Get Your Goat

Until very recently, I was not a huge fan of goat cheese, finding it a bit too gamey for my taste. But as any true food lover should, I decided to give it another chance. So when I heard about Redwood Hill Farm's creamery tours, I organized my fellow foodies on an outing to this family-owned business up in Sebastapol.

As we walked into the creamery, we were treated to a tasting of Redwood Hill's variety of cheeses, yogurt and goat cheese spreads. My favorite cheese was the California Crottin, with it's robust, slightly sharp flavor that would go nicely in a salad or a puff pastry tart. Also of note was their peppercorn spread with a light, fluffy texture and a spicy, peppery finish. These cheeses opened my eyes (and stomach) to the many complex flavors goat cheese can have... it doesn't always have to be gamey.

A staff member guided us through the facilities and explained how their yogurt and cheeses are made. Seeing the rows and rows of cheese drying everywhere made me want to sit in a corner someplace with a big box of crackers and a bottle of wine.

After the tour was over, we headed over to their farm to see where all this great goat cheese comes from. Redwood Hill has five different varieties of goats (Alpine, LaMancha, Nubian, Saanen and Toggenburg), all of whom contribute to milk production. The milk of each breed can take on a slightly different flavor or composition (for instance, the Nubian breed's milk has is highest butterfat content and amount of milk solids). I wondered how the flavor of the milk or cheese would be altered by changing the ratios of the breeds.

We also tried our hand (no pun intended) at milking goats. While I did not try it myself, apparently it's not as easy as it looks! Leave it to the cityfolk to expect point-and-squirt models of goats.

We were also fortunate to be able to play with the many baby goats at the farm, ranging from several months old to only a few weeks old.

Deciding to leave the food production to the professionals, we headed to the local town of Graton to the Willow Wood Market, which came highly recommended by a Redwood Hill Farm employee.

The fact that this place had an entire section of the menu devoted to polenta made it worth having lunch there. I chose the roasted vegatable ragout with polenta, but for a couple of minutes I seriously considered getting the polenta with goat cheese to stay in the theme of the day. The vegetable ragout and polenta was an excellent second choice.

After this day of tasting goat cheese, seeing how it's made and being around goats, you would think that you wouldn't need to eat goat cheese for a while.

That's pretty much what was running through my head the following morning when I found myself at the local Andronico's desperately searching for Redwood Hill Farm goat cheese.

The Monster in My Cupboard

Behind the Herbes de Provence and other jars of spice,
Italian Table Olives, boxes of imported rice
Beyond the $60-a-pound morel mushrooms, shriveled and dried
The package of Chinese egg noodles, delicious when fried
Lurks a hideous creature
Not of this world, I would say!
It stays in the cold dark recesses
Just waiting for its next prey.

Monday to Sunday
The days go by,
The cupboard goes bare
Except for the monster, who still lurks there.

What to do? What to cook?
We certainly cannot eat
That old, grey, leftover meat.

There is nothing we can do!
What else could we eat?
Release the monster from its prison
Let us face our culinary defeat.

To the cupboard I go
I fling open its doors and shout,
Spam, oh Spam, you hideous thing!
I summon you to come out!

You Say Tomato…

As far as my stomach is concerned, there are only two seasons a year: tomato season and non-tomato season. There is perhaps no other food that can elicit such a wide range of emotion for me: from the giddiness of buying bags and bags of heirlooms at the summer farmers’ markets to the rancorous rage that bubbles up when I take a bite into a flavorless BLT in February.

Tomatoes seem to have a way of inciting strong reactions among others as well. Most people seem to either hate them or love them. Tomato-haters say that they can eat tomato-based pasta sauces, or pizza, but not tomatoes in their raw or partially-cooked forms, claiming that the texture is simply unappetizing. These tomato neophytes are the unfortunate victims of Supermarket Tomato Hell and have obviously never tasted the real thing.

To me, the tomato is emblematic of the argument for eating only what is fresh and seasonal. The tasteless, mealy red orbs disguising themselves as tomatoes on our supermarket shelves bear no resemblance in taste to the fresh, seasonal tomatoes you can get at your local farmers’ market during the summer months.

Perhaps this is why, during the tomato season, I am on Tomato Overdrive. I eat tomatoes at least two times a day (surprisingly, cereal, yogurt and other breakfast foods do not go well with tomatoes… go figure). During these months, my arsenal of recipes is dominated by this wonderful fruit: Caprese salad, hearty pasta sauces, bruschetta. By September of last year, my boyfriend commented that he was “getting a little tired of tomatoes.” He ate dinner alone for a couple of weeks.

I love trying all of the varieties available and the subtle nuances between each type. Green Zebra tomatoes, with their alternating streaks of pale green and apple green, are crisp and firm with a wonderfully tart flavor and are ideal in sandwiches or a rustic tomato tart. The sweet and succulent Yellow Pear tomatoes add small bursts of sweetness to summer salads. Brandywine and Cherokee Purple varieties add sweet, rich flavors to pasta sauces nearly impossible to emulate in the off-season.

I could go on and on.

This summer, I am on a Green Eggs and Ham mission to try and convert tomato-haters to tomato-lovers: “You do not like them. So you say. Try them! Try them! And you may.” Anyone up for the challenge?