Chupaqueso.com

You’ve made microwave nachos before, right? Just grate cheese on chips, nuke for 30 seconds to a minute, and then eat. Well, we had those for dinner (with taco meat on the side, to be scooped with the chips — we’re good parents, really) and about the time Sandra realized I was going to have a plate (I was off the low-carb wagon for the weekend) we BOTH realized we were out of cheddar.

So I told her to grate some of the Meadow Creek Appalachian Shitake/Leek cheese on mine instead.

Man, those were some gooood nachos.

Later, Sandra used some of it in a quiche. Good quiche, too.

I still think this cheese is best just eaten straight (after being allowed to come up to room temperature, of course) but it’s good for melting and cooking, too.

–Howard “Meadow Creek Dairy’s Unofficial Evangelist” Tayler

This morning for breakfast I experimented a bit. I made a chupaqueso (on my cast iron sweetheart) with a mozzarella shell and a filling of Meadow Creek Appalachian Shitake/Leek (henceforth called “MCA”).

I’m of two minds about it:
1) Delicious. Let’s do that again.
2) Just because you have 3/4 of a wheel (about 7 pounds) of MCA doesn’t mean it’s okay to waste such a delicious cheese by MELTING it.

The MCA is oily when melted, like cheddar only more so. It also has a stronger, earthier flavor. Sure, it’s a better filling than cheddar would be (and I fried some, just for giggles, and it makes a tastier cheese crisp than cheddar does ,too) but that’s not the same thing as saying “that’s what I’m going to do with 7 pounds of cheese.” I think that MCA really is too much of a treat eaten straight to be sacrificed to more than a couple of these chupaqueso projects.

(An omelette, though… I may have to try it in an omelette.)

Here’s a quick run-down on the cheeses I’ve got in my fridge.

• Tillamook Pepper Jack: great for chupaqueso filling, great for snacking, and perfect for grown-ups because the kids hate spicy stuff and that means more for me.
• Bulk block of Cheddar: We get this at Sam’s Club for right around $2.00 per pound, and we buy 5 pounds at a time. It’s the “staple” cheese, used primarily for kids’ stuff — quesadillas, grilled cheese sandwiches, and snacking. It’s a good chupaqueso shell, and a decent filling, too.
• Bulk block of Mozzarella: Again, Sam’s Club, and again, $2.00 per pound. It’s a good chupaqueso shell, and works great as a pizza topping.
• Meadow Creek Dairy “Grayson”: The stinkiest cheese in the house. I’m the only one who eats it, and I have to be sure to do it when nobody else is around. It really is stinky. But it’s good — even the rind is tasty.
• Meadow Creek Dairy “Appalachian Shitake/Leek”: Oh boy oh boy is THIS tasty. We just got a 10 pound wheel from a generous Schlock fan, and while the rind smells like musty dirt, the cheese is wonderful. We haven’t yet tried it for anything besides eating.
• El Viajero brand Queso Blanco: This is the best frying cheese I’ve found. When I’m low-carbing, I’ll slice pieces and fry them directly — no shredding, no chupaqueso shell. The cheese doesn’t melt or go greasy when fried, and DOES make an excellent chupaqueso shell. It’s not especially tasty for straight snacking, but it’s delicious when fried.
• Baby Havarti: I’m not sure there’s much of this left. It gets gobbled up by anyone who knows it’s in the fridge, and it’s a little on the pricey side. In fact, I bet that if I go check the fridge again after finishing this post, it’ll be well and truly gone.
• Bulk block of Parmesan: I forget the brand name, but we bought two to three pounds of the stuff for shredding as a topping on whatever, including chupaquesos. You can’t beat parmesan you shred yourself. (You especially can’t beat it if your friend GIVES you a block, which I think may be where this block came from).
• Bottle of Parmesan: This shouldn’t count as cheese, but hey, we’ve got it. Mostly it’s for the kids and when we’re lazy.
• Homemade yogurt: If I’m including the bottled store-brand Parmesan in a list of cheeses, then the homemade yogurt ought to count as cheese, too. Sandra makes this stuff, and the kids and I agree that it’s better than store-bought yogurt. We used to have a strainer with which we could make “yogurt cheese,” but it’s long gone. I think that makes yogurt a “proto-cheese,” but once we go THAT route I have to start listing the milk here, too.

A couple of Virginia Schlockers (and I think they may BE a “couple” in the significant sense) work on a dairy farm where “farmstead” cheeses are made. For the uninitiated, farmstead cheeses are “… cheeses made by hand on the farm with only milk produced on that farm, so that the cheese reflects the specific local character of one farm and one herd.”* The cheeses have a taste unique to the plants and animals that went into them, and a true connoisseur can sniff out that signature.

These Schlockers conspired with Sandra, and sent me three half-pound wedges and a four-pound wheel from their farm, the Meadow Creek Dairy. I’m not going to attempt to review the cheeses here, because I lack the appropriate cheese-reviewing terminology. I’ll just say that if you like full-flavored cheeses with real rinds and a distinctive taste, you’ll like these. And if you, like me, are an American who is sick of hearing effete euro-snobs announce that it’s impossible to find good cheese in the States, you owe it to yourself to get some of this.

I’ve been to Europe numerous times. I’ve HAD the fancy cheeses there. Yeah, they’re nice, and they beat the pants off of mass-produced California cheddar (Velveeta, “American” cheese, and Cheez-Whiz don’t even deserve parenthetical mention). But it’s delightful to know that there are folks here in the states who have perfected that same art, and are creating something unique. And delicious.

If you like putting out a really NICE spread on New Year’s Eve, and if you happen to love cheese, I’ve been led to understand that you can have Meadow Creek Dairy cheese shipped to you in time for your party. My favorites are the Grayson, the Appalachian, and the Appalachian Rosemary… in that order. Sandra likes the Appalachian Rosemary best, and I caught her putting it in an omelette yesterday morning. I’ve been instructed to surrender the rest of the wedge to her, since she doesn’t like the Grayson, and is surrendering that entire wheel to me. I figure it’s a fair trade.

Thanks Kat. Thanks, Dan. The gift was all the more special since I know you two had a hand in its making.

*Note: This “farmstead” definition comes to us from Will Studd via his 1999 book Chalk and Cheese. If my last name were Studd, and I was writing even only incidentally about dairy animals, I’d use a pseudonym, and latex gloves. But hey, Chalk and Cheese, was awarded “Best Cheese Book in the World” at the Périgueux book fair in 2000, so I guess Mister Studd’s doing alright with his name and his subject matter.

Note Also: This was originally posted at Schlock Mercenary, and has been cross-posted and back-dated here because it’s so topical.

(Cross-posted and back-dated from schlockmercenary.com)

At almost the precise moment my “Cheeeeese” blog entry aired, a Schlocker emailed me with what sounded like an anecdotal or urban-legend-esque tale. Supposedly there was this young woman who saw a block of queso blanco on a neighbor’s table, decided it was uncut cocaine, and hired a hit man to kill everyone in the house so she could steal the coke and resell it.

To her misfortune (and to the good fortune of everyone in the home) the hit man she hired was an undercover police officer. And the cops searched the house, having reasonable cause, and determined that the queso blanco was not, in fact, cocaine.

A little googling pulled up the original article. Here it is, from the Washington Post. The article aired on December 6th (here at Schlock Mercenary we’re less than 10 days behind the rest of the journalistic world) and at that time Jessica Sandy Booth remained in jail, with bond set at a cool million dollars, on four charges of attempted murder and four counts of soliciting murder.

All over a block of queso blanco. I think I’ll go fry some right now, and get my buzz on.

(EDIT: The Post article is gone… here’s another article instead.)

(Cross-posted and back-dated from schlockmercenary.com)

The diet-and-exercise thing is going well. I’ve lost six pounds, and redistributed another five or ten, if the fit of my clothes is any indication. And I’ve discovered that I really, really like cheeeese.

This is a good thing, because cheese is something I’m allowed to eat. Lately I’ve been frying a “mexican snack cheese” called “Queso Blanco,” and the stuff is AMAZING. I’ll fry a couple of quarter-inch-thick slices in a little bit of butter, and they toast up nicely without going all gooey and impossible to flip. And when I eat them, they taste like grilled cheese sandwiches. I don’t know how they did it, but the cheese-mongers managed to fake that toasted bread flavor without the help of actual bread.

The addition of a small dollop of tomato sauce (yes, it has carbs, but in insignificant amounts per dollop, and besides — vegetables are GOOD) completes the illusion. Tomato soup and grilled-cheese sandwiches is one of my favorite foods, but with bread off the menu, I thought it’d be a few months before I’d be able to enjoy it again. Not so!

The funny thing is that the “Queso Blanco” I’ve been buying, with its picture of a serape-clad, burro-riding, sombrero-bedecked mexican man on the front is made in the Central American province of… umm… Wisconsin. My guess is that whatever the authentic recipe for white “mexican frying-cheese” calls for, these corporate cheese-mongers have found a way to pull it off without the use of anything hecho en mexico whatsoever. Still, it tastes fan-NAFTA-tastic. Naftastic? Whatever.

Needless to say, I tried this stuff in my standard Chupaqueso recipe, and it makes for a truly superior shell. I still prefer chupaquesos that have been filled with pepperjack, or mild cheddar (and bacon, and ham, and green chiles), but Queso Blanco is now my shell of choice.

Looking for chupaqueso recipes? Watch this space. I’ve had so many requests for them, I’ve found a special home in cyberspace for them to live, and I’ll tell you where it is once there’s some actual cheese there.

(And some ADS about cheese. I’m waaay too hungry to write recipies for free.)

Note: A little googling turned up this page about queso blanco, which apparently is a fresh white cheese made primarily in Venezuela, where I’m told they do, in fact, have lots of cows. That’s about the extent of my ability to read Spanish, though.