The cheese receiving top honors this month is the mighty Manchester, on sale for $9.99 each, down from $11.99. These broad, pale yellow rounds, crisscrossed with slight indentations from resting on our aging racks, are easily one of our most attractive cheeses, as lovely to look at as to taste. They make a gorgeous addition to a cheese platter at a party; a knife cuts through their paste like butter; they are just soft enough to spread whole wedges on crackers.

But the Manchester is more than a pretty face. What appears a simple cow’s milk double-cream at first taste – abundantly creamy but remarkably mild – belies a much more complex cheese upon further examination. Because a cheese this unadorned must be made and aged just right; any small flavor flaw would be blatantly obvious against it’s milky profile. For this reason, it is one of the cheeses that John, our head cheesemaker, has worked on most rigorously over the years and feels most proud of when it turns out just the way we like it.

And the way we like it, in the case of the Manchester, is dense, with a rich paste that becomes dryer and more concentrated with age, covered in a rind that becomes headier and more pungent with age. It can go savory – on a ham sandwich with caramelized onions – or sweet, split and slathered in fig jam, then wrapped in puff pastry and baked in the oven. It is just right with a pears, melted atop mac’n'cheese, or spread on a bagel.

Jason Hinds at Neal’s Yard Dairy in London (and no easy critic) recently called it “Unrecognisable. Delicious. A triumph.” Come taste it’s inner beauty for yourself.

Make Your Own Mozzarella

They’re Back! Our Mozzarella classes are being offered almost every Saturday, from September through May. They are being held in the dairy, from 12 – 2pm.

Class registration is $45, and class size is limited to 14 people; pre-registration is required. Cheese heads John and Aubrey are teaching the course, which includes an in-depth cheese chemistry lesson and how to make fresh mozzarella made from Calder dairy milk, and mozzarella made from finished Belgioso curd. You will craft and hand-stretch your very own mozzarella balls as well as Buratta and Mozzarella & Myrtle. The temperature in the dairy, is usually between 65 and 75 degrees depending on the time of year, so please dress appropriately for warmth and wetness.

Please contact us at (734) 929-0500 if you are interested in signing up. We’ve had a ton of requests for classes over the summer so we are expecting them to fill up quickly.

Farmer’s Markets

It has been a great season at the markets so far this year. We are coming up on our final Westside Market of the year and to celebrate, the Sharon Hollow will be on special, 2 for $10. Catch Mike in the parking lot of the Roadhouse tomorrow afternoon, from 3-7pm for some fresh cheese and local produce and crafts.

The Kerrytown Market is going strong on Wednesdays and Saturdays. We are looking to be down there through October and some of Novemeber. We haven’t quite figured out our end date yet, but will keep you posted.

Eastern Market in downtown Detroit is our newest market. We’re there on Saturdays, from 7am until we run out of cheese, usually around 3pm, in Shed 3. If you’ve never been to Eastern Market before, it’s definitely worth the trip. 3 giant sheds filled with vendors make up the heart of the market district. Vendors spill out into parking lots as people flood the streets in search of local produce, meats, coffee, salsa, breads, and countless other goodies. It feels like one big event, one giant party thrown every Saturday morning. We hope to see you there!

To the cheese lovers out there who like a little spice to their curd:  this week we present a list of the wonderfully numerous and varied things you can do with a half-pound of our Harissa Cream Cheese.

You can:
-give your morning bagel some spicy pizazz!
-make a sandwich with cool cucumbers and spinach on Roadhouse bread.
-turn celery sticks into perfect appetizers, or swipe carrots through the perfect dip.
-cook a creamy, fiery omelette, …add asparagus too!
-stuff potatoes.
-build a better burger.
-GET A FREE T-SHIRT!!!

Yes!  Until our stock of shirts runs out, buy just one half pound of our super-fresh cream cheese mixed with our favorite spicy tunisian red pepper paste from Moulin des Mahjoub, and we’’ll give you an awesome Harissa Cream Cheese t-shirt, no extra charge.  Designed by our wildly talented graphic artists, these shirts have an extra-soft-knit feel and are intended to inspire admiration and wonder in all who see you in it.  They are our homage to Majid Mahjoub himself, who makes his smoky harissa with peppers, garlic, extra virgin olive oil, tomatoes and coriander, and whose ingenious idea it was to mix harissa and cream cheese in the first place.  We love the way the cool smoothness of the cheese coats your palette, along with the smoky, herbed tomato-pepper flavor, while the heat of the harissa takes a moment to sneak up on you… and then continues warming you up for quite a little while.  Just the thing for a chilly morning!

So don’t delay.  At only $6.50 per half pound, both cheese and shirts are flying out the door.  This deal is available ONLY at the Creamery!  We can’t wait to see you!

Smoke Me Some Mozzarella…

You know about our fresh mozzarella.  Those plump and milky-white balls shining in their salty brine, waiting to flood your palette with creamy delight!  We make a whole lot of ‘em.  During August (tomato season) we make up to 200 pounds in a day for our Saturday farmer’s markets, and it remains a consistent best-seller year-round.  If you’ve ever been into our shop, we’ve probably offered you a bit to taste (it’s a fun one to sample because everyone loves it so much).

Well, there is a slightly lesser-known mozzarella variety on the rise: we would now like to formally recommend to you the virtues of Smoked Mozzarella.

Smoking not only imparts a great flavor, it is an ancient method of food preservation.  Because we make our mozzarella fresh every morning and recommend eating it that day, we smoke any we don’t sell by that evening.  (If you plan on cooking with your fresh mozz, just pop it in the fridge – which firms it up a bit but has no effect on its cooked texture – and it’ll be fine to use up five days later.)  We have a little smoker rigged up right out back behind our Creamery, and we do the smoking over smoldering cherry wood chips.

When we bring it back in to the cheese shop, it smells like we’ve been holding a week-long campfire: woodsy, smoky, delicious!  The smoked mozzarella balls are a gorgeous, bright tawny brown, and they present a whole host of new mozzarella dish ideas.  The deep meatiness of the smoke lends itself to a lovely roast beef sandwich, and can turn a regular burger into a gourmet sandwich.  It can be a robust counterbalance to delicate greens in a salad; it makes a fantastic omelet.  Quite a few die-hard smoked mozz fans we see frequently in shop like to use is as a twist on familiar fresh mozz recipes: pizza, lasagna, eggplant parmesan.  It is a cheese meant to be experimented with!  And after summer’s fresh mozzarella bonanza, autumn is the perfect time to try something a little heartier, a little stouter, just a bit more complex.

So come in and try some – and then come back and tell us what new recipes you discover.  We love to hear about all your cheese-filled creations, smoky or not.

The  countdown to Paw Paw Gelato continues… as we eagerly await for the fruits to ripen before they are shipped to us to be transformed into that mango-y, custardy frozen delight we get for just a few weeks each year.  Though it’s tough to wait, it’’s the reality, the beauty and the suspense of using local, native fruits, and we love that about our Pawpaw gelato.  So, will they be ready next week?  Check back to find out.  We’re as anxious as you are!