LINKS: Denny's New Cheese Sandwich

By Erica

Last week, Denny's put a new item on its menu: The Fried Cheese Sandwich. NPR sent some investigators, including Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me's Peter Sagal (below) to try the new sandwich, which a grilled cheese with mozzarella sticks instead of plan cheese on the inside.



Their report has some great lines, including "All the layers, it's Inception in sandwich form. The mozzarella sticks are really just a dream the grilled cheese sandwich is having. It's a good dream," and "It's really like the grilled cheese sandwich is smuggling the mozzarella sticks into your stomach."

I've never said no to fried cheese, so I think that this is an EXCELLENT invention. Maybe the Wisconsin version will include fried cheese curds instead of mozzarella sticks!

We're back! With a bonus tasting from the archives...

By Kara and Erica

We just got back from cheesecation, and we're ready to eat. As we search for the perfect back-to-tasting cheese for our next review, we thought we'd share with you a video from the archives. Regular readers will know that this sort of several-month aging process merely serves to bring out the flavors in a good cheese... video... right?

Enjoy, and look back here for fresh posts this week!

We are on CHEESEcation

Apologies for the lack of post. Cheese: A Journey are on vacation. We will be back at then end of a month. Here's an amazing vintage cheese label to entertain you till then!

LINKS: "A Little Fermented Curd Would Do The Trick"

By Erica

Happy Friday! Here's the excellent Monty Python Cheese Shop sketch to get you through to the weekend. I don't know WHY we haven't posted this before....

LINKS: Cheese-Making in Our Future?

By Kara

Maybe I'm overconfident or gullible or just hungry... or maybe this is just a really encouraging (if less than beautiful) website. David B. Fankhauser, Ph.D. (!), is a professor of biology and chemistry at the University of Cincinnati Clermont College in Batavia, OH. He is also the author of an extensive website for beginning cheese-makers.

He knows how to break it down. Ingredients: milk, starter, rennet. Equipment: heavy stainless steel pot with lid, measuring cups, thermometer, whisk, cheese cloth, cheese press. He includes instructions about how to cheat with the starters and make DIY cheese presses, and - the best part - he's posted a full cheese-making syllabus, starting with yogurt and labneh and ending in homemade blue. Professor F. is frank, straightforward, and illustrates his lessons with very helpful photographs. Check out the first "lecture" (on yogurt) here.

...Do you think we can pull it off?

LINKS: A truckload of cheese

By Erica

It seems like most of our "links" posts are about cheese accidents in the news, and here's another!

Yesterday morning in Minnesota, a truck driver fell asleep at the wheel and crashed his semi into a Ford Explorer. None of the passengers suffered any life threatening illnesses, so perhaps the most upsetting part of the crash was that the truck was carrying 17,500 pounds of cheese!

The Department of Transportation called garbage trucks to the scene to remove the massive amounts of cheese from the interstate (I-90, in case you were curious). It took five hours to clear away all that cheesey goodness.

Sources:
Worthington Daily Globe

TASTES: Parmesan - Pairing Appendix!

By Kara and Erica

In our tasting of Farmer John's Parmesan, we implied that the lingering nutty-meatiness of Parmesan just begs for a good pairing. This might have been correct in theory, but... well, just watch. It seems we need a little pairing practice.