photo by Phil Mansfield Celebrity Dairy - Home Page Dairy Inn Farm-Side Cheesemaking et voilà - le fromage Visiting Us Along the way Farm Links Cheese Links		Celebrity Dairy Goat Cheese "Cheese: milk's leap towards immortality" - (Cliffton Fadiman). We're regularly asked - "do we still eat our own cheese?" Simply - Yes! In subtle ways - its always different, and still interesting after 10 (no - now 15, and even after 20) years. Cast of Characters - The regulars. All of our cheese starts off the same way - some ends up as plain and herb-coated fresh Montrachet style logs, but mostly as whey. Speaking of whey - 85% of the milk ends up that way. Fed back to the does - they drink it up and haul it away. Montrachet: Fresh (2-10 days old) 1 lb logs   - Plain     - Herb coated Asian Luv (toasted sesame seeds, ginger, garlic) Currituck (curry) French Kiss (herbes de Provence) Garbo (garlic, basil, pepper), Party (parseley, basil, chives, onion) Dill (dill, lemon pepper) Rosemary Paprika-Garlic   - au Poivre Peppertop - (restaurant grind) black pepper Confetti - (coarse cracked red, green, white, & black peppercorns) Serendipity: fresh-drained curd (1-2 days old) in . deli containers or 2 lb zip-lock bags   - Plain     - Herbed Garbo, Party, Dill, Curry, Chipotle, and Jalapeño (my favorite)   - Sweet with preserves - Apricot, Peach, or Raspberry. and Chocolate! Cameo Appearances: seen from time to time   - Feta Fresh, w/ Jalapeños, & Beta Feta - Feta, (but Betta) - packed in olive oil w/herbs   - Dried Nuggets of dehydrated chèvre - having a nutty Parmesan-like intensity Mold-Ripened: (new in 2000) - the addition of white and blue molds and time spent in our aging room give these cheeses character and complexity   -Silk Hope A hand-ladled pyramid: coated with vegetable ash and mold-ripened to a snowy white finish   - Brie A hand-ladled flat cylinder: mold-ripened   -Cloud A rough ball shape: wild-ripened with blue and white molds note - Silk Hope won a third place Aged Goat Cheese at The American Cheese Society's annual cheese competition 10 Aug, 2000, in St. Helena, CA. (sort of old news, but it was the last competition we entered. ) Current Performances - Part of our act is hand delivering our cheese to customers - be they individuals at local farm markets, or nearby restaurants or grocery stores along the local axis running from Siler City & Pittsboro, through Chapel Hill to Durham, North Carolina. The stores and restaurants that have sought out our cheese are proud of its local origin and quality, and usually give us attribution on their labels and menus. Farm Markets - look for Fleming at the Chapel Hill/Carrboro Farmers' Market - every Saturday morning 7:00-12:00, and in 2007 for her daughter Lea at the Moore's Square Farmers' Market in Raleigh Wednesday mid-day - 10:00-2:00. The Saturday market runs from mid-March up to Christmas, while the weekday Moore's Square Market has a somewhat shorter season. Grocery Stores - Chatham Marketplace - Chatham County's very own local Coop, Weaver Street Market stores in both Carrboro and Southern Village, A Southern Season in Chapel Hill, and the Whole Foods Markets in Chapel Hill, Durham, and Raleigh all carry our cheese. Restaurants - The folks at Aurora Restaurant in Chapel Hill were our first commercial customer, and Chef Gwen Higgins used our cheese faithfully for almost 20 years, and offered us great support and encouragement along the way. Aurora closed after a 25 year run, and was one of our personal favorite restaurants. Currently, Chapel Hill restaurants using it regularly include Bonne Soiree,Crooks' Corner, Elaine's, Glass Half Full, Sandwich, and The Weathervane Restaurant . In Durham - try Anotherthyme, Ben & Karen Barker's Magnolia Grill, and Nana's. In Raleigh - Frazier's Restaurant, South, Vivace, Zely & Ritz, and 1705 Prime. The Cheese Owners Manual - Getting it home - How do you get our cheese home? Soft young cheeses like to be cool, but will tolerate some time at ambient temperatures. Our rule of thumb: - if your are comfortable, so is the cheese. So in the heat of summer - if your aren't heading right home to store the cheese carry it with you, but at least don't leave it in the car. Other times of year are more forgiving. Seasoned farm market customers bring a cooler and ice packs with them to the farm market during the heat of summer. This way they can shop at the market early to get the best quality and selection, and still be able to stop for brunch with friends or run other errands without compromising the quality of their food purchases. One couple proudly showed Fleming a cooler they had bought just for carrying our cheese home in style, yet still allowing time for that important Saturday morning coffee stop at Weaver Street Market: it was an insulated wine bag with a frozen ice insert! Holds 3 logs of cheese, or one wine bottle (take your pick) Cool idea. How long will it keep in the fridge? - The quick answer is: Several weeks - if packaged properly. In its natural life cycle cheese gradually dries out as it ages. Small cheeses have shorter aging periods than larger ones. Ours (under a pound) have a natural aging period of only 3-6 weeks. Your challenge is to guide this process in your fridge - which is both colder and dryer than an ideal cheese aging room. The waxed parchment deli paper we use to wrap the cheese retards evaporation, thus compensating the low humidity level in your fridge. Cheese wrapped this way will gradually age - getting dryer, and with a more definite flavor. Left alone, it dries up into a small shriveled rock. (We know - pieces of cheese routinely flee captivity to the freedom to be found in a refrigerator's dark recesses - only to be recaptured during that great event - the annual refrigerator cleaning) Don't throw these out! What you have created is an aged grating cheese. Take credit for your patience and self-discipline, and grate these rocks as a garnish for salads and pasta dishes. We sometimes accelerate this process by putting medallions of cheese in a food dehydrator and drying them overnight. This creates an instant flavor accent that stores without refrigeration. The worst thing you can do is to wrap the cheese in plastic - as this totally arrests the aging process. After a week, cheese wrapped this way will develop a butterfat "sweat" on the surface, and often start growing a black mold (poile de chat - or cat hair - a sign of too high humidity) that causes a bitter taste. Will it Freeze? - yes - definitely! If you are stocking up on cheese in the Fall to carry you over the winter when the goats are pregnant, and there's no milk to make cheese from - pop your cheese into the freezer. The plastic deli cups used to package our soft Serendipity spreads are a perfect freezer container. However - the chèvre logs need to be put into freezer quality zip-lock bags. For best results - thaw the cheese slowly in your fridge overnight. After thawing, the cheese's flavor is unchanged. When pressed for time we've even thawed the cheese in a microwave oven - but this insult may make its texture a bit grainy. Better to plan ahead. Hint: before freezing - cut the chèvre logs into smaller size pieces, and re-wrap in deli paper. This way you can remove and thaw just the amount of cheese you'll need later. Use a length of dental floss to cut the cheese: it leaves a clean sharp surface that both looks neat, and minimizes exposure to the air.
The Inn at Celebrity Dairy 2106 Mt. Vernon Hickory Mtn. Rd. Siler City, NC 27344 - theinn@celebritydairy.com ** tel. (919) 742-5176, or toll free reservations: (877) 742-5176 *