VOLUME 1, ISSUE 1, | November 1 - 30, 2006
Healthy Artisan Cheese:
Eat Less, Enjoy It More
By DAVID GIBBONS
Even if you’re a hyper-conscientious dieter who tends to avoid fat like the plague, it’s still possible to enjoy the ancient miracle of curdled, cured milk and stay within healthy parameters. As in the case of any rich food, the key to enjoying cheese is moderation. The best strategy is to buy only the finest cheeses, consume them in small quantities and substitute them for foods with equivalent fat and protein counts. Four ounces of strip steak may conform to your Mediterranean-style pyramid diet but it isn’t a much of a gustatory revelation. The same amount of genuine — emphasis on genuine — artisan cheese is guaranteed to tickle your palate. For your weekly treat, instead of the steak, splurge on a 4-ounce chunk of authentic Roquefort and serve it alongside a big healthy salad.
Become a connoisseur and a choosy taster. Most of the world’s elite cheeses are stronger, richer, more profound — and, of course, more expensive — than your standard fare. We’re not talking about Cabot Cheddar, which you can probably find in your supermarket dairy case. Nothing against Cabot; it’s a perfectly respectable, well-made American version of a great English classic. But try a genuine raw-milk Montgomery’s Cheddar and your inevitable response will be: “Now that’s real cheese!”
As the renowned mâitre fromager (and, not coincidentally, my co-author of two popular cheese books) Max McCalman likes to say, “Cheese is a more perfect food than the incredible, edible egg.” Cheese supplies plenty of the nutrients needed to sustain a human being, except for fiber — and that’s where the salad or perhaps a good piece of whole-grain bread comes in. A 4-ounce piece of good Cheddar offers more than twice the protein of an egg as well as one-half to one-third of the daily nutritional requirements of an average-sized adult. Yet there’s no denying the fact that it contains significant amounts of saturated fat from an animal source, the kind doctors recommend reducing to a minimum in order to control your cholesterol and weight.
Artisan cheesemakers avoid questionable industrial practices such as treating healthy animals with growth hormones or non-therapeutic antibiotics, or giving them animal-based feeds; therefore these substances won’t creep into your diet. Research suggests that milk from naturally grazing pasture-fed cows contains increased levels of Omega-3 fatty acids and Conjugated Linoleic Acid (CLA), both anti-cancer agents. For people who are lactose-intolerant, cheese is really the only dairy product they should consider since virtually all the milk sugar (lactose) is “pre-digested” by the action of beneficial bacteria and enzymes in the cheesemaking and aging processes.
Speaking of bacteria, you may hear a lot of fear-based, alarmist pronouncements from the medical establishment about the dangers of non-passteurized raw-milk cheeses. In fact, the safety net of pasteurization is illusory because its main effect is to eradicate completely the natural barrier of beneficial bacteria that protect an aging cheese. Historically, the infrequent incidents of sickness from cheese have almost all been blamed on raw-milk cheeses but turn out to be traceable to pasteurized ones. Responsible raw-milk producers test for bad bugs on a daily basis and will destroy any contaminated batch of milk or cheese immediately.
Reputable purveyors such as the Artisanal Premium Cheese of New York and Neal’s Yard Dairy of London will only buy cheeses from producers who uphold the highest standards, sanitary and otherwise.
To shop for the world’s finest cheeses in the New York area, go to Murray’s Cheese Shop, 254 Bleecker Street (between Sixth and Seventh Avenues in Greenwich Village) or their new branch in the market area of Grand Central Station (43rd Street and Lexington Avenue); one of the Fairway Markets, 2328 Twelfth Avenue (off Westside Highway at 125th Street) or 2127 Broadway (between 74th and 75th Streets), Manhattan, or in the Manetto Hill Mall, Plainview, Long Island (exit 37 off the Northern State Parkway), or at 480-500 Van Brunt Street in Red Hook, Brooklyn. For a large-scale, commercial operation, Whole Foods also has a good cheese program and sells quite a few genuine artisan cheeses. To learn more about—and also purchase--elite cheeses, go to the Artisanal Premium Cheese website: www.artisanalcheese.com.
Keeping Track of the Fat
A 3-ounce portion of cheese contains about 25 to 30 milligrams of cholesterol and 5 to 6 grams of saturated fat. By comparison, an egg has 274 grams of cholesterol and 2 grams of saturated fat; 3 ounces of rib-eye steak about 70 milligrams of cholesterol and 5 grams of saturated fat; 3 ounces of dark-meat chicken 80 milligrams of cholesterol and 2 grams of saturated fat. A low-fat diet designed to reduce risk of cardiac disease ought to contain no more than 300 milligrams of cholesterol and no more than 20 grams of saturated fat per day.
Be aware: on the day you stage a cheese tasting and eat half a pound of the good stuff, your intake from that source alone may have reached 80 milligrams of cholesaterol and 16 grams of saturated fat.
Not all artisan cheeses are labeled but with the ones that are, their fat content is listed as a percentage of solids (“dry matter,” or matière grasse in French), which can be somewhat misleading. (The reason for this is that, while cheese has a high water content — hard cheeses are 30 to 35 percent water; soft ones up to 60 percent—they dehydrate as they age, meaning their fat content as a percentage of total weight will change whereas the fat as a percentage of solid weight will not.) Consequently, a harder cheese with 50 percent fat in dry matter will yield more fat than a softer one with 75 percent. Parmesan, for example, which contains 30 percent water and 35 percent butterfat in dry matter, yields 25 grams of fat per 100 grams of cheese; Brie, on the other hand, which has 49 percent butterfat in dry matter but is 57 percent water, yields just over 20 grams of fat per 100 grams of cheese.
Holiday Entertaining With Cheese
There are two main options for serving an eye-opening selection of fine artisan cheeses: (1) A board where you lay out the chunks and your guests cut their own portions; (2) Prepared plates where you arrange pre-cut portions and serve a sit-down course. The first option has the advantages of being more relaxed and free-flowing, allowing people to circulate around the room, cocktail-party style. The problem with this approach is a lack of presentation- or portion-control, and, frankly, self-service boards tend to get a bit sloppy, which does a disservice to fine cheeses. The second option — a cheese course -- is an elegant and intriguing addition to your holiday party. You get a lot of bang for your buck, the prep is relatively simple, and the cheese plate takes the place of, at the very least, your appetizer course if not your entrée. Choose a selection of five or six cheeses and serve portions of 1 to 11⁄2 ounces per person per cheese. (Remember, these are tasting plates; a little bit of great cheese goes a long way.) As accompaniments, serve figs; membrillo (Spanish quince paste, which should be available at any fine cheese outlet); slices of a high-quality baguette; or some type of whole-grain bread (if you’re offering a blue cheese, walnut and/or raisin bread goes very well).
Be sure to mix and match your selection to keep things interesting. Alternate milk types (cow, goat, sheep) and textures (soft, medium, hard); progress from milder to stronger flavors. Start with a mild, rich French triple crème such as Explorateur or Brillat-Savarin or, alternatively, one of the Northern Italian cheeses from the Robiola family; move on to a medium-aged, mold-ripened goat cheese such as the Spanish Monte Enebro or Humboldt Fog from Northern California; next, a hard extra-aged Mimolette from northern France or an authentic 3-year-old Dutch farmhouse Gouda; followed by a washed-rind stinker, the quintessential Burgundian Epoisses, as smooth, melting, meaty and balanced as it is smelly; next, an aged sheep’s-milk cheese like Spenwood from the British Isles or Pecorino di Pienza, a taste from the beautiful hills of south-central Tuscany; and, finally, the coup de grace, a creamy yet intensely flavored world-class blue such as genuine Roquefort or perhaps Stilton, from its original maker, Colston-Bassett.
For a larger group, try the Spanish Queso de la Serena or Torta del Casar and the Portuguese Serra da Estrela or Serpa; these Iberian “torta” cheeses are collectively known as the ultimate party animals. Buy a whole one (from 2 to 4 1/2 pounds), carve off the top of the rind and scoop out servings of this incredible, glossy sheep’s milk ambrosia as it melts languorously at room temperature. These delicacies offer deep, complex, lingering flavors highlighted by an intriguing undercurrent of bittersweetness.
Important note: Always be sure to take your cheeses out of the fridge in plenty of time (at least 30 minutes) to bring them to room temperature before serving. Offering fine cheeses too cold, which masks their flavor, is the biggest mistake people make in cheese entertaining.
David Gibbons is a freelance writer and editor who is co-author, with cheese expert Max McCalman, of The Cheese Plate and of Cheese: A Connoisseur’s Guide to the World’s Best, which won a 2006 James Beard Award.
