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This page contains an archive of all entries posted to 365 Cheeses in the North Carolina category. They are listed from oldest to newest.
New York is the previous category.
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Many more can be found on the main index page or by looking through the archives.
© 2008 Kirk Samuels
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North Carolina Archives
Hoop cheese is cheese curd that has been pressed in a round hoop-like mold. Depending on the curd it is either fresh, white, moist and unsalted or firm, orange and cheddar-like. North Carolina Hoop cheese is the latter, fresh cheddar curds pressed in molds then covered in red wax. The flavor and texture is like fresh cheese curds, even a little squeaky. It used to be sold in country stores next to the cracker barrel. It was cut to order by a device called a hoop cheese cutter, a round pedestal with a blade that swung out and down to cut off a measured amount of hoop cheese.
North Carolina Hoop cheese locally is a good price. Compared to factory cheese in the grocery store aisle it is incredibly more flavorful and tastes, well, like cheese. This may sound strange, but most cheese hanging in bags in the dairy aisle is insipid, tasteless, rubber.
Name: North Carolina Hoop Cheese
Type of Milk: Cow, Pasteurized
Type: semi-hard
Produced in:
Date Produced: Unknown
Date Purchased: 11/9/2006
Date Eaten: 11/13/2006
Purchased Where: United States, North Carolina, Raleigh, Whole Foods
Price: $6.99/lb.
I bought this cheese because it was different and because I didn't think I would like it. Not liking it would give me more to write. What made this cheese different and something I thought I would not like? Pine.
Chapel Hill Creamery's Hickory Grove cheese is a monastery-style (unpasteurized) cheese that has been flavored by pine needles. The faint green imprints of them can be seen on the hardened rind. Pine? In cheese? Made me think of Pinesol, not parmesan. But I gave it an honest try.
I liked it. Hickory Grove has a unique flavor. Slightly vegetal. Milder than I expected. A little tangy. It reminded me a little of retsina, the Greek wine flavored with pine resin, but not as strong. I has a pleasant unique flavor and will make a great addition to a holiday cheese tray.
Name: Hickory Grove
Type of Milk: Cow, Unpasteurized
Type: semi-hard
Produced in: USA, North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill Creamery
Date Purchased: 11/17/2006
Date Eaten: 11/18/2006
Purchased Where: United States, North Carolina, Raleigh, Whole Foods
Price: $17.99/lb.
I bought Tia Anna's Queso Fresco on a whim. I was in Whole Foods planning the evening's meal and looking for a nice cheese to incorporate into a chicken burrito. In the packaged cheese section I came across this new product, a locally produced fresh queso. What the heck, I thought, I'll give it a try. My previous experiences with queso fresco have not been impressive. Earlier cheeses have been bland, bland, bland with a rubbery, boring texture. After the first taste of Tia Anna's I said, Hey now, this is something to pay attention to. The overwhelming flavor impact is freshness not complexity. It tastes fresh, like cold bright, new, whole milk straight from the cow herself. The texture is crumbly but soft. It is refreshing over a salad of greens and delicious in my chicken burrito. Unlike many American-made, factory produced quesos frescos Tia Anna's melts well making the perfect choice for stuffed chiles or baked enchilladas. I will difinitely buy it again.
Name: Tia Anna's Queso Fresco
Type of Milk: cow's, pasteurized
Type: fresh
Produced in: United States of America, North Carolina, Gibsonville, Callico Farmstead Cheese LLC.
Date Purchased: 6/2/2007
Date Eaten: 6/6/2007
Purchased Where: United States, North Carolina, Raleigh, Whole Foods
Price: $9.99/lb
or "Dairy of a Mad Goat Lady"
And by "mad" I mean crazy enough to try to make a fresh camembert from North Carolina goats. And by "crazy" I mean crazy successful! Chevre Camembert is such a rare treat in the United States. Soft and buttery, young and slightly mushroomy, this young camembert-style cheese with an edible white rind represents the best of this style of young bloomy cheeses, alive with rich flavor. From a small goat dairy in Randolph county North Carolina producing a handful of small-batch artisinal chevres, Goat Lady Dairy Chevre Camembert stands out even among cow's milk cheeses of the same type. The goatiness is subtle but the camembertiness stands out. Seemingly pricey by the pound, $24.99, a disk is less than half that weight at around $10.00 each making it comparable in price to many lesser cheeses. It quickly became a favorite.
Name: Goat Lady Dairy Chevre Camembert
Type of Milk: goat's, pasteurized
Type: bloomy rind, soft
Produced in: United States of America, North Carolina, Climax, Goat Lady Dairy
Date Purchased: 7/3/2007
Date Eaten:7/4/2007
Purchased Where: United States, North Carolina, Raleigh, Whole Foods
Price: $24.99/lb.
I've held off on writing about Celebrity Dairy goat cheese for a while. It is the most famous of the locally produced cheeses of the Triangle area of North Carolina and maybe that is why I thought it deserved special mention and careful review. I also knew it was a cheese I could readily obtain so I would wait until my options for cheese purchases narrowed and it would mark the point in the journey where my job of finding great and unique cheeses got a lot harder.
I have been familiar with Celebrity Dairy cheese for many years but to be honest I have not tried it for some time. It was one of the first goat cheeses I tasted and it really helped me enter the bigger world of cheese outside cow's milk. But now I come back to it after having tried some of the best goat's milk cheeses of France and Spain, Portugal and Italy, Vermont and California. The experience of those cheeses made coming back to Celebrity Dairy Chevre a little less welcoming.
Do not get me wrong. Celebrity Dairy Chevre is a wonderful cheese, a fresh goat cheese like many of the best of similar style in France. But compared to a Humboldt Fog or a Coupole goat cheese, chevres like Celebrity Dairy are prepubescent sisters of the buxom college coeds. A lot of people of talked to think they do not like goat's milk cheeses. My guess is the only ones they've tried are those like Celebrity Dairy chevre. It can be a little acidic, the tangy bite of goat's milk singing through. To the uninitiated this is a new experience that their history with cow's milk cheese does not prepare tem for. It really can be an acquired taste.
But one thing Celebrity Dairy Chevre is great for is as an ingredient in other dishes. I baked a Leek and Goat Cheese Tart with a pastry crust, sauteed leeks in butter and thyme, a mixture of sour cream, egg and heavy cream, and good-sized chunks of Celebrity Dairy Chevre. Accompanying the tart was a salad of mixed greens, pinenuts, thyme and chevre in a balsamic vinegrette. Served with a cold Pilsner beer or crisp Riesling it was a great summer dinner.
Celebrity Dairy Chevre comes in different flavors: plain, confetti - a mix of different pepper corns, party - the everything bagel of goat cheese, and dill. I didn't find the herbs and spices necessary and think they tended to mask a lot of the chevre's charm. Still, I am lucky to have access to this local treat.
Name: Celebrity Dairy Chevre
Type of Milk: goat's, pasteurized
Type: soft
Produced in: United States of America, North Carolina, Chatham County
Date Purchased: 7/14/2007
Date Eaten:7/15/2007
Purchased Where: United States, North Carolina, Raliegh, Whole Foods
Price: $16.99/lb.
Fresh cheese. Certainly not something we come across too much in in the U.S., even in higher-end food outlets like Whole Foods. So when I saw the sign for Chapel Hill Creamery's New Moon that noted the cheese had been aged for only "9 days" I told my dred-locked cheese monger to wrap one up. New Moon viewed from the top has a bloomy white rind resembling a full moon on a cloudless night or as Fleming described it, "about the size, shape and color of an albino Ding Dong". Upon getting it home I couldn't wait to cut into the fresh creamy goodness. Major disappointment followed.
I screwed up in leaving the store without first inspecting my purchase closely. Had I given it a thorough exam of smell and touch or at least asked the cheese seller to do the same, I would have spotted that this New Moon was on the wane. Bloomy white rind cheeses like Brie, Camembert and New Moon can go through a similar transformation: from firm and underage, to softening and almost ripe, to soft and starting to ooze, to super-soft and really oozy, to hardening from the outside in, to hockey puck. If cared for improperly, some cheeses can skip the soft-stage all-together and go straight into an awful childhood of aromas of rotten-mushrooms. The cheese I took home hadn't been abused but it certainly was well past the 9 day mark. The rind was chalky, the center dry and unappealing.
Knowing the temperamental nature of some cheeses and the demands of retail, as well as wanting to support my local cheese producers, I decided to give New Moon another shot. I went back the following week and saw the same sign describing the youthfulness of this cheese. This time I asked the cheese seller when the small white disks had come in. "I'm not sure," he said. "I know it wasn't this week because we didn't get any this week." I asked him how they looked and if they were ripe. He bent down, peering into the case, and shook his head. That was all I needed. I passed on New Moon that day.
Eventually almost two months later I decided to seek New Moon out again. This time I had better luck and better cheese. Again I asked the right questions but the answers I needed to hear. The New Moon was ready to take home. Still a little young I kept it cool in my cheese fridge for a day before bringing it out to breathe two hours before dinner. I could tell from the pale peach fuzz mold, the soft center and the milky aroma that the New Moon was ready. As the knife cut through the center I could see it was perfectly ripe, at least to my liking. The edges still had some solidity while the center flowed like honey. The taste was good. Not as rich as a camembert but buttery with a hint of grass.
New Moon appeared in full form on the menu again just last night at a local food bloggers’ dinner in Durham, NC with special guest Michael Ruhlman, author of some of my favorite books on the craft and careers of passionate chefs, The Making of a Chef, The Soul of a Chef, and The Reach of a Chef. He announced a new work available soon titled The Elements of Cooking, modeled somewhat after Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style, the bible of writing well. It reminded me of a quote by, I think, George F. Will who said wanting to meet a writer because you like his work is like wanting to meet a cow because you like her milk. If her milk made great cheese I’d want to meet her too.
Name: Chapel Hill Creamery's New Moon or New Moon
Type of Milk: cow's, pasteurized
Type: soft, bloomy rind
Produced in: United States of America, North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Date Purchased: 7/22/07, 9/15/07
Date Eaten: 7/22/07, 9/15/07
Purchased Where: United States, North Carolina, Raleigh, Whole Foods
Price: $5.99 each
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