“I can’t believe the cheese so mouldy!” is the kind of comment often overheard in the aging cave during our Cheesemaker for a Day program. Participants range from all-the-way cheese nerds to your run-of-the-mill birthday gift recipient. Their level of familiarity with the end product doesn’t seem to change the response. It’s a bit of a shock to see that much unpackaged cheese, growing that much mould, all in one place. By the time our Cheesemakers for a Day leave the factory, they’re mostly exhausted, always happy, and a little more mould-curious than when they first arrived.

Mould curiosity is one of the 10 sure signs of cheese nerd-ery. However, these people are still a rare breed in Ontario. Even though it’s an essential skill for cheese appreciation, akin to the swirl, sniff and swish of wine tasting, generations of sanitized North Americans are still squeamish about any ingestible that appears less than immaculate.

Mould has made some gentle in-roads via those delicately veined blue cheeses and pure white bloomy rind camembert’s, but that’s a far cry from the stinky, sticky, oozey cheeses with more colours on their rind than you can shake a stick at. Not surprisingly, mould misconceptions can leave the fledgling artisan cheese lover with cold feet.

So how do you know where to start exploring the world or mould while staying safe? Lucky for you, we’ve put together some basic tips to get you started.

The very basics:

• If a cheese has a rind, and if that rind is edible, it’s made of mould.
• Mould is essential to the flavour of many soft, hard, and semi-hard cheeses.
• Mould can be any number of healthy happy colours, but if your cheese is growing black mould, we don’t recommend eat it unless you know that to be a characteristic of the cheese.
• Bring your nose to the game. Good cheese can smell strong, pungent, or even unpleasant, but it shouldn’t smell rancid. When in doubt, use the best before date as a guide.

Hard and Semi-Hard Cheeses:

Hard cheese are aged for long periods of time and, unless coated in wax or vacuum sealed, develop a mould rind around them that shapes the flavour of the cheese. Mould on hard and semi-hard cheeses often becomes quite thick while they are aging and is brushed off right before packaging. Depending on how long you store your cheese, you can expect it to start growing mould again. If you’re not psyched on the particular mould your cheese is growing (a function of the mould already present on the rind and in your fridge) you can simply cut it off. By the time you purchase it, hard cheese is dense enough for undesirable moulds to remain in the surface of the cheese without penetrating the paste.

Soft and Fresh Cheeses:

Fresh cheeses should not have any mould on them, but soft cheeses may. Many cheese connoisseurs consider the best before date on a soft cheese to indicate the date it’s flavours are most mature (and yummy). This means that a mouldy, oozey soft cheese might actually be at its prime. Keep in mind that, unlike hard cheese, the moisture content and density of both fresh and soft cheeses allows for bacteria to penetrate through quite quickly, so approach any best before experimentation with caution.

Hard cheese after brushing

Wishing Tree is aged in our caved for at least 6 months before sale. It’s a brushed rind cheese that has a very earthy smell and taste. This simple salad highlights the earthy flavour of Wishing Tree by contrasting it with the lighter fruitier flavours of the veg, making for a light and refreshing meal.

Wishing Tree Salad

6 brussel sprouts, shredded
2 cups baby spinach
½ cup blueberries
200 grams Wishing Tree cheese

Combine all ingredients and top with your favourite dressing.

Lemon Fetish is the drier, zestier cousin of Bedda Fedda, Fifth Town’s “Feta”. This lovely little cheese has a salty punch that is accompanied by a delicate lemon hint, making for a surprisingly complex flavour. You could serve this cheese much the same way as a feta, but because of its drier texture, it really shines when paired with some of those juicier veggies normally sprinkled with a dash of salt. Tomato, avocado, cucumber. We recommend slicing up some veg and sprinkling Fetish over it like salt for a delicious and healthy snack. Bon Appetite.

Wine Pairing Tips 101:
A good wine and cheese pairing should enhance both the wine and the cheese through a pairing that either compliments or contrasts their flavours. We got our resident cheese nerd, Heather, to sit down with Fifth Town’s Rose Haus Cheese and some wine over the weekend and tell us what she came up with.

Some cheese tasting notes:
Fifth Town’s Rose Haus is a hand-salted creamy cow milk cheese that ages in our cave for 2 weeks while developing a delicate rind that we wash in a Grange of Prince Edward Chardonnay 1-2 days before wrapping. A young Rose Haus has a firm paste that becomes creamier as it ages and it’s flavours develop from subdued earthyness to a full-bodied, long finish.

The Experiment:
Because a mature Rose Haus is rich and creamy, Heather opted to go the route of a contrasting flavour pairing to balance the weight of the cheese. The first pairing with a sparkling white turned out to be too much of a contrast for either. However, the next pairing, a light Riesling from Sugarbush Vineyards in Prince Edward County, was a perfect match.

Heather’s sophisticated pairing summary: “The smooth and fruity components of the Riesling accentuate the creamy rich flavours of this washed rind cow’s milk cheese”.

Heather’s summary for those of us new to the pairing game: “Rieslings tend to be sweeter and calm, but abrasive enough to cut the fat that the Rose Haus is going to leave in your mouth”.

Fifth Town’s Chevre Logs are rolled by hand in the morning and left to sit overnight in the cooler before being coated in ash or our Vicki’s Spring Splendour herb mixture the next day. Afterwards, logs are aged for about a week, which allows them to develop a soft rind.

Ingredients:
1 Nude or Lacey Grey Log, cut into thin slices
1/4 cup pecans
1/8 cup maple syrup
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper

Package of crackers

Method:
In a bowl, combine maple syrup and cayenne pepper. Over medium heat dry roast pecans in a frying pan until fragrant, about 4 minutes.  Turn off heat and drizzle syrup mixture over the pecans in the hot frying pan. Stir quickly until syrup becomes thick, then scoop pecans onto a plate and leave to cool. When cool, break up pecan chunks by hand and set aside.

Arrange crackers on a serving dish and place Nude or Lacey Grey Log slices on top. Garnish with spiced pecans and serve.

Did you know there was a difference? Artisan and farmstead cheeses are both made by hand and both are made with unadulterated milk (meaning that no milk proteins, concentrates or skim milk powders are added). However, farmstead cheese is made with milk exclusively from the farmers own animals while artisan  cheese can be made with milk sourced from a variety local farms. The milk for Fifth Town’s cheese comes from a few different goat, sheep, and cow dairy farms in the area. Garry, our milk sommelier and delivery guy, picks it up fresh almost every morning and we start turning milk into cheese within a couple of hours after delivery.

Baked Mac N’ Bonnie and Floyd

Fifth Town’s Bonnie and Floyd is a St. Paulin style cave aged, washed rind, semi-hard sheep cheese. St Paulin cheeses were originated by French Trappist monks in the early 1900s. Today, it’s characteristic creamy-ness and edible orange rind has made it a popular high-end “mac and cheese” cheese. At Fifth Town, we age Bonnie and Floyd for 3 months in our caves while they develop a nice healthy orange smear, thanks to the b. linens mold. This cheese is slightly salty near the rind with refined nutty, almost sweet lactic flavours near its centre. It pairs well with lighter red wines such as Pinot Noir (or macaroni).

Ingredients

350 grams Pasta Shells
1 onion, chopped finely
4 cloves garlic, chopped finely
4 cups spinach, chopped
2 teaspoons lemon zest
220 grams Bonnie and Floyd Cheese, shredded
Splash of olive oil
Salt and Pepper to taste
1 cup almonds, sliced

Preheat oven to 190˚ Celsius (375˚ Fahrenheit)

In a medium size pot cook pasta shells. When cooked, strain, rinse with water, and set aside. Sauté onions and garlic over medium heat in a fry pan until browned.

Mix together pasta, onions, garlic, spinach, lemon zest, salt and pepper with a splash of olive oil. Spread a thin layer of mixture over the bottom of a 9”x 13” casserole dish and alternate with shredded Bonnie and Floyd until done. Sprinkle sliced almonds over top of mixture and cover with a tin foil. Bake for 30 minutes, or until cheese is bubbly.

Serves 8