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Many of the finest restaurants and hotels across the country incorporate Artisanal Premium Cheese into their menus. Below is an interview with Executive Chef Vincent Menager, the Hotel Sofitel from Toni Amira, Director of Sales. 45 West 44th Street New York, NY 10036 At Sofitel since 2002.
Read The Full Interview In Our Blog 
Question:
I hear that cheese makes you happy. I realize that cheese can offer a lot of pleasure in small bites, but how can it make you happy? Last Time We Asked: What is a ''monastery'' type cheese? Answer: The ''monastery'' types are cheeses that were primarily developed in monasteries in the early middle ages. One of the more famous monastery cheeses is Munster, a diminutive of the word monastery. These types would generally be made twice each day after each milking, instead of from two successive ones - usually one in the morning added to cooling milk from the evening before. This family of cheeses are the wash-rind varieties, also commonly called the "blush rind" or smear-ripened cheeses. Sometimes they're simply called the "stinky" types of cheeses. These cheeses would be types that would be only lightly pressed, if at all, this helping retain more moisture - thus cheeses that would be consumed relatively young and soft. The surface bacterium that gives those cheeses their "blush" is the b. linens strain of bacteria. This strain is salt tolerant so it can continue to proliferate after repeated washings in a brine solution. While other pathogenic strains succumb to the salt baths, the b. linens continue to flourish and give the cheeses their pink to orange hue. The action of this bacteria also gives the cheeses their characteristic "stink" that is much appreciated by many cheese lovers. (Nowadays many cheeses, in an effort to suggest that this b. linens is thriving on their surfaces, instead employ annatto, a natural food coloring that is also used to add color to the paste of many cheeses.) Unfortunately we see very few raw milk versions of this cheese type, since they're best consumed younger than 60 days (the minimum aging requirement for raw milk cheeses here in the US.) Ironically, the b. linens that thwart the contamination of pathogenic bacteria (along with the help of the salt) tend to lose their efficacy well before 60 days. So instead, these type cheeses, if produced with good clean raw milk under sanitary practices, would likely be safer younger than 60 days, rather than older! |
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I started working at 13 in a bakery. When I started my Hotel school, I went to the work in a kitchen and that was then that I decided I would never leave it.
