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Dags & Willow
17 June 2006
[indent]Cheese. I love cheese, cheese in all its rich and varied forms and styles, hard and soft, infused with herbs or wine, aged or young, cow and goat's milk. Far too many people miss the delicious range of delights by sticking to a handful of mediocre, middle-of-the-road cheese - not to sharp, not too strong, not too interesting.
But real cheese isn't like that at all. Real cheese has flavour. Real cheese makes you pay attention, not merely consume it like some chewy topping.
For me, cheese is a world of tastes and sensations, like wine, sushi or tequila, to be explored and experiemented with, not merely to make burgers gooey. Cheese should have character and panache, not be some bland, orange square cut tissue-thin.
Yesterday I happened to be walking up Pine Street, and I decided, on a whim, to pick up some cheese at Dags & Willow, a small, new European-style deli across from Loblaws. Imagine my delight at finding 100 or more different cheeses, laid out to immediately get my mouth a-watering. And each was identified by a brief description that could only excite my taste buds further, like those little tabs at the LCBO that talk of the hidden delights in a bottle of wine
I chose several small samples - including sage derby, oak-smoked wensleydale (two cheeses I've wanted to try ever since seeing the Monty Python cheese shop skit) - plus vacherin freiburger, mimolette, cantal, chevre noir, beemster extra old - in all seven different but equally enticing cheeses. Not a bland one among them.
D&W didn't have one of my personal favourites, Oaxacan string cheese, also called queso oaxaca, but I forgive them. I suspect that outside Mexico it is difficult to get (a quick glance through their various "encylopedias" on world cheeses also failed to show any Mexican cheese listed at all, so perhaps the owners are not even aware of how many varieties there are in Mexico - to me that is likem having a wine "encylcopedia" that doesn't list anything from Australia). I will try to encourage them to look south in future when contemplating new additions.
I also picked up a loaf of walnut bread (crunchy crust but soft inside, punctuated throughout with walnuts), to dip into oil oil and balsamic vinegar (Dags & Willow also sell premium olive oils and balsamic vinegars, but at premium prices, too - I decided to use what we had at home first, then venture into their stock once that was consumed).
So our 'dinner' Friday (with our friend, Lynn) consisted of a nice bottle of Wolf Blass red, an interesting and thoughtful selection of cheeses, an exquisite bread for dipping, and a side of thin olive-chipotle chips (made from bread also sold at Dags & Willow) consumed outside on the back porch in the heat of late spring, with cats lounging lazily nearby. It doesn't get much better than this.
Picture of sage derby (pronounced darby) from the Cheese of the Month Club where it says, "Because of the Sage, the cheese has a subtle but distinctive flavor, and it develops attractive and unique green marbling."
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But real cheese isn't like that at all. Real cheese has flavour. Real cheese makes you pay attention, not merely consume it like some chewy topping.
For me, cheese is a world of tastes and sensations, like wine, sushi or tequila, to be explored and experiemented with, not merely to make burgers gooey. Cheese should have character and panache, not be some bland, orange square cut tissue-thin.
Yesterday I happened to be walking up Pine Street, and I decided, on a whim, to pick up some cheese at Dags & Willow, a small, new European-style deli across from Loblaws. Imagine my delight at finding 100 or more different cheeses, laid out to immediately get my mouth a-watering. And each was identified by a brief description that could only excite my taste buds further, like those little tabs at the LCBO that talk of the hidden delights in a bottle of wine
I chose several small samples - including sage derby, oak-smoked wensleydale (two cheeses I've wanted to try ever since seeing the Monty Python cheese shop skit) - plus vacherin freiburger, mimolette, cantal, chevre noir, beemster extra old - in all seven different but equally enticing cheeses. Not a bland one among them.
D&W didn't have one of my personal favourites, Oaxacan string cheese, also called queso oaxaca, but I forgive them. I suspect that outside Mexico it is difficult to get (a quick glance through their various "encylopedias" on world cheeses also failed to show any Mexican cheese listed at all, so perhaps the owners are not even aware of how many varieties there are in Mexico - to me that is likem having a wine "encylcopedia" that doesn't list anything from Australia). I will try to encourage them to look south in future when contemplating new additions.
I also picked up a loaf of walnut bread (crunchy crust but soft inside, punctuated throughout with walnuts), to dip into oil oil and balsamic vinegar (Dags & Willow also sell premium olive oils and balsamic vinegars, but at premium prices, too - I decided to use what we had at home first, then venture into their stock once that was consumed).
So our 'dinner' Friday (with our friend, Lynn) consisted of a nice bottle of Wolf Blass red, an interesting and thoughtful selection of cheeses, an exquisite bread for dipping, and a side of thin olive-chipotle chips (made from bread also sold at Dags & Willow) consumed outside on the back porch in the heat of late spring, with cats lounging lazily nearby. It doesn't get much better than this.
Picture of sage derby (pronounced darby) from the Cheese of the Month Club where it says, "Because of the Sage, the cheese has a subtle but distinctive flavor, and it develops attractive and unique green marbling."
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