Cheese

Tentazione del Frate translates to “The Monk’s Temptation.” Let me make it perfectly clear that I am not the person who names cheeses. If I were allowed to name cheese, you’d be able to buy stuff like English Bitterspittoon, Basque Numma Num Num Num, Canadian Quaint Grammar, and domestic Scrumdiddly. If you have a cheese, baby, or anything else that you think should bear one of those names, email me, okay?

Anyhow, Tentazione del Frate’s a semi-hard pasteurized sheep cheese from Italy. It comes in small wheels, probably about a kilo each, adorned with a pretty label showing a monk gazing wistfully into the distance. No kidding. It’s milky, a little salty, with a slight sharpness that approaches, but doesn’t quite reach, the delicate bite of a carefully cultured mold.

What’s it like to work in the cheese department? Here are some bits and pieces:

Five to seven people work each day, though any more than three of us behind the counter starts getting slapsticky.

We usually cut, wrap, seal, and label four to six hundred pounds of cheese a day, and we also stock over a hundred pounds of pre-packaged cheese. Our biggest cheeses weigh in around eighty five pounds. We spend a lot of time brushing mold off cheese, washing tools, and scrubbing floors. We also hang out in giant walk-in refrigerators. We’re tough!

Our most senior department member has been at Rainbow for about 21 years. She started when she was a teenager. Our least senior department member has been working here for around 3 years. When he came, it was the first time we’d hired from outside the store in at least 10 years. This is a pretty fun job, so we don’t have a lot of turnover.

Beer and Wine is technically part of our department, but the boozeguys operate fairly independently. Between the two of them and the rest of us, our department has ten people. Despite being such a small department, there’s almost always one or two of us on a corporate committee. Right now we have one worker on the Storewide Steering Committee, one on the Coop Committee, and one on the Effective Meetings Committee. Way to over-represent, Cheesers!

Is there anything you’ve been wondering about our work?

Here’s another amazing cheese from the dashing French affineur Pascal Beillevaire. I found one lone log of this rattling around in a too-big box. It’s hard, sort of wheat-colored on the inside, dusty brown on the outside, and it comes wrapped in an elastic fishnet thingy. O-kay…I broke out my knife and carefully cut off the netting, cleaned up the rind, and cut a thin slice on the cheese wire.

Oh.

Oh oh oh.

Tastewise, I’m practically dumbstruck. It’s so hard to describe this thing. Raw sheep milk. Big, but not overpowering. Meaty. Astonishing. Fumaison, whoa.

As our cheese palates broaden, many of us begin to scoff at flavored cheeses. I think this phenomenon is related to how we enjoy shuddering theatrically when faced with the haircuts we sported in high school. It’s nice to imagine ourselves ever so much more sophisticated. We have an eye for subtlety now, we know how to match our accessories and describe the difference between “tart” and “tangy.”

But you know what? Cheese has stuff in it for a reason! Cheese is a great vehicle for stuff! Stuff is a great vehicle for cheese! If you’ve ever paired Mozzarella with basil, or Piave with green beans and almonds, you should feel no embarrassment about loving the occasional flavored cheese. And, to my mind, the best cheese with stuff is Welsh Red Dragon. This is such an exciting cheese! It’s a blended cheddar cheese with Welsh ale and whole mustard seeds. For perspective, understand that I don’t like ale or mustard (because I’m a crazy person) but I love this cheese! It’s a medium-sharp cheddar with a softer texture, a faint beery yeastiness, and BANG! POW! WOW! wonderfully sharp mustard seeds that crunch pleasingly between your teeth. Red Dragon begs to be sandwiched with tomatoes and arugula and washed down with a gulp of beer. It’s also intensely satisfying on its own. No kidding.