EJ Harvey goat cheese recipe from the SEA GRILLE

Chef EJ Harvey is the owner of the SeaGrille Restaurant in Nantucket "where ALL the locals go for great fish and excellent seafood". At the Nantucket Wine Festival EJ made a cooking demonstration on Sunday featuring our Bijou. http://www.theseagrille.com/

Spring Spinach, Strawberry and Bijou Salad

with poppy seed dressing

Ingredients:

Baby Spinach - 1 pkg.

Red onion - 1/2 thinly sliced
Bijou - 4 oz (2 cheeses)

In a large bowl, mix all the salad ingredients together.

Poppy Seed Dressing:

Red wine vinegar 8 fl oz

Mustard (optional) 2tsp

Minced shallots 1 Tbsp

Olive oil 24 fl oz

Salt as needed

Maple Syrup 2 tsp

Flat lead parsley 3 Tbsp

Method:

1 Combine vinegar, mustard, shallots, salt, pepper, and maple syrup. Gradually whisk in oil.

2 Stir in the herbs, and adjust the seasoning with salt, pepper and maple syrup if necessary.

3 Pour dressing over the salad ingredients. Toss and serve immediately.

Nantucket Wine Festival recipe "souvenir"

What a great event the 13th Annual Nantucket Wine Festival was. The cheese tasting seminar was a success - Valfino/Bonne Bouche and Cave Man Blue took the top honors from the crowd.

To see more pictures of the event check out our photos on flickr www.flickr.com/photos/vermontcheese

Thursday nights' Opening Galla, was the kick-off of this weekend's event. Karen made some wonderful cookies and was out of sweet goodness within 2 hours, so here is the recipe for the most famous cookies of the event:

Vermont Butter Pecan Icebox Cookies

Ingredients:
8 ounces Vermont Cultured Butter, Lightly Salted
½ cup brown sugar
½ cup sugar
1 large egg
½ tablespoon vanilla extract
21/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup pecans, toasted and chopped fine
11/2 teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt

Coating mix:
Mix the following items together and set aside to roll the dough in later:
1 cup pecans, toasted and chopped fine
½ cup sugar
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon

Directions:
Using an electric mixer beat butter and sugars on medium until creamy. Gradually add egg and vanilla until incorporated. Combine flour, baking powder and salt; add to butter mixture beating well at medium speed. Stir in 1c pecans. Shape dough into 2 six inch logs. Sprinkle pecan, sugar and Cinnamon mixture on a cutting board and roll the logs of dough in it. Wrap logs in waxed paper and refrigerate over night.
Remove dough from the refrigerator and slice into ¼ inch slices. Place slices on a sheet pan lined with parchment paper and sprinkle with sugar before putting in the oven. Bake cookies at 350° for 12-14 minutes until light brown. Remove cookies and cool on wire racks.

See you in Nantucket!

This weekend is the Nantucket Wine Festival and we have been invited to teach a seminar on cheese and wine. After multiple brainstorming sessions on the subject / angle / title of the seminar we came up with the idea to talk about Terroir and look at Europe's "old world cheese" and US's "new world cheese"
The cheese list and selection is impressive:
Parmigiano Reggiano from Italy,
Clothbound Cheddar from England, and
Camembert as the French ambassador!
For the US team, we picked our tasty little aged goat cheese "Bonne Bouche", the washed-rind "Valfino" cheese from our friends at Roth Kase in Wisconsin and of course the sublime "Oregon Blue" from Rogue Creamery in Central Point, OR.
All wines are from California - See you on the Island!
For more info: http://www.nantucketwinefestival.com/

Happy Mother's Day

To all Mother, here is our gift idea from the creamery: Fresh buttery Scones & Flowers.

Make sure to use our Vermont Cultured Butter lightly salted to make the perfect tasty scones. Chocolate and peanuts or Blueberry lemon zest.


Joyeuses Fetes!










For more pictures from our test kitchen, check our album on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/vermontcheese/

Vermont Cheesemakers Festival

Save the date!!!!!!