New Cheeses have arrived today!!!

Hey’a'll – -

I got so much to do in the world of my life this afternoon it is sorta beyond funny.  Here is what is cool so far…

Name: Boucher Bleu
Milk: Raw Cow
Origin: Highgate Center VT
Cost at Store: $39.99/lb.

- – Boucher Bleu.  I spell the word blue as bleu because my dad told me that was how you spelled blue when it came to cheese.  I was around five years old at the time.  I was really excited because I had found a spelling error on the menu of his restaurant, and I know he probably felt a little bad letting me down, and so he turned it in to a learning opportunity.  Neat.

Anyways, the Boucher Bleu is a special wheel, noted most principally for its mild sweetness and fudge-like texture.  However, digging in to it a little bit, we find a pretty cool story.  I am compelled to copy and paste here, but I will touch on the good points and paste in a link for the full story.

- – The Boucher family came to the St. Lawrence River valley over 400 years ago and farmed the land with great success.  They were eventually granted land that is now modern day Quebec.

- – Pierre Boucher was a pivotal figure in the history of French involvement in modern day Canada, so much so that there is to this day a town you can visit, Boucherville, which, in the 17th century, was named in his honor.

- – Two brothers, Denis and Daniel Boucher have kept the farming tradition alive in their family, and have undertaken the production of cheese from their dairy in Highgate Centre in VT.

- – OK, so there is a lot to consider here.  I can’t help but have pangs of pain as I read about the story of the Boucher line, and how they brought French culture to the new world, seemingly at the expense of the culture that existed before their arrival.   It is funny, because I love cheese, in America, which was brought here by Europeans.  I have French Canadian in my blood, and yet I sort of feel bad for the the folks who were displaced in this story.  That is pretty much all I can say about that, I feel sorta sad.  That said, the world is a wild place, and I don’t know why folks feel compelled to spread out and fight and conquer each other, but I know it still goes on today, so we all do our best.

- – So to the cheese, I said sweetness and texture, but let us think a little about bleu cheese and how this one is cool.  I would like to talk about your tongue for a second.  It is covered in taste buds, which are arranged in five sections, and have seemingly evolved in us as a way to help us determine what we should / shouldn’t put in our mouths.  So, if you were to say, try to eat a rhubarb leaf, maybe the intense tartness of the potentially lethal dose of oxalic acid contained therein would deter you from consuming it.  But it’s not like a little print out pops out of our ear saying “dude C₂O₄H₂ alert, spit it out and seek medical attention”.  We just sorta know, or, some folks do and some folks don’t.  But it is in playing with this sensory pathway that the rush, the clarity, the epiphany, and holy moly moments of flavor combinations are possible.  So, what the heck are we talking about here?  Simply, when we wake up in the morning, our taste buds are at their most articulate.  We haven’t eaten, smoked, drunk, licked, or sucked on anything in many hours.  So, like a story my mom told me about oversleeping in middle school, which ends with her skipping breakfast, and in a desperate rush of hunger eating her tuna salad sandwich at 7AM on the school bus, and not eating another tuna sandwich for 15 years, the wild weird and woolly flavors are generally not the best thing to consume first thing in the AM.

But, dear readers, what do we do pretty much first thing every morning?  (Excuse the generalization here), We suck down a cup of coffee with all our might!  How smart you think those taste buds feel after those 16ounces of an acidic extraction of practically burnt inedible beans are unceremoniously washed over their peacefully renewed and recently rested chemosensors?  Not as smart as they felt before you tried that!  Add to that the egg and cheese for breakfast, bento box for lunch, soup snack at 3PM, Rice beans and greens for dinner with wine, mini chocolate cake for dessert…Whatever snacks you snuck in that you prefer we not mention here, etc, those taste bud guys get railed all day!   You can imagine that they really appreciate a good nights sleep.

So anyways, on the website for the Boucher Bleu, they claim that it can be enjoyed as an amuse-bouche with a drop of Amaretto, on a spoon.  What does that really mean though?  (Aside from some fancy way to say “our cheese tastes good”.)  Well, amuse bouche in French, as far as I understand it, means, “Invite your mouth to taste”.  Or “Tickle your tongue”.  It generally describes a single bite of food that you consume at the extreme beginning of your meal, to engage the gustatory juices.  Bleu cheese as an amuse?  Usually leaves a bitter and pungent aftertaste, that lingers until about the salad course.  I would call it a “faux-pas”, or “boneheaded-move” in general, for a chef to choose a bleu cheese as an amuse.  So that is what makes this subtle sentence profound or interesting, and does a good job of describing the remarkable nature of this remarkable local cheese.  As I said at the top of the page, the Boucher Bleu is renown for its “mild sweetness”.  A bleu cheese that comes and goes with grace and elegance among your palette is sure to be a memorable and, dare I say it, a fleeting pleasure.  And if you wanna skip the amaretto I won’t tell, although if you toast a few almonds (has anyone ever toasted just one nut before?), crush them and place them atop your spoonful of Boucher, you will I am sure, be hungry for more.  So, come on down to CF and ask for a taste.

That’s it for now, Thanks for the comments and keep ‘em coming, and please, don’t be afraid to call BS from time to time.  Love, MorganMongerMonster.

- – Obligatory ad for City Feed, courtesy of Brian S. Ellis – - “Take a Break from wireless, eat your lunch in peace at City Feed” – - Sweet.

- – OK, so here are some neat links to check out…

Wikipedia entry for Pierre Boucher.
The full story of Green Mountain Blue Cheese.
Boucher Family Farm Blog.  (A Wicked Awesome read)

Oh, and in my poking around the internet for interesting nuggets, I learned the word, “Riparian”.  Maybe you use it every day in casual conversation, but, just to be sure, the definition, according to m-w.com is “relating to or living or located on the bank of a natural watercourse (as a river) or sometimes of a lake or a tidewater.”  Yay!

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