"I'm always the person who's like, 'Can I eat some of that?'" laughs Rachel Freier as she mimics pointing to cheese in the very early stages of production. "They're always telling me it's not ready yet." It was the second official night of the Monger's Table, where one section of the bar at Murray's Cheese Bar is transformed into a cheese-centric tasting menu led led by Freier, who was on a mission to educate, entertain and, most importantly, extol the virtues of some delicious global cheeses.
But before the first morsel of cheese gets passed to diners, Freier wants everyone to appreciate cheese's most important element: milk. A dainty coupe filled with whole milk has been infused with vermouth, hay from Vermont's Jasper Hill Farm and chamomile. "Cows go crazy for chamomile," Freier explains as we sip the sweet, herbal cocktail. "If they find it in a field, they'll eat it all up."
(Nell Casey/Gothamist)
From milk, we move to curds, another stage in the development of cheese. Freier presents the curds in three stages of maturity, beginning with the silky, almost liquid state she had been so eager to try during visits to cheese-making facilities. Next, curds brined in salt, black pepper, rosemary—"like the Thanksgiving turkey"—with a dense, velvety texture. And finally, fried curds, like the platonic ideal of bar mozzarella sticks and equally as addictive.
Freier's knowledge of cheese, from the history to the production to the cheeses themselves, is impressive and vital to her role as Cheese Program Manager at the venerable cheese shop and restaurant. While an evening eating and being educated on cheese sounds great for someone who cares passionately about the subject, Freier makes sure more casual cheese tourists have more to engage them, including the delightful dishes—"I joke that the reason I started this dinner was for the plates," Freier reveals—and the expert alcohol pairings.
(courtesy Murray's Cheese Bar)
Freier employs a few tricks throughout the evening. Don't let the chopsticks fool you: that isn't fish wrapped in a dainty bundle of greens like a piece of sushi, but a tender hunk of Loire Valley St. Maure goat's cheese, matured and rolled in ash by the Murray's team. From France to Italy with the next course, which, upon first glance, appears to be a delicate square of ravioli topped with tomato sauce. In fact, there's no pasta at all; instead, stretched mozzarella has been shaped into "ravioli" and stuffed with a tomato-garlic filling.
"Every night I'm asked, 'Can I eat the rind?'" Freier notes. "The rind is everything, it's the most direct taste of place. It tastes of where it was aged." Pan sautéed bits of raclette-style cheese make up the cheese component of the Eat The Rind course; the toasted rinds are like a "vegetarian chicharrones," with a rich, salty umami-rich flavor. The entire salad is an umami bomb, with foraged mushrooms and an adorable fried quail egg. One cheese skeptic even dubbed it his favorite dish of the evening.
(Nell Casey/Gothamist)
There's no mistaking the next course, a crock of warm cheese surrounded by sticks of toasted bread, Vermont jerky, whey-poached purple potato and other crunchy fondue vehicles. From decadence to practical with the following course, a green juice of ginger, green apple, spinach and whey, the problematic byproduct of cheese-making.
"Whey has protein and live organisms, you can't just dump it," Freier explains. Because of that, it makes a nutritious addition to juices—and is even fed to pigs in places like Parma, of the famed prosciutto—that helps with digestion.
In fact, drinks are an integral part of the tasting menu and Freier's selections are enlightened. An effervescent Duche de Longueville Antoinette Cider adds a sweet counterpart to the savory cheese rind salad while a buttery California chardonnay supported the richness of the fondue. Most interesting of all, however, was the Eden Ice Cider The Fallstaff 2008, a super-rare ice cider produced more or less by accident by the Vermont-based producer, here serving as accompaniment to the gjetost apple tart that would be one of the final notes of the evening.
(courtesy Murray's Cheese Bar)
There's meat used to make the rich gravy, but it's Ardrahan cheese, a washed rind variety from Ireland, doing the heavy lifting the evening's final savory course. Though Freier doesn't like to use the word "stinky" to describe cheeses—preferring instead to employ terminology like beefy and porky to appeal to cheese neophytes—the cheese has quite a bit of personality, robust and hearty enough to stand in as a meat substitute. Freier's even exploring a vegetable-based gravy, which would make much of the meal vegetarian-friendly, including the use of vegetarian rennet in many of the cheese selections.
To close, two sweet offerings, beginning with Norweigan gjetost cheese, a deep caramel-colored cheese made by recooking the whey for extended periods of time until it becomes dense and sweet. On the opposite from the warm tart, frozen balls of stilton ice cream encased in chocolate as a frozen bon bon. "I don't even like blue cheese but I would eat that again," a dining companion gushed after the meal.
It's that sentiment that makes this dinner ideal for both cheese fanatics like myself and those who'd like an introduction to cheese in a relaxed, informative and pressure-free environment. Eating chunks of Challerhocker and smears of Affinois are no big deal to some, but to others, it's an alien experience. But by presenting the cheese as a downright ordinary and logical thing to be in a pot pie, for example, by showcasing the varieties in unexpected ways, Freier makes it less about the perceived trauma of trying something new and more about enjoying a delicious meal that also happens to be based entirely on cheese.
So take it from those of us who know and just surrender to the fromage.
Seatings can be reserved here at $75 for 10 courses and $105 with the beverage pairing, which is highly recommended.
