Miracle of Mold: The Job of the Cheesemonger
By Catherine Young
Bonnie Quinn wants to help you learn about cheese. She does not want to safeguard her knowledge or intimidate you into buying wheels of unfamiliar camembert or Livarot. She wants
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Bonnie Quinn.
Photo by Jim Bush. |
Bonnie has been the deli manager, aka “cheesemonger,” at Premier Gourmet for the past two and a half years. She and her husband owned Truffles restaurant in Kenmore until they were forced to close it due to the post-9/11 economic downturn. After a stint working in a kitchen at a rehabilitation facility, she was looking for a change.
Bonnie came to her current position not under the long and careful tutelage of a cheese master but by answering an ad in the newspaper. She was quickly trained in the ways of cheese (and meats and fish) and continues on her perpetual quest to know and experience more and more cheese through food shows, newspaper and magazine articles, and online research. “You can learn a heck of a lot in a short period of time at the food shows,” Bonnie assures me.
For a customer looking in earnest for that perfect triple crème brie or intriguing Manchego, Bonnie is just what the gourmand ordered. Her hair pulled back and hygienically netted, with dangly earrings and large glasses from which she peers out, Bonnie is direct and solicitous with her customers. The secret to Bonnie’s rapport is that she identifies with customers’ quests to always know and experience more. While she may be the area’s foremost cheesemonger, when it comes to the nitty gritty nuances of le monde du fromage, there is always more to learn.
I sat down with Bonnie for a three-hour chat about the pleasures, peculiarities, and business of cheese. First things first: fancy cheese isn’t cheap.Bonnie makes her most delicate choices about which cheeses to stock based as much on finances as taste and quality. Bonnie considers her entire stock of cheese before adding a new variety into the mix. She has to ask herself if a new cheese will fill a void.Will customers like it? A cheese has to “move,” which means it has to be very popular or have a substantial shelf life.Some cheeses are delicious but can’t be carried because they are too much of a gamble. Bonnie has to strike the right balance. If it is too expensive or esoteric, then, like a trendy garage band, it goes bad before it sells out.
Some vendors will only sell certain cheeses five wheels at a time, forcing Bonnie to deal with a huge inventory of a single variety of cheese.Consider the Stiltons. While to most people “Stilton” is synonymous with a tall English blue cheese, Stilton begins its life as a basic white cow’s milk cheese (the standard blue Stilton has mold injected into it). Taking it in an entirely different flavor direction, fruits can be added to the white Stilton instead of mold, creating tasty dessert cheeses. For a time, Bonnie was forced to stop carrying the flavored Stiltons because they had to arrive several wheels at once. When she found a vendor who was willing to supply them one wheel at a time, Bonnie’s fine Stilton variety was back. Now a customer can walk into Premier and purchase an apricot, lemon, blueberry, or strawberry Stilton along with the standard blue-veined type.
The apricot Stilton was the first of twenty cheeses I sampled with Bonnie’s guidance. We worked our way down the open refrigerator case, beginning with the British Isles, traipsing through France, Italy, and Spain and ending with Scandinavia and Holland. Bonnie’s exuberance revealed itself fully. She regaled me with cheese facts culinary and sociological. She explained the form of a proper cheese plate. It should be arranged clockwise with cheeses progressing from mildest to strongest, starting with the mildest at midnight. The different animal sources (cow, sheep, goat) should be represented, keeping theselection diverse but balanced.
“A customer may come in looking for three cheeses,” she says. “If we sample ten, the customer often winds up leaving with five or six.” Bonnie’s gloved hand presented me with cheese after cheese until I finally had to request a cracker or two. The vodka currant cheese from Sweeden was sharp and delicious, while the rind of the Camembert tasted like the monkey house at the zoo. I tried everything from raw farmhouse cheddar from England to the Italian Brillo di Treviso a la Caesar, a cow’s milk cheese that is buried in grape musk to give it an intense wine flavor. I tried the pricy Devon Oake and the intense Red Leicester with wasabi and spring onion.
The texture and taste of a cheese when it finally arrives on your plate represents every aspect of its long journey. Everything matters: the climate and soil that created the grasses that the animal ate before it was milked, the type of animal milk used, the bacteria that was added, if the milk was pasteurized, and how (or if!) it was processed while it was aged. A country’s variety of cheeses often reflects the common history of humans, animals, geography and commerce that has developed over time.
The FDA stipulates that an unpasturized (or “raw”) cheese cannot be sold in the United States unless it has been aged at least sixty days. This prevents an entire realm of cheeses from being tasted within our national borders. But there is certainly no shortage of cheeses at Premier. By the time I sampled my third Gouda (aged five years and evocative of whiskey), I thought I might need to slip any more samples into my pocket for later. Alas, it was the end of my whirlwind global cheese tour with my guide, Bonnie. And she was right about the sampling—I wound up leaving Premier with five different cheeses.
Catherine Young is a freelance writer and artist living in Buffalo.
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