Last year, when I came to New York City in
February 2010, I went to eat at Pure Food and Wine for the first time and was
blown away by the tastiness and quality of the divine gourmet creations they
dished out. And one item on their menu particularly impressed me: The Dr. Cow Tree Nut Cheese Sampling Plate. Making hard aged nut cheeses was beyond my
knowledge that I had acquired so far and I had no idea on how to actually make
them.
In Spring this year, I started
experimenting with fermented aged nut cheeses and the results turned out great,
as you can read about in a previous blog post I published a while ago. I have
been making plenty of cashew, brazil nut and almond cheese since then. A small
batch I kept in my fridge to experiment with the aging process and I just
recently had the last bites of 3 months old cashew, brazil nut and almond
cheeses. All of them were still delicious. The almond cheese developed an
interesting “patina” and all of them intensified in taste and became harder
over time. Surprisingly, none of them developed any molds, which is
outstanding. Not many commercial dairy based cheeses can keep in the fridge for
3 months without growing unhealthy molds!
After having explored the base of nut
cheese making, I figured, it is now time to get creative. So, I just used my
September Course Bread & Cheese to experiment for the first time with
walnuts. I blended up the base and let the first fermentation process happen
overnight. Next day, when my students and I tried the result after the first 24
hour fermentation, we all agreed that the walnuts leave a somewhat bitter
flavor. In that moment, I remembered a black current powder, I have had sitting
in the shelf for a while and never put to use and had the immediate idea to
combine it with some white crushed peppercorn and combine it with the base
flavorings of nutritional yeast, nutmeg and salt and whip it under the
fermented nut cheese batter. 
After dehydration and fermenting it for
another week, the result was an amazing walnut cheese, perfectly balanced in
flavor, with bitter notes of walnut, sweet and tangy notes of the black current
and pungent notes of white pepper. Moreover, the color of the cheese is
particularly eye catching and beautiful. I served it with fresh fig and peat
and my fennel kamut squares at my last dinner club and it turned out to be a
big hit!
One and a half years after discovering
these wonderful cheeses in New York, I miraculously find myself sitting in the
living room of Pablo, founder and owner of Dr. Cow Tree Nut Cheeses, in his
wonderful loft right under Williamsburg bridge in New York City just a couple
of days ago. That was such a nice experience, after all my small home
experiments to finally meet the creator of those cheeses that were the source
for my inspirations and cheese creations this year. Special thanks to Neal (my
friend and also ex head chef at Pure Food and Wine), whom I stayed with in New
York and who lives just around the corner from Pablo and introduced us.
I hope you all get a chance to taste these
wonderful cheeses yourself soon, either Dr. Cow in the States or my homemade
ones in Berlin, when I am back next year :)
