On Tuesday evening Stephanie and I attended our first cheese class since Alpine Cheese and Alsace Wine back in March. I didn’t really look at the Fall schedule until well after it came out, which in some ways actually made things easier. There were only a few classes with space still available and the ones that were left tended to be either very basic or more unusual.

I gravitated towards a more unusual one that I hadn’t seen before called “Leaf-Wrapped Lovelies”. The description began:

“So many lovely and delicious cheeses come in leaf-wrapped packages. Especially in Italy, Spain and France and now increasingly in the U.S., many artisan cheesemakers have made a tradition of wrapping their most delicate cheeses in chestnut, fig or grape leaves, both to offer protection to small tender wheels as well as to impart flavor.”

What I liked about the class was that it wasn’t region-, cheese-type-, or pairing-specific. The characteristic that tied these cheeses together was how they were finished—and in a very artisanal, handcrafted way. Though the Cheese School‘s plates are always handsome, I think the nine cheeses below were certainly the most diverse and probably the most beautiful so far.

Starting with the green cabbage-wrapped cheese at the top and going around clockwise, the cheeses were:

1. Robiola Incavolata*
2. Capriole, O’Banon*
3. Rivers Edge Chevre, Up in Smoke*
4. Rivers Edge Chevre, Autumn Crottin
5. Sally Jackson Sheep*
6. Pecorino Foglie di Noce
7. Cusie
8. Rogue Creamery, Rogue River Blue
9. Valdeón

I marked my favorites with an asterisk.

The class was led by Lynne Devereux who took us around the plate almost as if she were bringing us from farmstead to creamery. Each cheese came with a story about who made it, how it’s made, the care that goes into how it’s wrapped, as well as a discussion about taste, texture, and how it paired with the wines of the evening.

The Rivers Edge Up in Smoke was particularly interesting. They actually smoke the maple leaves with hickory and alder before wrapping the cheese and smoking it again. I thought it would make for a particularly manly chevre-chaud.

The Robiola was just too cool not to take a picture of, with its cabbage leaf wrapping. Apparently it almost never made it to the plate, as it was held up in Customs on the way from Italy. It was Stephanie’s favorite cheese, and my second favorite (I really liked the Sally Jackson Sheep).

In the end, all that was left on our plates was a pile of leaves.

I’m sure this has been blogged to death already—so one more can’t hurt, can it? I mean look at the thing, it’s so beautiful. A culinary work of art. I wanted to photograph it more than eat it.

About 2 weeks ago (has it only been 2 weeks? it feels like ages) Stephanie and I hosted the latest in our series of food-themed parties, this time centered around the humble “slider” (or mini-burger). However since then life intervened in more ways than one, so I haven’t had a chance to post about it until now.

Let’s jump straight to the food, shall we? Other than ordering 100 mini brioche rolls from La Boulange, we made pretty much everything from scratch. I turned a 7 pound pork shoulder into NC-style pulled pork, made lamburgers with shallots and herbes de Provence, and roasted mini portobello mushrooms.

Along with that we had a whole bunch of homemade condiments: the previously blogged-about pickles (which turned out amazingly, by the way), aioli made in a mortar and pestle, coleslaw made with homemade mayonnaise, caramelized onions, and the pepper jack I made back in August. In addition to the usual finger foods, Stephanie had two Chaource-style bries she’d made a few weeks beforehand, as well as some olives and salami (Bâton de Berger) that we’d brought back from France. It was a feast!

I wish I’d had time to take pictures of all this wonderful food, but the light was low and I was busy ushering people into and around the apartment—over the course of the night we managed to pack in more than twenty people. However, my camera did make the rounds, so here’s a taste of the photos I found on it the next day:

Did I mention we got two Twitter testimonials? Thanks quasistoic and claudinerlco.

If I were to write a list of “things I know about my Dad” one of them would be the fact that he worked at a hot dog stand in Buffalo, New York after graduating from high school. There are 3 things he’s taught me that he learned from that experience:

1. How to cook a hot dog. Specifically ways to score or puncture the outside surface (or casing) of the hot dog to ensure even cooking and an attractive finished product.
2. When returning change to someone, hand it to them, don’t slide it across the counter, because it’ll take them a long time to pick up.
3. He didn’t want to work at Pat’s for the rest of his life.

That he spent the entirety of his career working at IBM, and yet his summertime stint at Pat’s Charcoal Hots left such an indelible mark is worth taking note.

Pat’s doesn’t exist any more, not since 1984, but Buffalo’s love of Sahlen’s hot dogs cooked over a charcoal fire lives on in the form of Ted’s Hot Dogs. I remember my Dad taking me to Ted’s during our visits to Buffalo when I was younger and telling me his stories from that summer in 1967. I don’t know if I have my dad to thank, or genetics, but I do love me a good hot dog (Exhibit A, Exhibit B), so I was excited to relive the experience while we had the chance—even given the circumstances.

Four jars to be exact, using this recipe: Garlic Dill Pickles.

We’ll see how they turn out.