Tag: cheese

Quintessential Grilled Cheese: the world’s most expensive sandwich

Robin

Priced at an outstanding $214, Quintessential Grilled Cheese has held the the record for the world’s most expensive commercially-available sandwich for over seven years. And you could say that New York-based restaurant Serendipity 3 is specialized in setting food-related Guinness records. It currently holds several world records, including most expensive dessert, most expensive hot dog, largest wedding cake and largest cup of hot chocolate. But also the record for world’s most expensive sandwich, which happens to be just a humble grilled cheese treat. Named Quintessential Grilled Cheese, it is deceptively…

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Cheese Tea: bitter, sweet, and salty collide in this cool Asian treat.

Robin

Cheese tea is iced tea, often black, matcha, or oolong, that gets topped with a foamy mixture of cream cheese, whipping cream, milk, and salt. It’s true, the concept sounds horrible, but in this case, the cheese topping is more like a thick layer of creamy, salted foam that tops each drink, that found a fanbase among the late-night crowd. The trend then spread to Asian countries and apparently it had its roots from China. A few years ago, HEYTEA (喜茶) (previously known as Royaltea (皇茶) ) claimed to have…

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So, Japan’s 1,000-year-old cheese that’s back in fashion due to COVID-19 pandemic

Pavel

A year ago, on February 27, 2020, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe requested that all schools in Japan shut down until early April to stop the spread of COVID-19. And of course, by the following week, most schools across the country shuttered their doors. However, one of the biggest buyers of Japanese agricultural products is the school lunch program, which feeds elementary and middle school students across the whole country. To clarify, around 10% of all domestic food production goes to school lunch, which usually emphasizes local or domestic products and,…

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Cheese Zombies: the Yakima Valley’s beloved school lunch that takes grilled cheese to the next level.

Nathan

In the late 1950s, a school district in Washington’s Yakima Valley received an excess of subsidized cheese. Faced with this unexpected abundance, not wanting it to go to waste, the food services supervisor (or, according to other stories, a local cafeteria cook) invented a new sandwich that soon appeared on menus: the so-called Cheese Zombie, essentially a grilled cheese cake that’s baked with fresh dough. Needless to say, it was an instant hit. “Zombie”-makers begin by placing cheese slices between rolled-out sheets of dough. Before placing the huge sandwich into…

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Møsbrømlefse: the sweet, cheese-filled Norwegian flatbread that keeps Nordlanders nourished during the cold winter

Nathan

Once a month, in a 130-year-old building in Oslo, Northern Norwegians congregate. Despite the structure itself used to be a health resort, the community isn’t here for steam baths, but for enjoy møsbrømlefse. Made of lefse, a traditional Norwegian flatbread, stuffed with møsbrøm, a caramelized goat cheese and syrup reduction, this treat is sweet, gooey, tangy, and as packed with calories and nostalgia. In Salten, the far-north region where møsbrømlefse originated, dairy and long-lasting ingredients such as flour traditionally held laborers over during long, cold winters. Despite there are as…

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Brunost: the norwegians “brown cheese” that tastes like caramel.

Nathan

Norway’s national diet harks back to its days as a poor country, expecially with preserving fish and meats in salt, lots of potatoes and simple sauces, in a heritage still dominates today. One of Norway’s most intriguing foods (at least, for foreigners) is eaten daily by many Norwegians for breakfast, lunch, or as a snack. Norwegians buy a special slicer just to eat their brunost, a “brown cheese” that has a texture more like fudge than any regular cheese, and a salty-sweet, almost tangy flavor. Brunost, also known as mysost,…

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Pfunds Molkerei: in Germany, the world’s most beautiful dairy shop!

Anya016

Imagine walking into one of most adorned room at Versailles…to buy a piece of cheese. Maybe it sound unlikely, but that’s the feeling you get when you step into the Pfunds Molkerei, officially know as “Schönster Milchladen der Welt”, or the most beautiful dairy shop in the world, according to 1998 Guinness Records. Located at Bautzner Straße 79, in Dresden, Germany, it is one of the most popular tourist attractions in the beautiful German city, with over 500,000 tourists stopping by every year. Of course, that’s fairly unusual for a…

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Smearcase: a cheesecake named after 19th-century cottage cheese still served in a few Baltimore bakeries.

Nathan

A dairy wagon in Virginia City, Nevada, made the news when it tipped over in 1878. The Territorial Enterprise published an article called “Whey Goin?” in which a pun-crazed reporter described in this way the scene: “The air was filled with milk and the wagon was left a complete wreck. It was a regular smear-case. From the length of time he has been in the milk business Pedroli’s horse ought to know butter than to act in such a whey— ’tain’t the cheese.” Interestingly, all of the dairy products listed…

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Chhurpi: the world’s hardest cheese come from Nepal.

Robin

Chhurpi, Nepali: छुर्पी, (or Durkha) is a traditional Nepalese cheese that has been a means of survival for many remote communities for centuries. Made out of the milk of yaks, or chauri (a crossbreeding between a yak and a cow), it comes in two varieties – soft and hard. The soft variety is usually consumed as a side dish with rice, as filling for traditional dumplings, or also as a soup. But it’s the hard variety that makes chhurpi famous all over the world. Probably you’ve tried hard cheeses before,…

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Năsal: a delicious Transylvanian Cheese

Ivan

We are in Romania. Năsal is a traditional local cheese bearing the same name as the village where it is produced in the Țaga commune, Cluj County. The soft and creamy cheese has been smear-ripened in caves since the Middle Ages. According to a Transylvanian legend, the commune of Țaga was once controlled by a wealthy, cruel count. Under his rule, the people starved and, to feed themselves, one day, some farmers were forced to steal the count’s cheese for their children. They hid it in a cave near the…

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4# Christmas Cake and Cheese: a big deal in Yorkshire – England!

Leo S

Yorkshire, a historic county of Northern England and the largest in the United Kingdom, has its a curious variety of weird and wonderful traditions often unknown on the rest of the world. There is also one festive custom which probably is set to take dinner tables by storm, in future. The poor fruitcake has gotten a bad rap over the past few decades, and it is not just a cellophane package. Probably people misunderstand its booze-infused density and fruitiness, chalking up the decision to give such a gift as nothing…

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And you have a wheel of cheese to be eaten at your funeral?

Leo S

Imagine setting aside a wheel of cheese at your wedding. What would it look like if it were served at your  funeral? Probably shriveled and brown, pockmarked from decades of mite and mouse nibbles and, above all, hard as a rock! You’d need an axe to slice it open and strong booze to wash it down. Of course, this is the cheese you  don’t want to cut even though it’s aged to perfection. However, a fossilized funeral cheese means you lived a long life! Jean-Jacques Zufferey’s home in Grimentz, high…

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Stinking Bishop: the Britain’s smelliest cheese!

Leo S

Here we are: Stinking Bishop is an award-winning artisanal cheese. Among these awards there is “smelliest cheese in Britain.” Even if it has a subtle, nutty flavor, the Gloucestershire specialty is most famous for its strong aroma, which has been described as putrid and evocative of a rugby team’s locker room. It is a full fat pasteurised cows’ milk soft cheese made with vegetarian rennet. The rind is washed in perry, a type of local pear cider, which gives it its characteristic flavour, brown/pink rind and pungent smell. The Stinking…

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Callu de Cabrettu: the oldest style of cheese?

Ivan

Here we are: We are in Sardinia, Italy, a region which could be home to the oldest style of cheese. According to locals, this is almost the forbearer of all cheeses and an authentic example of “paleogastronomy”. Callu de cabrettu is probably one of the oldest forms of cheese and is made by taking the stomach of a baby goat kid with all its contents of mother’s milk, tying it closed, and hanging it to age until it naturally becomes cheese from the acids and rennet present in the stomach.…

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