March 10, 2014

Best Picture Cheeses: 'Her'

March 10, 2014/ Nathan

One of the best new cheeses around is Miranda, an absinthe-washed wonder lovingly crafted by Jos Vulto of Vulto Creamery. Starting out as a cheesemaker in Brooklyn, Vulto aged cheese in a crawlspace beneath a city sidewalk, and now operates a creamery in Walton, NY, just a few hours north of New York City. Vulto Creamery represents no-nonsense cheesemaking at its best, honoring the milk of the animals and the tradition of making cheese by hand and in small batches.

February 20, 2014

Best Picture Cheeses: '12 Years a Slave'

February 20, 2014/ Nathan

In 1997 Max Schmidhauser created the semi-soft goat cheese Tomme Crayeuse as an answer to a top-selling French classic known as Tomme de Savoie. The latter is a perfectly fine cheese (I like to channel my inner cow and pretend I’m munching on grass while eating it), but Tomme Crayeuse’s flavors run deeper: from fresh earth to bright citrus to the gentle tang of goat’s milk. A visual stunner as well, it’s spotted with white and yellow molds against a marbled gray rind concealing an ivory paste. In its prime, the cheese is a lichen-covered rock after a rain shower, a painter’s splattered studio floor.

February 12, 2014

Best Picture Cheeses: 'Gravity'

February 12, 2014/ Nathan

In space there are few straight lines, no clear up or down, and no earth to stand on. Flat planes of existence disappear and the world asserts its full three dimensions, enveloping your body in its grasp.

Not that I’ve been to space, but this is how I perceive it to be, and how Alfonso Cuarón makes us feel while watching his miracle of a movie, Gravity.

February 05, 2014

Best Picture Cheeses: 'Philomena'

February 05, 2014/ Nathan

Across the wide Atlantic in a place called County Cork, Mary Burns has been making Ardrahan Farmstead Cheese for the past 30 years. Ardrahan, the pride of the Burns family and one of the great Irish cheeses, feels traditional, like a common lullaby or a national dish. Its friendly coating of rusty-orange B. linens creates a mild pungency—think aromas of barnyard and gym socks—while underneath lies a buttery, meaty paste evoking milk from happy cows and summer days spent skipping stones at the seashore.

February 01, 2014

Best Picture Cheeses: 'American Hustle'

February 01, 2014/ Nathan

First, an explanation. This is CineMunch, where the Cine veers decidedly toward the Oscars and the Munch nearly always involves cheese. So why wouldn't we choose a cheese for each of this year's Best Picture nominees? We wouldn't not. Here's installment #1.

Ameribella is stinky. It's what cheese people call a washed rind, the term for cheeses washed in a saltwater brine (or beer, or wine, or cider) as they age. Washing encourages the proliferation of Brevibacterium linens, the friendly neighborhood bacteria that imparts all manner of pungency to a cheese. Depending on the make process, the type and character of the milk, the conditions in the aging room, etc., B. linens will manifest as body odor, rotting fruit, or gym socks. Alternatively, you might detect sulfurous eggs, wet newspaper, or barnyard. If you're lucky, all of the above and more will come shining through, singing their ballad of stench through your nose and palate.