Today is a big day for the Portland Market House.  It’s the grand opening of the second floor, with three new shops and seating for 50, but the big news in cheese for us is that we just got a new wheel of Piave into the shop. It’s a favorite of our staff to recommend as an alternative to Reggiano Parmesan.  Not to undermine Reggiano, the “king of cheeses,” but we love to always find a cheese that our customer hasn’t tried yet.   I frankly like Piave as a table cheese, even though it’s a hard cheese by the time we can get it in this country carrying the name “vecchio”(aged or hard). Piave is sweeter than Reggiano and a little lighter.   It’s a cow’s milk cheese from the north of Veneto Province in Italy and named after the Piave River.  I like it with a Merlot and a tomato and pasta dish.  When I bring it home and temperatures are 30 degrees or below outside here in Maine, I might eat it straight in my hot tub with a good red wine and good friends.

It reminds me of when I get together with the “girls”:  Every now and then, my girlfriends from my old neighborhood call to get together, our lives are so busy that it is not often, so it feels like a real gift. They come with their towels and bathing suit and stories to tell. They both have two or three jobs that they juggle, one married, one not. We talk briefly before getting into suits. As we walk down the stairs to the back yard we all are convinced that we may be a bit crazy, bare feet on stone and ice. These are always good times, in the steam and cold. Stories are shared only in the hot tub, but always with good cheese and wine. This time with Piave and Merlot.

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I have a customer who came in with a request to solve an unusual problem.  You see, if you live in Portland, Maine, you probably live in an old house. I do. He does. This time of year, when the cold settles in for good, the mice move in.  For him, it’s an annual event, and he knows it’s time when he opens his bread drawer and there’s holes in the bread bag.  So, mice like cheese, right?  But, he’d bought my 4 year old Canadian Cheddar, some Gruyere, and some Delice de Bourgogne on his own from my shop, and tried them all on his mouse traps.  The mice ate well.  The Delice, a great triple crème soft cheese (triple crème means cream has been added to the curd to make the cheese 70% or higher in butterfat), they just licked off without springing the trap. The Cheddar, that was too crumbly and they carried that off, probably with a good jigger of Scotch, which goes great with the 4 and 8 year old cheddars.  He had high hopes for the Gruyere, the great Swiss cheese, but it also got eaten off the mouse traps. So, the question was, “What cheese should I buy for my mouse trap?” After a lot of back and forth, we decided we’d try something not too hard and not too soft, and kind of inexpensive too, because  the mice really were eating too well.   I sent him home with an Emmental from Switzerland, the classic cheese with big holes in it. It’s the cheese from the old black and white cartoons you used to see on TV that the mice just loved.  The saga continues.  The mice might be saving it all to make a great fondu.

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My brother has the most outrageous Thanksgiving dinner that I have ever heard of. His wife’s extended family, from both parents, come as well as our family. This year he will be serving 80 people all sitting down at the same time! My brother loves it. My kids love it. He has asked me to get the turkeys for him this year as I know many of the Maine farmers. John Bernstein from Maine-ly Poultry is supplying us with four, over thirty pound, fresh turkeys and six dozen eggs! My brother makes the stuffing and cooks the turkeys; the women mostly cook the veggies and potatoes. The children, supervised, make all the desserts. There are too many desserts and lots of mess and noise in the kitchen that day. I am always happy to see that in the midst of it all, he finds a way to escape for an hour or two to row out on the lake. Some years I have joined him. It is lovely out there, peaceful and serene.

 Of course, being the Cheese Lady, I must bring the cheese. His daughter’s name is Eleanor, so I am required to bring some Eleanor Buttercup for her. Debbie Hahn of Hahn’s End Farm makes this cheese in Phippsburg Maine. This is a 6 month raw natural rind cow’s milk cheese.  Debbie has won some terrific national attention in the American Cheese Society competitions. This cheese was named after her grandmother, “because my grandma was so sweet”, and so too is the cheese. This raw cow’s milk cheese with a natural rind is aged about six months and has a light bright sweetness to it. It is the sweetest out of all of Debbie’s cheeses. I really like it with fruit and any white wine.
 

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There’s no way to start a blog but to start it.  We’ve just gotten in our big holiday supplies of cheese from New York and spent the whole day cutting wheels and wrapping and putting the pieces in the cases. Ryan spent a full 8 hours cutting cheese to put in the cases.

You never really know what the distributor will have for you.   The cheese actually comes in container loads of mixed cheeses from Europe, straight from the cheese aging houses there.  The aging houses have bought the cheese from the small farmers, then the aging houses handle the cheese until they decide the cheese is ready to go. They load ship containers full of mixed product. The distributor in New York will buy the whole container load, not really knowing what’s in it.  I get to pick from what the distributor gets and he ships it by tractor trailer to me.  The cheese has come a long way, over a long period of time. Each time our truck comes, it’s like Christmas for me.  Just now, we’ve gotten in our major order for the Thanksgiving holiday, with a very large component of French  and Dutch cheeses, primarily.  The Chaumes (a French cheese similar to a Port Salut, but with much more character and flavor) is the best I’ve ever seen.  We also got in outstanding  St. Nectaire and Tomme de Savoie.  We have now 3 Dutch Beemsters, including the Vlaskaas, get it while it’s here, it’s won 3 gold medals and it will soon be gone.

We’ve stocked up on Maine cheeses too.  We just got in a Bigelow Blue from Longfellow Creamery at Second Chance Farm in Avon.  It’s an organic raw cow’s milk, very lightly blued, and creamy cheese.   Longfellow’s cheese has gotten better and better every year.  We also have their Kennebago Camembert, which has won major awards.  It’s awesome cheese.  Anne Bossi of Sunset Acres Farm has gifted me with a large supply of her beautiful bloomy mould goat’s cheeses.

This is the first blog for the start of the holiday season and the start of our website.  I hope you will enjoy hearing about what’s happening under the roof of the Public Market House on Monument Square and in my cheese shop as the season unfolds, and about the many local, native Maine producers and growers we celebrate.

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