Touching Triskel and Chasing Truffles

 It tasted so good - you would have loved it; 

        It was so deliciously brave - you should have tried it; 

              It was so perfectly itself- if you've missed it, you've missed out.

Life is a truffle hunt.
Nigel Whitehouse. Telegraph

This is a post is about Truffles, about those momentary harmonies of events, times and appetites that come together to create something particular and beyond the control of market or man. This post is not about the famed golden fungi or the loved dolphin. This post is about being there and for those who were not, it is about ineffable truffles that come from experience, this post is about Triskel.

I have heard a few times of a legendary restaurant in Sligo, perhaps you have too? Perhaps you have already guesed that I am referring to Truffles? Like so many good things, it happened in the 1990’s. To put the restaurant into context, the Irish countryside then was not particularly known for its affluence or for its readiness to spend money beyond on necessities of church, pub and Trocaire and yet Bernadette O’Shea opened a pizza restaurant on The Mall in Sligo. 

Mustard Seed, Chez Hans, good restaurants were few and far between and not for the many.  In the popular dialogue, people might praise a pub for its Guinness and a house for its generosity but inventiveness and culinary interest often stopped with the story of what happened on the way to the butcher, an Irish Breakfast or Ballymaloe.  And yet Truffles had pizza that thrifty families would drive miles for.  Its pizza capitalised on Irish ingredients and, like a Michelin star brazened chef, Bernadette O’Shea was unafraid to use local ingredients like local celebrities. There were Leek and Black Pudding Pizzas, Pizzas with Milleens cheese, or the infamous Cabbage Pizza- yes you will eat your vegetable. Eyes still glow with hunger when they attempt to describe the pleasure. As with the best endings, the restaurant never failed, local appetites never withered, its founder turned to other things and all those who had ever eaten there were left with the precious memory of Truffles.

We have our own Truffles in the cheese world. Not truffled cheese, but truffles of cheese, cheese

rarities that are now legend. Maybe you chanced to try it but I have only ever heard,  numerous times of the Mine-Gabhar made by Luc and Ann Van Kampens in County Wexford in the 1990’s and early 2000’s. Heads tilt is soft respectful remembrance of the little goat cheese that conquered Irish and British palates. Now, in my own time, I am witnessing and tilting my head for Triskel.

Triskel is an Irish baa-baa to the Loire Valley goats and the eternal request for chevre. Triskel is the family name to the different raw milk goat’s cheese made by Anna L’Eveque in Portlaw Co. Waterford.  The cheese drew on her French heritage and brought the freshness and delicacy of French Goat’s Cheese to the Irish markets without needing to leave the country. Anna made crottin, pyramids, fresh goat logs that tasted like snow and even ventured into more complex affairs that reminded me of the sublime Louvie-Juzon. Anna L’Eveque’s turns with Triskel began when, in her studies, she helped care for herds of goats and started making cheese; she continued with the cheese and, in order to secure her milk supply she took on a herd of goats (aka...adopted thirty kids). Ely Wine Bar’s host said that they were his fall back whenever he had need,  Mongers were delighted to present this side by side with the French classics, and maybe a little ahead. The taste was clear, fresh, rich without being heavy and soft with a definite nudge, sometimes butt, from a goat.  

Triskel was never without a market but it has proved, sadly and gloriously a creature of time. Anna L’Eveque recently announced that she would finish making goat’s cheese with this milking season.

Word has just begun to get out, it will be a long time before people stop asking for it and a forever before we forget the deliciousness and the braveness of it.  For everyone and everyone else, it is that moment that you savoured or it was that moment that you missed. Did you taste it? It was a Truffles.

Pairing and Libations:

Sancerre or a crisp fresh white wine.
Cider, dry and lightly fruity
Fresh Figs
Fig Compote
Charcoal Crackers

More of Truffles - Bernadette recently opened a restaurant in Dromahair, Co. Leitrim called Luna and (in the 90's) published a fantastic cookery book called, Pizza Defined.
Hungry Breton in Ireland has done a wonderful post on Triskel (and others).

Crozier Blue

Surely we could say Ireland has more seasons than it did before? That Autumn’s colours are no longer found solely in crates holding cider apples crops or confined to the meandering lines of uprooted carrots and beetroot and the odd wanderer’s scarf. Nor are our summer shorts reserved for holidays abroad and those immune to reason teenagers set loose at night.

There are glorious autumn colours in our trees, thick slanted sunlight highlighting golds and yellows with occasional flashes of tropic red and ready peach, earlier there were even ripe plums.  In the summers we drank caipirinhas and had barbecues wearing shorts and loose cotton shirts – not even needing to shiver by the grill, waterproofed and smiling resilient in the rain.

Summer and caipirinha references might seem a stretch of context in this colder weather but it is deliberate. As with these brighter more illuminated seasons, we are in a new context, a new burgeoning. Ireland of recent years has had new vibes brought to its populace and their habituals through the changing of the seasons - but also through curiosity and travel, immigration and experimentation.

(How does this relate to cheese? Almost there..)

Picture from Neal’s Yard Dairy’s Site

New seasons and seasonal, Ireland is known for its mountain lamb but you would have been given the local pub its craic for the night if you had tried to milk ones of those poor craitures… sure you might as well have gone for the ram. Ireland was not known for milking sheep breeds or sheep milk cheese - until recently. To name a few we have: Cratloe Hills, Cais na Tiré, Knockdrinna Meadow and one (and only one) mighty Blue – Crozier, from Tipperary. 

Curiosity and experimentation: In 1993 Cashel Blue makers Jane and Louie Grubb brought over just enough sheep milk from the English Berswell herd to make one sheep interpolation of Cashel Blue.  It tasted like we need to make another round.

from the Tipptatler… who knew?

Immigration and travel: the Grubb’s cousins, the Clifton Brownes brought over a small number of milking Friesland Sheep and crossed them with some of their own. Add a few years, an adventurous learning curve and there is now a herd of 400 milking Sheep grazing the grass above the rich limestone beds of Ballinamona Farm within sight of the Rock of Cashel. It is a great site.

It is a fabulous sheep cheese. They have even managed to sell it to the French. Crozier (named after the Shepherd’s staff) is not as assertive as Roquefort but when it is ripe, it is rich, piquant from the blue with a light fattiness and saltiness that I love to find in Sheep’s milk.  Ireland produces wonderful sheep milk – it is no wonder that our lamb has always been so good. When it the cheese is young or not quite as in season, it can be a little saltier and drier without the richness of the matured in season milk curd to carry it through, but seasons come (for some cheese it can be a couple of times each year) and the good news is that Crozier Blue is coming into one of its peak periods of the year right now.  Summer milk, long maturation…and we into our cooler nights, it is time for some of this heartening and not for the faint hearted cheese.

Steve McQueen

Something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue 

(…it fitted to well, I had to).

Beloved libations and pairings:

Cider: I do not mean Bulmers, try fruity, light Normandie style cider, Craigie’s Dalliance or Ballyhook Flyer or Longueville House’s - I would love to try it with the Longueville Apple Brandy.

Wine: Sauternes, Vin Santo, Port or, for the younger cheese, a Reisling with a little sweetness. Cashel Blue's new generation, Sarah (née Grubb) and Sergio Furno have a background in wine and give some excellent suggestions.

For eating, I always like it straight up on a board.

luscious image from WiseGeek

It works well with:

Medjool dates sliced, stuffed generously with the cheese and sealed to disguise the content (you could eek it out with some cream) and popped into a warm oven for 1 min 32 seconds. Some chopped toasted hazelnuts or walnuts could work well here.

Or with momentarily seared fruit  (slices of pear or halved figs) and the cheese, with an eye to beauty, crumbled on top

**n.b. Aesthetic note: Blue cheese does not look pretty when it is heated, so either add it after the other ingredients have been warmed or don’t make its warmed addition visible to eye.

Retrenching. I was never a fan of take-away nights….

I am all for easy suppers and evening entertainment but never from a box. Ah Raclette, I’d happily retrench on a poor but communal night with a few tranches of this cheese.  Cut a furrow, dig a ditch, fortify uncompromising aspiring and economizing appetites at home by buying some slices, being delighted with the prices and raising arms and hot pans against a city of take-aways. What waste-aways, brown bagged evenings, disposable containers and straight into the bin. What’s the fun, where's the build, the bud or the bone? Not even the dog to lick it. Ditch it. I’d take a carton of wine before I’d take that complementary can Diet.

So let us look again at our pocket books, our portions, our diaries and priorities.  Let us taste an evening, a glass of wine, a sip of company; let us not think we have no time for cooking but, instead of what we can do with that time we have for eating. Let us think.  Let us eat. Bless...

Me, I am not some devotee mourning the loss of them good old days, but I am a fan of them ingenious old ways. My mother lived on sushi in NY or evenings of wine and cheese but it was that bowl of soufflé shared with spoons that still sits warm in her memories. Or Bargeman stews left to cook for hours between catches and caches of ports, passed on to studious students with bubbling pots leaving licks of broth and greasy spots upon their studied pages and discussion tables. Time. Thought. Transferred tradition.

To Raclette, its origins were around the cow herders' fires on the Swiss mountains.

Creative Commons GRCampbell

The cheese was opened and aimed toward the flames.  Under the bright light and the licking heat the outermost part of the cheese brought to a bubble until - ready, it was scraped off, caught on to a plate of boiled potatoes and accompanied with some cornichon and meat. Sweet. And then times move on...

To the present day, with machines, some more elaborate than others to warm a simple Raclette.

Perhaps less ready to commit? It is not the same, but I have improvised with the grill, a blini pan and an oven mit.

Raclette, the scraping off (racler, to scrape) of the cooked cheese gives it its current name. Slices of it are known as tranches (trancher, to slice), the individual plates the cheese is heated on are known as coupelles. The preparation is called modest planning and the evening is called Good.

Creative Commons,  GRCampbell

Raclette is a very fun and simple way of hosting a supper.  The cooking device shares its name with the cheese.  The cheese, fromage a Raclette or Valais Raclette is made in both Switzerland and France. French Raclette is a bit softer, milder and creamier in flavour than Swiss Raclette.  In Ireland the former is more readily available.  Just as you meet more French here, so will you meet more of their Raclette. Marcel Petit has a very good one. Swiss Raclette can be richer in flavour but is harder to find. An Irish alternative is Durrus.

Instructions:
What you need after the Raclette (the cooking device and the cheese, trimmed into thin slices around 200 grams per french person) are good firm potatoes suitable for boiling (i.e.. Charlottes), cornichon and pickled onion, dried meat, black pepper, paprika (maybe), a Savoie or Fendant white wine (definitely), some friends and a long evening…

I was never a fan of take-away, unless it was an evening that took me away. 

Dublin residents: Raclette is available at Sheridans, Fallon&Byrne and sometimes Lidl or Aldi will do promotions (not the same quality). Additionally there is/was (?) rumour of a new presence at the Irish Village markets doing an Irish Raclette with Coolea, Le Petit Camion

Cheddar Philia

Was Cheddar destined to come from a Gorge? From some near abyss, from where it would emerge,

field by field conquering across the Atlantic, the Pacific, fall into Atlantis, becoming one of the most commonly used, abused and eaten cheeses? Jesus. How many people have I met that asked for a good cheddar because cheddar is all they have ever known?

We have gorged ourselves on cheddar. But have we ever touched the curd, heard that the first word, came from Blake’s Jerusalem? There is the Absolution...

To ubiquity. Some only know cheddars as white or red, mild, medium, ooh and so sharp, touched with pimento, enriched or modified, maize. Fine, give it to me grilled, let me nibble and pass that killer mustard. Impart some flavour, but apart from that what is in the flavor? Dear God.

Dear England,
I admire farmhouse cheddar. It is not sharp, it’s rich and it’s Montgomery’s; it is not creamy, it’s Westcombe. Clothbound and aged, aim for a nice 15 months, they have personalities and individual flavours. Try words like fruity, dry, lemon zest, creamy, herbaceous, earthy, lactic, complex - cheddars can be deep. The cheddar world is not a flat brick of vacuum aged cheese, its a truckle.

Let us feast on these gorgeous cheddars.

Cheddars had their origins in England’s West Country, Somerset in specific, but being based in Ireland I cannot but mention a few of our fine pitches into this clothbound world (more on these Irish lovelies will follow); Hegarty’s. Coolatin, Sliabh na mBan (the one from Co. Offaly).

I tend to like them straight up with a balancing red wine or fruity rich cider. It is is one of the few cheese that can honestly be enjoyed with a heavier red (Malbec, Cabernet sauvignon, Zinfandel…).

However, there are the other cooking moments: they are often called macaroni and, or, as an alternative grilled, cheese. I read of a fascinating grilled cheese. They brushed the butter toasted bread’s interior with white wine and eased the passage of the classic heavier cheddar by balancing it with some fresher, lighter, Ongleshield (from the same farm) and some savory fried leeks. Sleek. Sweep me into that molten meld.

Check out Bill Oglethorpe’s fantastic three cheese grilled recipe.

And Patricia Michelson of La Fromagerie’s Guide to the Most Beautiful Toastie you could make yourself (and someone else because all pleasures are better shared - when you have enough).