Seaweed Cheese
....a mermaid in search of a taste of the sea.
My recent obsession started when I read about the seaweed cheese made in the Vendee, in the Western region of France. The thought of a yummy cheese with health benefits and the aroma of the sea as well intrigued me. It’s usually small batch, artisanal, and hard to find outside of the region so my search for somewhere to buy it continues until I can get there in person.
And then I learned that, using seaweed fresh off the rocks, the famous French butter maker Bordier makes a hand-formed seaweed butter using three different types of seaweed, wake, dulse and sea lettuce. Here’s a great video to watch about the Bordier seaweed butter that may make you yearn to hop a plane and visit the shop in Brittany. Being a mermaid, I am dreaming of my first chance to put my feet in the water there, then to savor my first taste of Bordier seaweed butter on a freshly baked baguette. That, my friends, would make me very happy.
With further online wandering looking for seaweed cheese, I learned about Embruns aux Algues, produced in the Loire where the curd is combined with seaweed, producing an orange-pink rind. And I also found a cheese made in Rochefort, Belgium by Trappist monks, called Rochefort aux algues d’Ouessant, that combines French seaweed into their semi-soft cheese.
In America, a cheesemaker in Waldoboro, Maine makes a soft cheese with a “ribbon” of powdered bladderwrack seaweed down the center. You can order this online at their store. It won a gold medal at the 2022 World Championship Cheese Contest.
It seems inevitable that seaweed will find its way into more cheese. Sea salt and the saltwater flavor of seaweed entwined in a cheese made from cows that graze near the sea….well, it sounds like perfection to me.
Favorite flavor this week: Ginger
Since I was a child, ginger jam has been on the breakfast table because of my father’s love for it. He loved it so much he always kept a pottery jar of preserved ginger in syrup that he would buy in Chinatown on the table. He would butter white toast, spoon some whole ginger and syrup onto his plate, finely chop it with a knife, and scoop it all onto his toast to be washed down with strong black coffee.
The other choice, always present, was Tiptree Ginger Jam. In fact, he was a Tiptree addict, especially enamored with Tiptree Little Scarlet (tiny wild strawberry jam). Tiptree is made by the Wilkins family in Tiptree, England, who have been making jam since 1885 and they have some really delicious jam flavors, including their Christmas Jam, Gooseberry, and Rhubarb with Ginger.
I make my own ginger jam, but I also have on hand Trappist Ginger Preserve (my favorite) and Chivers Ginger Perserves. How do I use them? On toast in the morning. In cooking, for instance I often add a tablespoon or two of ginger jam after I crumble ginger snaps into my gravy for Sauerbraten. I use it in Thai cooking, in tea loaf cakes, in homemade ice cream. As a surprise element in a sushi roll. Stirred into curried chicken salad. I like it in a marinade for an extra punch. In Japanese carrot ginger salad dressing.
And I like making my own pickled ginger (gari), eliminating the artificial colors and flavors often present in store bought. In the colder months it helps boost immunity and simply tastes divine on everything. Here is my recipe:
Peel the ginger, about 8 ounces.
Slice very thinly, on a mandolin or even with a potato peeler if you can. The thinner the better.
Boil 1 cup rice vinegar (or you can use cider vinegar) 1/2 teaspoon sea salt, and 1/3 to 1/2 cup sugar in a saucepan. Add the ginger and simmer for 5 minutes.
Transfer the ginger to a clean canning jar with a lid, Pour the liquid over the top. Allow to cool then screw on the lid. Put in refrigerator for 1 week to marinate before using. It may have turned a bit pink, which is fine, it is from a reaction between the ginger and the rice vinegar. Then enjoy!
Good Reads, Good News:
The Hamptons Winter Happy Hours, Brunch Spots…etc.
The Coziest NYC Hot Spots with a Fireplace
Exciting New Tin Building in NYC Must-Eat List
Anthony Bourdain’s Food Market NYC
Cookbook Review:
Le Sud de France: The Food & Cooking of the Languedoc by Caroline Conran
I have over 500 cookbooks, both new and vintage. This one is from 2012 and is without doubt one of the most thorough, thoughtful, well-researched, and interesting ones I own. It's black and white inside with no pictures, only illustrated with a few of Caroline's drawings. It's soft cover and a soft-sell, with a moody watercolor of hills rather than of food on the front.
But within this gentle tome is a wealth of experience and food know-how.
Caroline and Terrance Conran made a name for themselves in England, first opening their design oriented Habitat shop in Chelsea in London, following on with a series of companies from there. Terrance then developed as an international restaurateur, opening at least 8 restaurants in London, with Caroline his partner. Caroline and Terrance wrote a cookbook together, and Caroline went on to continue as a food writer to work with three-star chefs helping them write their cookbooks. She's written many of her own, including Under the Sun, a book about southern French food.
This one, however, is unlike other cookbooks, conveying every bit of knowledge she has accumulated about food, whether it's attractive to read or not, in the interest of scholarship and because of her fascination with it.
"Boar meat is actually more easily digested than pork, but it is vital that the testicles and guts are removed immediately after it has been killed. If not, the meat, probably because of the animal's thick fur which keeps the carcase warm over a long period, will taint very quickly."
Then, you'll learn about olives:
"Growing and looking after olive trees is an art, one passed down from one generation to the next. The trees are pruned to be open in the centre, so that a bird can fly through. This allows the air to keep them free of mildew and lets the winds of late May flow through and pollinate the flowers for a good crop."
Or this, written as a head note before her recipe for Light Chicken Liver Pate:
"Poultry here are strong, tall birds; my neighbor Madame Galy kept a popular, if ugly, red-feathered breed with bald necks, called cou-nu, that pecked and scratched, along with several ducks, beneath a couple of large fig trees. They taste wonderful."
Each of the over 300 pages are filled with interesting imagry, facts, and enthusiasm for the area she lived in and the food she encountered there. Reading it makes you want to know her, to go shopping with her at the markets, and to cook with her. For now, I have her wonderful book.
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