Author: Lynne

The Andante Dairy goat cheese pyra­mid is a lit­tle like that rare wood­peck­er in Arkansas that some peo­ple say they have seen and oth­ers say is extinct. If you can get up ear­ly enough, you might catch a fleet­ing glimpse of the pyra­mid at the Andante stand at the Fer­ry Plaza Sat­ur­day Farm­ers Mar­ket. I have been lucky enough to catch it twice; all oth­er times I have either been too late (and I would argue that 9:00 a.m. shouldn't be con­sid­ered late for a week­end morn­ing unless you hap­pen to have a baby in the house) or the per­son at the stand has denied all knowl­edge of even the exis­tence of the pyra­mid. The pyra­mid is an aged goat cheese, firm and creamy, yet a lit­tle crumbly, the per­fect con­sis­ten­cy for eat­ing on a crack­er. The first time I bought one, I served it to din­ner guests, ladies with petite appetites who only ate half of it and I spent a glo­ri­ous week eat­ing goat cheese pyra­mid on starr ridge crack­ers for din­ner. The sec­ond time I bought one, I served it to din­ner guests, rav­en­ous glut­tons who devoured the whole thing in the time it took me to prep a leg of lamb for the grill. My rec­om­men­da­tion: put the pyra­mid on your life list while main­tain­ing to oth­ers that it is only a myth.

Recent­ly at a din­ner par­ty I met an eli­gi­ble, attrac­tive sort, not real­ly my type but entic­ing nonethe­less. Cow­girl Creamery's sea­son­al Pierce Pt. is a cheese per­fect for a fling: it's creamy and com­plex, and it's only around for a short time so you don't have to wor­ry about mak­ing a long-term com­mit­ment. It's a whole milk cheese bathed in mosca­to and rolled in dried herbs (some­thing I often wish would hap­pen to me); it shows up in fall and win­ter and is gone by spring, inspir­ing a gath­er-ye-cheese-rounds-while-ye-may approach when you find it on a cheese plate.

this is a pleas­ant lit­tle aged cow's milk cheese from a North­ern Cal­i­for­nia cheese­mak­er whose name I can­not recall. Rest assured, though, that if you're try­ing to eat as local­ly as pos­si­ble, blondie's best can safe­ly be on your gro­cery list. It's some­what like an aged jack, or an aged hip­pie, with that kind of mel­low nut­ti­ness, cut with a lit­tle tang. It's good on a crack­er but also works well in a sal­ad with some dried cher­ries and toast­ed almonds.

with a wedge of appleby's cheshire in the house, one is always eat­ing good in the neigh­bor­hood. It's a Neal's Yard cheese, and so far in San Fran­cis­co I've only found it at Whole Foods. There are oth­er cheshires to be had in the city, and accord­ing to the grumpy pro­pri­etor of the cheese shop in my neigh­bor­hood Neal's Yard cheeses are over­priced, but to me Appleby's is the best tast­ing. It is the ched­dar of my dreams. I know you shouldn't keep hard cheeses in the refrig­er­a­tor, but I've always found that when left out, they take on a kind of oily sheen that I don't find very appe­tiz­ing. The cheshire, on the oth­er hand, gets bet­ter and bet­ter the longer it is left out. Fresh from the fridge it has a kind of firm but creamy tex­ture; when left out it takes on a delec­table crum­bli­ness that inten­si­fies the fla­vor. A piece of cheshire on a starr ridge crack­er is a meal for kings. The only prob­lem with leav­ing it out is that it can become a meal for dogs. Bis­cuit has to date swiped four blocks of cheshire care­less­ly left with­in swip­ing dis­tance on the counter. She always does such a com­plete job, leav­ing nary a crumb, that I often don't real­ize until a day lat­er. The dog is not known for her refined palate, but she makes an extra effort for the cheshire.

Quark (when it's not a sub­atom­ic par­ti­cle) is a byprod­uct of curds and whey that results in what some describe as "a Ger­man-style cream cheese," oth­ers describe as "a cross between yogurt and cot­tage cheese," and still oth­ers describe as "yum­my." This Sat­ur­day we bought some lemon quark at the Spring Hill Jer­sey Farm. This can best be described as tast­ing like the fill­ing of a lemon cheese­cake. You can eat it with a spoon, spread it on toast, or just use your fin­ger to scoop out deli­cious lemo­ny creamy pleas­ant­ly tangy milk fats in a semi-sol­id state. My friend Reed recalls that in Hol­land, they sell quark in some­thing like yogurt-con­tain­ers, and that there it is most­ly like pud­ding. I like it best spread on toast and driz­zled with some 420 Honey.

Flor di capra is an organ­ic, aged goat cheese from Italy. I bought it at the Rain­bow the oth­er week in part because I had some Capri­cious (organ­ic, aged goat cheese from Cal­i­for­nia) at home and want­ed to com­pare how they taste. Leslie par­tic­i­pat­ed in a sim­i­lar tast­ing last week at Buffy. Flor di Capra is very tasty, but it smells and tastes amaz­ing­ly like grass. It lit­er­al­ly taste how lying in a field of grass smells. And at the rind it tastes like dirt, the way grass at the root tastes of dirt. And the Capri­cious, as not­ed here else­where, tastes like salty sea air. This made me think a lot about the con­cept of ter­roir, and how I wish there was a word for this in Eng­lish, both because say­ing some­thing in French always makes it sound pre­ten­tious and stuck-up, as opposed to a sound and true prin­ci­ple, and also because the fact that there's no word for it in Eng­lish points to the fact that we don't think it's impor­tant. And it is. Isn't it a piece of basic com­mon sense that things taste like where they are grown, or made? If goats live by the ocean and eat grass that grows in salt air, and then their milk is made into a cheese that is then aged in a cave by that ocean, doesn't it make sense that it tastes like the salty sea in a creamy milk-based form?