City Mouse!

At last, back in the city.  As promised in last week's post, I'm relaunching under a revised title:

City Mouse (Country Mouse)

The first part of the blog's new URL, mus urbanus, is Latin for "city mouse."  But for the record, I did consider calling it "Scott's Big Blog of Cheese."  In addition to sharing tasting notes on cheese, I plan on writing about the urban farming movement, trips to the farmers' market (sometimes called the greenmarket here in New York), (mis)adventures in at-home cheese making, and--if all else fails--good meals and great recipes.  So, without further ado, here's the first installment...

We drove into the inferno that is Brooklyn on Tuesday and unpacked and organized our apartment.  At the end of the day, we had enough time to reacquaint ourselves with one our most cherished New York activities: the weekly trip to the Red Hook Fairway.  And the best part of any trip to Fairway is a long, drawn-out, if not somewhat officious, visit to the cheese counter.  All of the mongers there indulge our questions and are more than happy to offer free tastes.

This week we settled on two quarter-pound wedges: Irish Cashel Blue and Chimay Trappist:

The Cashel Blue, in the back, is made from pasteurized cow's milk.  It has a wonderfully smooth, buttery paste with a little bit of grittiness in its pockets of blue.  Like most blues, its nose--as its finish--is minerally.  And the taste?  I'd say well-salted, milky, with a pungent fruity-metallicy bite as the blues crumble in your mouth.  In sum, it was great spread on a cracker, and I imagine it would be nice crumbled on a burger.  I recommend it.

The Chimay, front and center, is also a pasteurized cow's milk.  It's made by a farmers' cooperative in Belgium (it's full name, Chimay Trappist, is owed to the Trappist Monks who invented the recipe).  Its rind is washed with the famous beer, and the Fairway packaging suggests that you pair it; but it's quite nice even without the beer. The paste is a firm, almost gelatiny butter, and it is smooth, mellow and nutty to the tastebuds.  It smells milky, maybe a tiny bit ammoniated and animally going in, and--like the beer--it has a slightly bitter finish.  Also nice on a cracker or simply in fingerfulls by itself.

Yesterday morning we made another familiar fieldtrip--this time to the greenmarket at Union Square.  We escaped the oppressive heat under the shelter of Paffenroth Gardens' tent,--

--where we found some amazingly fragrant and colorful produce: peaches, baby melon, kale, garlic, and a pound of fingerlings--

--that'll go nicely with the whole bluefish and fennel we picked up at Fairway.  So far, I can vouch for the kale, which was full of flavor, and the peaches, which are as aromatic and delicate as they are juicy.  Paffenroth, by the way, is located in Orange County, New York, so its produce travels about 60 miles to the Union Square market.