Apr. 21st 2008

Winter Menu Week 16
Soup
A. Celery root soup with apple and blue cheese
B. Split pea soup with pumpernickel croutons

Baked Goodness
A. Apple ginger scones
B. Moist and buttery buttermilk dinner biscuits with maldon salt

Pasta/Grain
A. Farro salad with spring ramps, fennel, lemon and parsley
B. Creamy polenta and green onions topped with sauteed wild mushrooms

Veggie
A. Vegetable curry with butternut squash, chickpeas and sweet potatoes
B. Roasted sunchokes with butter and herbs
Meat dish
A. Spring chicken salad with grapes, spring onions and herbs
B. Three bean chili with Hawthorne Valley Farm beef

Side
A. Shaved salad of apple, fennel, celery root, carrot and fresh herbs in a
lemon shallot vinaigrette
B. Roasted garlic and chive mashed potatoes

Dessert
A. Cardamom pear spice cake
B. Orange filled shortbread thumbprint cookies

Cheese Please!!

Alleva Dairy Mozzarella
A beautiful fresh mozzarella from the oldest Italian cheese shop in the country! Established in 1892, Alleva is now in its fourth generation of family ownership, with its roots stretching back to Benevento, Italy. Alleva mozzarella has a distinctive texture, soft and slightly squeaky against your teeth, and is so fresh that milk literally oozes out when you cut into it.

Jasper Hill Farm Constant Bliss (raw cows’ milk) Greensboro, VT
The name says it all really. Made from the raw milk of the Kehlers’ Ayrshire cows, this Bliss is no joke. What it is: a creamy and buttery mold-ripened cylinder with a light mushroomy twang. Aged for just 60 days, the barest minimum for raw milk cheese, it is the jailbait of American bloomy rinds.

Uplands Farm Pleasant Ridge Reserve (raw cows’ milk) Dodgeville, WI
When Mike and Carol Gingrich retired, they chose the life that most of us working stiffs can only dream of: cheese maker. Wait, what??!? Instead of moving to Florida, or buying an RV, Mike and Carol bought a farm in Wisconsin and started making Pleasant Ridge Reserve, a rich and hearty Alpine-style cow’s milk cheese with a stately coffee brown rind. Pleasant Ridge is only made 10 weeks out of the year when the cows are out on pasture, and is a perfect expression of the low grassy valleys of southern Wisconsin in the summer time.