of a campfire with friends, but then again, that is not such a bad thing.

My many thanks to Amy Rowbottom of Crooked Face Creamery for sending the samples of the Applewood Smoked Ricotta, as I have not found it on the West Coast, but I hope that after reading this story, that a few West Coast Cheesemongers give it a try.

Lastly, thanks to Sal at Ovtene for introducing me to Amy…I can certainly see how your Ovtene wrap was the perfect finishing packaging touch to complete Amy’s vision of delivering Crooked Face Creamery’s Smoked Ricotta to the mouths of cheese lovers everywhere.

Until next week…

Trevor