Fromagerie du Presbytère, Jean Morin, Laliberté

Laliberté: Arguably, the best bloomy in all of Canada

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Award-winning Laliberté: Made by Cheesemaker Jean Morin and his équipe at Fromagerie du Presbytère in Québec.

Laliberté is triple crème that will blow your mind and palate. Think aromatic, decadent, with an exquisite hint of mushrooms and wild flowers. It’s made by Jean Morin, cheesemaker extraordinaire, and his équipe in a former Roman Catholic rectory—thus, the name Fromagerie du Presbytère—in Sainte-Élizabeth-de-Warwick two hours east of Montréal.

The milk comes from the family dairy farm across the street from the rectory now creamery. Jean Morin is a fourth-generation dairy farmer, the fifth generation now works the farm, too, with a sixth generation in the toddler phase.

Award-winning Cheesemaker Jean Morin at work.

The farmstead cheese took a year and a half to develop and is made with cow’s milk provided by a mix of naturally raised Jerseys and Holsteins.

When asked what the secret is to making award-winning cheese, Morin, answers simply: “Good grass and no silage.” He elaborates: “Happy, healthy cows. It all starts with the milk, and the care we show the cheese as we make it.”

Laliberté was judged Grand Champion at the recent Canadian Cheese Grand Prix. At the most recent Canadian Cheese Awards, it was named Best Bloomy Rind Cheese.

“This cheese truly distinguished itself in texture, taste and overall appearance. Its exquisite aromatic triple cream with its tender bloomy rind encases an unctuous well-balanced flavour with hints of mushroom, pastures and root vegetables,” says Phil Bélanger, Canadian Cheese Grand Prix jury chairman.

Jackie Armet, cheese co-ordinator at Canadian Cheese Awards, spotlights Laliberté “because it is simply delicious. It has so many rich qualities for a soft bloomy rind cheese. Delicate but bold in flavour with a lovely creamy finish and always t

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Cheesemaking at home, Jāņu siers, Latvia

Jāņu Siers: Midsummer means making cheese at home

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Jāņu Siers still wrapped in cheesecloth as it cools. Brown eggs give the caraway-speckled fresh cheese a yellow hue.

The sweet smell of dairy in the house that comes from making cheese at home is one of my favourite things. Holding milk at 90 to 95C for 15 minutes so curd separates from whey is a sure way to create that warm and wonderful aroma.

The summer solstice has me preparing to make a caraway-speckled fresh cheese Latvians call Jāņu Siers.

Here are the ingredients: 3 litres of whole milk, 1 kilo dry pressed cottage cheese, 150 grams butter, 4 eggs, 2 tablespoons caraway seeds, and 1 tablespoon salt. After I make the cheese, I’ll add a few photos at the bottom of the post about the process.

In Latvia, my native land, the cheese is a core element in celebrations marking the summer solstice, a festival called Jāņi. I like the cheese too much to eat it only once a year, so often I’ll make it also at midwinter and giving small wheels as gifts to family and friends at Christmas.

Here’s what I posted about the cheese a few years back:

“Jāņu siers, what kind of cheese is that?” you ask. It’s a caraway-speckled fresh cheese that I make at home.

Jāņu siers in Latvian, my native language, is, literally, John’s cheese in English. In Latvia, for more than a thousand years, it has been made at the summer solstice to mark the midsummer festival of Jāņi. That festival is celebrated on June 23 by Latvians all over the world on the eve of St. John’s Day. For many, it’s the most important holiday of the year.

In Latvia, farms are bedecked with garlands of oak and birch branches and meadow flowers. Nearly everyone leaves the city for the open air so that the shortest night of the year can be spent in the merry company of friends in the country. Bonfires are lit, special songs are sung, dancing is a universal element during the festival. The traditional caraway-seed cheese and lots of beer are on the menu.

This TV commercial for Aldaris beer will give you a taste of the festivities on Jāņi:

Tradition has it that this is the one night of the year that you must never sleep. Girls pick meadow flowers to make wreaths for their hair, while men named Jānis get a bushy crown of oak leaves around their heads. (Jānis is the most popular male name in Latvia and comparable to John.)

Eating, singing, drinking and dancing ensue the whole night long. Although the sun sets briefly, it doesn’t get dark in the higher latitude of Latvia and everyone must be awake to greet the rising sun in the morning. A naked romp into the nearest lake or river is a must for men—and the women who cheer them on. Young couples like to go into the forest and search for the legendary fern blossom. Or so they say. And when you greet the morning sun, you have to wash your face in the grass’s morning dew, which on Jāņi morning is said to have particularly beneficial properties.

The reality for me this year was that I tried to make more Jāņu siers than before and used a large lobster pot to heat the milk to 90-95C rather than my usual heavy saucepan. Very hard to keep milk near the boiling point for 15 minutes in a thin pot, I discovered to my dismay, without scorching the milk, thus, three small wheels I made won’t be shared with friends as behind the taste of cream and caraway there is a hint of burnt.

On the bright side, Jāņu siers is always eaten with butter (and never on bread), and I love butter almost as much as cheese. Lay on enough butter and the slight scorched taste dissipates. Consume with enough lager and the cheese tastes as good as it should.

Incidentally, I have not repeated the error of trying to keep milk at 90-95C in a thin lobster pot!

Here are photos of the process I used this year:

Here are the ingredients: 3 litres of whole milk at least 3.25%, 1 kilo dry pressed cottage cheese, 150 grams butter, 4 eggs, 2 tablespoons caraway seeds and 1 tablespoon salt. Look closely at the label of the cottage cheese and ensure it says “dry pressed” and not merely “pressed.” We neglected to do so.
Mix eggs with cottage cheese. Brown eggs are generally more yellow, which is preferred. We only had white eggs available.
Gently heat the milk to 90-95C and add the cottage cheese mixture. Hold at 90-95C for 15 minutes or so until curd separates from whey. If you use dry pressed cottage cheese, the whey will be more greenish than ours.
Wet the cheesecloth before lining a sieve and emptying the curd and whey. Twist the resulting bag of curd and squeeze to drain most of whey.
Warm the pot again, add butter and caraway seeds, then add the curd and salt, and begin mixing in circular fashion until curd forms a ball and no longer sticks to sides of pot. It will take 10 minutes or more.
Wet another cheesecloth before lining a sieve and emptying the ball of cheese. Divide into two or three portions if you prefer smaller wheels. Place on a plate, with the knot in the cheesecloth underneath the cheese. Add second plate and weigh down in fridge overnight.
The next day, remove cheesecloth and wrap cheese in plastic. Store in fridge until it’s time to enjoy. Some people say a week is the right time for the cheese to age to perfection, but we can never wait that long.

—Georgs Kolesnikovs

Georgs Kolesnikovs, Cheese-Head-in-Chief at CheeseLover.ca, was born in Latvia but has lived in Canada most of his life, in Ontario, Quebec and the Northwest Territories. He did spend most of the 1980s living, working and sailing in California.

Aux Terroirs, Cheese online, The Cheese Poet

Curated artisan cheese box for home delivery

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Aux Terroirs will deliver a box of seven curated cheeses to your home in Ontario or Quebec for $80 all up.
Are you thinking about ordering cheese online for home delivery for the first time?
We can attest it’s an excellent way to get your fromage fix in these Covid Times. Check out the growing list of Canadian cheese producers, distributors and retailers offering home delivery on the Cheese Lover Shop Online page.

Aux Terroirs, a leading Quebec-based distributor of fine cheese, charcuterie and other gourmet foods, has put together a #stayathome box of Canadian artisan cheese curated by Erin Harris, chef, cheesemonger and now author widely known as The Cheese Poet.

The Cheese Poet Box includes one piece each with tasting notes of seven outstanding cheeses:

Le Fleurmier: A soft cheese with a bloomy rind produced by Laiterie Charlevoix, it has a rich and velvety texture and a fruity, nutty flavour.

Le 1608: A hard cheese from Laiterie Charlevoix made with the milk of the Canadienne breed of cows, a breed unique to Canada that first arrived with French settlers between 1608 and 1670. Smooth, unctuous, melt-in-your-mouth deep yellow paste, delicate yet complex buttery flavour.

La Moutonnière Feta: A marinated sheep-milk feta made by Fromagerie la Moutonnière, it presents a very white paste that is creamy yet crumbly. It features fresh milk aromas with finely spiced lactic and tangy flavours.

Azimut: An aged goat cheese, a tomme, made by Fromagerie Lait Grand Cru. The flavour of this firm cheese has a hint of fleeting sweetness, more pronounced buttery notes and a nuttiness that lingers longer in the mouth.

Cow’s Creamery 2-year Cheddar: The pride of Prince Edward Island, this all-natural cheddar features a smooth texture, rich flavour and tangy bite. A gold medal winner in the World Championship Cheese Contest

L’Adoray: Made by Fromagerie Montebello, it features an orangey rind and an ivory-coloured, supple and creamy paste. Strapped with spruce bark, it features lactic, woodsy aromas and slightly spicy flavours of butter, wood and straw.

Urban Blue: Made with Nova Scotia cow’s milk, the double cream Urban Blue delivers mushroomy, umami flavours without being pungent or salty. Inspired by Gorgonzola, Urban Blue is an approachable, versatile cheese with a tasty natural rind made by Blue Harbour Cheese near Halifax.

Shipping and applicable taxes are included in the $80 price. Available for home delivery in Ontario and Quebec. Click here to order.

Monforte Dairy, Ruth Klahsen, Waltzing Matilda

Waltzing Matilda: Poetry, passion and Tom Waits

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Waltzing Matilda: Water Buffalo Camembert from Monforte Dairy, silky smooth and delicious.

Ruth Klahsen has been making cheese at Monforte Dairy for 16 years now. Regularly, she has knocked it out of the park with winners like Toscano and Abondance. Add Waltzing Matilda to that list. Made with the rich milk of water buffalo, the flavour profile of the Camembert-style Waltzing Matilda can only be described as gorgeous, as silky smooth delicious.

There are actually two Matildas: Waltzing Matilda features a delicate layer of vegetable ash under its bloomy rind while Matilda in the Buff is the same cheese without the touch of ash.

As Ruth writes on her website:

Cheesemaker Ruth Klahsen. Photo Jo Dickins.

This Water Buffalo Camembert will make you decide where your loyalties to the name Matilda lay. Tom Waits’ gravelly rasp, or a patriotic love of Australia? For an elegant dinner party, choose the Waltzing Matilda with a delicate layer of ash under its bloomy rind. For the more casual family affair, the Matilda in the Buff will do just fine. Both of these cheeses age beautifully and become supple and creamy in their hinter years (weeks). Honey pairs perfectly with their nutty flavor.

The soft cheese comes in 200-gram rounds, made with water buffalo milk from the Isaac and Israel Wagner farm in Ontario’s Amish community around Aylmer. The ash is, to satisfy federal regulations, imported from France.

At Monforte Dairy in Stratford, Ruth writes, we’re convinced the small things do indeed make a difference, that agriculture is best practiced on a human scale, and that our cheeses, each in its own way, reflect something a little deeper than the technology behind mass manufactured food—a little of the poetry and passion of life itself.

Speaking of poetry and passion, here is the legendary Tom Waits performing the song that inspired Ruth to name her cheese Matilda:

Rock-music author Daniel Durchholz once said Tom’s voice sounds “like it was soaked in a vat of bourbon, left hanging in the smokehouse for a few months, and then taken outside and run over with a car.”

We agree and, thus, in the interest of public service, we feel obliged to present the lyrics here. Besides, wasted and wounded never sounded so good!

Wasted and wounded, it ain’t what the moon did I got what I paid for now See ya tomorrow hey Frank can I borrow a couple of bucks from you To go waltzing Matilda, waltzing Matilda, You’ll go waltzing Matilda with me

I’m an innocent victim of a blinded alley And I’m tired of all these soldiers here No one speaks English, and everything’s broken and my Stacys are soaking wet To go waltzing Matilda, waltzing Matilda, You’ll go waltzing Matilda with me

Now the dogs are barking and the taxi cabs parking A lot they can do for me I begged you to stab me you tore my shirt open And I’m down on my knees tonight Old Bushmills I staggered you buried the dagger in Your silhouette window light To go waltzing Matilda, waltzing Matilda, You’ll go waltzing Matilda with me

Now I’ve lost my Saint Christopher now that I’ve kissed her And the one-armed bandit knows And the maverick Chinaman, and the cold blooded signs And the girls down by the strip tease shows, go Waltzing Matilda, waltzing Matilda, You’ll go waltzing Matilda with me

No, I don’t want your sympathy the fugitives say That the streets aren’t for dreaming now manslaughter dragnets and the ghosts that sell memories They want a piece of the action anyhow Go waltzing Matilda, waltzing Matilda, You’ll go waltzing Matilda with me

And you can ask any sailor and the keys from the jailor And the old men in wheelchairs know that Matilda’s the defendant, she killed about a hundred And she follows wherever you may go Waltzing Matilda, waltzing Matilda, You’ll go waltzing Matilda with me

And it’s a battered old suitcase to a hotel someplace And a wound that will never heal No prima donna the perfume is on an Old shirt that is stained with blood and whiskey And goodnight to the street sweepers the night watchmen flame keepers And goodnight Matilda too

              • Tom Waits
              • Tom Traubert’s Blues “Waltzing Matilda”
              • Album: Used Songs

Click here to order Matilda and other Monforte Dairy cheeses online for home delivery in Greater Toronto Area (GTA) and Niagara. Or check with your favourite cheese shop.

—Georgs Kolesnikovs

Georgs Kolesnikovs, cheesehead-in-chief at CheeseLover.ca, is chairman and founder of Canadian Cheese Awards and director and founder of The Great Canadian Cheese Festival.

 

Fromagerie du Presbytère, Shop Online

Fromagerie du Presbytère delivers cheese in Ontario

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In these Covid Times, we are delighted to learn that more and more Canadian cheese producers are opening online shops and offering home delivery of artisan and farmstead cheese.

Fromagerie du Presbytere is one of the first Quebec cheese dairies to make the move.

Click here to reach the fromagerie’s online boutique. It’s in French but easy to navigate.

For the Cheese Lover directory of Canadian producers, distributors and retailers who take orders online and offer home delivery, visit the Shop Online link in the menu across the top of the page or click here.

Artisan Cheese Night Market, Great Canadian Cheese Festival

Cheese Festival and Night Market future unclear

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Feels so strange . . . and empty. This is the first first week of June since 2011 that we have not been hosting either The Great Canadian Cheese Festival in Prince Edward County or Artisan Cheese Night Market at St. Lawrence Market in Toronto.

Here’s a video shot at the very first Cheese Festival in 2011, as a promotion for the 2012 event. The video perfectly captures the spirit of Cheese Lover events.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgimlKWOVWo&feature=youtu.be

The final Great Canadian Cheese Festival took place in 2017. The Artisan Cheese Night Market was held in 2018 and 2019. Who knows what the future will bring, especially in these Covid Times?

Stay informed about future cheese events by signing up to follow CheeseLover.ca by email in upper right.

In the meantime, a really good selection of Canadian cheese can be ordered online for delivery to your home on the Shop Online page.

 

Afrim Pristine, Cooking with cheese, For the Love of Cheese

Afrim Pristine: A passion for cheese, a love of cooking

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Maître Fromager Afrim Pistine in the cheese cave at Cheese Boutique in Toronto.

For the Love of Cheese: Recipes and Wisdom from Cheese Boutique, by Afrim Pristine, Maître Fromager at Cheese Boutique in Toronto, is much more than a cookbook. Yes, 164 of its 214 pages are devoted to recipes but even those pages are chockful of cheese knowledge and anecdotes from Afrim’s lifelong devotion and passion.

He was born into the business that began as a convenience store in the Bloor West Village in the 1960s, eventually growing into the Cheese Boutique on Ripley Avenue, Toronto’s pre-eminent retailer of fine cheese and gourmet foods.

Afrim started working at the store when he was eight years old. Three decades later, there is no one, arguably, with a higher profile and deeper knowledge of cheese in Toronto.

Afrim’s father, Fatos Pristine, built the business by cultivating relationships with the city’s outstanding chefs. Afrim has taken those relationships to the next level. Many are his close friends, many have contributed to recipes in the book. The list reads like a who’s who of chefs: from Michael Bonacini, who wrote the foreword, to Claudio Aprile and Chuck Hughes, Mark McEwan, Jonathan Gushue, Anthony Walsh and Daniel Bolud, to Bob Blumer who describes the “spine-tingling gastrogasm” of enjoying Époisses.

But when I asked Afrim what is the one recipe of the 79 in the book that I must try, he recommended his mother’s Gatto di Patate. How he knew we love potatoes in this house almost as much of cheese, I don’t know, but Modesta Pristine’s recipe delivered deliciousness in spades, as you can read here.

For the Love of Cheese is available for convenient online purchase and contactless delivery at the CheeseLover.ca Bookstore.

The wisdom portion of the book’s subtitle starts straightaway, after an introductory history of Cheese Boutique, with Cheese 101, Afrim’s take on all you need to know about buying, storing and enjoying cheese. He covers all the bases in a straightforward, useful manner.

Afrim, like most cheesemongers worthy of the name, is often asked to name his favourite cheese—an impossible question, really, given the thousands of tasty cheeses on the planet. His response is to identify his top 10 cheeses of all time, in order of preference, no less.

The man loves to cook: Afrim Pristine working a wood stove at Fogo Island Inn.

We won’t reveal the entire list but will allow that Parmigiano-Reggiano is clearly the first cheese named—“The king of cheeses, end of story”—while two Canadian cheeses make the list:

  • #7. OKA
  • “Simple, straightforward, with the perfect amount of stink.”
  • #10 FRESH CHEESE CURDS
  • “Go, Canada, go!”

Then follows a section on all 55 cheeses used in the book’s recipes—which results in a handy directory of possibly the 55 tastiest cheeses in the world.

Afrim does love to cook, as witnessed by the feature in Foodism magazine.

If you love cheese and enjoy cooking half as much as Afrim Pristine, For the Love of Cheese is the book for you.

—Georgs Kolesnikovs

Georgs Kolesnikovs, cheesehead-in-chief at CheeseLover.ca, is chairman and founder of Canadian Cheese Awards and director and founder of The Great Canadian Cheese Festival.

 

Afrim Pristine, Cheese Boutique, Cooking with cheese

Gattò di Patate: For the love of cheese, salami and potato

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When I asked Afrim Pristine what is the one recipe in For the Love of Cheese: Recipes and Wisdom from Cheese Boutique that I must try, he recommended his mother’s Gatto di Patate. How he knew we love potatoes in this house almost as much of cheese, I don’t know, but Modesta Pristine’s recipe delivered deliciousness in spades, spuds and curds.

It’s a classic Neapolitan dish—Il Gattò di Patate in Italian—that Mrs. Pristine makes on special occasions, such as when relatives visit from Italy.

The recipe calls for Ragusano, Mozzarella, Salami Cacciatore and Yukon Golds, in addition to milk, eggs, unsalted butter, nutmeg, sea salt, ground pepper and fine breadcrumbs. We substituted Parmigiano-Reggiano for the Ragusano, an Italian PDO-protected cheese made exclusively in provinces of Ragusa and Siracusa, Sicily. It is one of the oldest cheeses in Sicily dating back to 1500.

After mashing the boiled potatoes with milk, eggs and grated Parmigiano, we cubed the Mozzarella and Salami and mixed gently with a wooden spoon, adding seasoning as we went.

After applying butter to the bottom of the casserole dish and adding breadcrumbs, in went the potato mixture with all its ingredients. Then a coating of breadcrumbs and more butter before our Gattò went into the oven.

After an hour in the oven at 350F, we concluded we had been too liberal with breadcrumbs, but what the whey. The aroma of baked cheese and potato was fabulous, lingering in our home till late in the evening.

The first scoop revealed a wonderful warm mixture of cheese, potato and salami.

Served with Italian sausages and green beans, we had ourselves a wonderful feast.

Thank you, Mrs. Pristine!

—Georgs Kolesnikovs

Georgs Kolesnikovs, cheesehead-in-chief at CheeseLover.ca, is chairman and founder of Canadian Cheese Awards and director and founder of The Great Canadian Cheese Festival.