Tomini elettrici

Soft cow’s milk cheese with herbs and crushed red peppers preserved under oil: most probably the most soul-touching food I miss from Piemonte (after truffled cacciatorini). The tragedy is that there’s no close relative being sold in the US and even fresh cheeses like farmer’s cheese are too grainy and lacking the twang of a real tomino from Piemonte. Needless to say, I undertook the challenge and started from scratch.
I followed the recipe of Dr. Fankhauser for Neufchatel cheese and made some tweakings.
I used ½ tablet rennet, got 2 pounds of cheese out of 1 gallon of Clover Stornetta Organic Vitamin D milk and mixed with 3 tsp of salt.

I molded the cheeses into logs and sprinkled the surface with kosher salt.
Wrapped the logs into cheese cloth and sprinkled the cloth with salt too. I aged the cheeses for one week in the upper part of the fridge into a tupperware for herbs (the ones with a grid on the bottom and some apertures on the sides to keep the right amount of moisture).

I finally cut the logs into rounds, sprinkled them with crushed red pepper and dried oregano and parsley and covered them with safflower oil. Now they are in the fridge and they just taste phenomenal.
Considering the amount of handling that the cheese has underwent I won’t keep these more than two weeks in the fridge.

Veldhuizen Bosque Blue

Both I and my friend Amir Rosenblatt of Seattle’s Beecher’s loved this blue cheese from Texas at Slow Food Nation. Made from Stuart Veldhuizen, the cheese has tremendous density and creamyness rounded up by a gentle and earthy pungency. I think I’ll be ordering cheese online for the first time. Other bloggers fell in love with it too.

Gnocchi alla Vigezzina

While not being a fan of tweaking recipes, sometimes you just need to substitute your ingredients. It would be actually difficult to find the right cheese even in Italy. On top of that you can skip the chestnut flour just because you may have a hard time finding it. But of course…what’s the point? Get going and find some, even online.
The flavors stuck in my head since I visited val Vigezzo in Piemonte (Italy) years ago during college.
It’s chestnut gnocchi with cheese and bacon but there’s a unique earthiness associated with this dish.
The original cheese was a local “nostrano”, undefined for “made here”.  Slightly creamy and young with a subtle buttery texture and great texture thanks to the great pastures available in val Vigezzo and most probably the good view cows get since val Vigezzo is also called “painters’ valley” for the beautiful landscapes.

I actually pair these chestnut gnocchi with Castelmagno cheese or Castelrosso, a rather inexpensive cousin.

Murray’s Cheese defines Castelrosso a “pasteurized red cow’s milk cheese is a cousin of the famous King of Italian cheeses, Castelmagno from Piemonte, in NE Italy. Similar in apppearance, it has a dry, crumbly, snowy white paste, which is a bit creamier and more complex beneath the natural thick, gray rind smattered with yellow and red mold. The flavor is mild: lactic and buttery, with a full fungal finish. Its residual tang is similar to Lancashire and other English cheddar-styles. The straightforward flavors are an ideal foil to Italian condiments such as grape mostarda and chestnut honey”.

Now, I just love it when melted with some milk into a luscious creamy sauce that brings out the full earthy potential.

So here is the math for the gnocchi:

• 500 g russet potatoes
• 120 g flour
• 40 g chestnut flour
• 1 egg

Boil potatoes, skin on, until soft and let on a plate to dry for 10 minutes. Peel, mash and mix with the flours with a good hefty pinch of salt. Beat the egg, incorporate in the dough and let rest covered with foil for 30 minutes. Roll the dough, cut the gnocchi and texture them with a fork (or with a cheese grater as my Grandma does).
Boil some water, add salt, and cook the gnocchi until they float on the surface then remove them in batches and add them to the sauce. You can thin out the sauce by adding some of the starchy water used to cook the gnocchi. A dash of white pepper and you’re good to go.