Wednesday, September 20, 2006
Staff photo by John Patriquin
Jill Dutton, an owner of The Cheese Iron in Scarborough, cuts a wheel of Bayley Hazen blue cheese from Vermont.
Staff photo by John Patriquin
Vincent Maniaci turns a block of cheese, which he does daily as part of the aging process, in the cheese cave at The Cheese Iron in Scarborough.
Staff photo by John Patriquin
Some of the cheeses sold at The Cheese Iron in Scarborough include, from left, Parmigiano Reggiano (Italian), Cabecou Feuille (French) and Rolf Beeler Fosterkse (Swiss).
TIPS FROM THE CHEESE IRON
Buy fresh cuts of cheese in small amounts. Purchase only what you need for one or two days to retain the best flavor and texture.
Think about what you like, and taste before you buy. Do you prefer hard or soft cheeses? Do you like cheese that has 'a big nose,' or something more subtle? Do you prefer cheese made from cow, goat or sheep's milk?
Store cheese in the butter box or vegetable crisper of your refrigerator.
SCARBOROUGH - Vincent Maniaci approaches a visitor with a slice of Ascutney Mountain, an alpine cheese made in Vermont from raw cow's milk, and offers it up as if it were secret treasure.
It is kind of sweet and has an interesting texture, difficult to describe.
Not so difficult for Maniaci: "It has a kind of tropical nose to it, and a nice bite."
Next comes a piece of Twig Farm washed rind cheese, a semi-soft cheese also made in Vermont.
"This is a mix of cow and goat's milk," Maniaci said. "You get that beautiful, sort of buttery quality of the cow, but then you also get the acidity of the goat. It's a wonderful combination. It's not too heavy on the palate. The goat gives it a wonderful, perky quality."
Saying that Maniaci knows cheese is like saying that Julia Child knew French cooking.
He's studied, sampled and worked with cheese for 13 years, including a stint at Neal's Yard Dairy in London.
After more than a decade of planning, Maniaci and Jill Dutton, his wife and business partner, have opened a European-style cheese shop on Route 1 in Scarborough called The Cheese Iron, named after the tool that's used to determine if a wheel of cheese is mature.
At The Cheese Iron, customers can choose from more than 200 kinds of cheese and watch Maniaco tend to the "affinage," or ripening process, in the store's own pine-paneled cheese cave.
The cave, a small room tucked into a corner of the store, is kept at 45 degrees and 90 percent humidity.
"Cheese needs good circulation, but if it's a dry circulation, then it starts to dry out and crack," Maniaci explained. "So, just like a real cave, there's good circulation (in the cheese cave), but there's also moisture so that the rind is still moist and doesn't start to split."
The shelves are filled with wheels of cheese of every size, shape and color - small works of art in progress.
Lining the shelves are straw mats that allow air flow to get underneath the cheese so it doesn't get too moist.
The cheese is hand-turned daily because otherwise the butterfat will pool to one side. As he turns the wheels, Maniaci smells them and feels them. When he thinks a particular wheel is ready, he inserts the cheese iron and takes a core sample.
Using all his senses and years of experience, he checks for defects and determines whether the cheese wheel has matured enough to cut. If it's not "au point" - at the point of perfection - he replaces the core and covers the hole in the rind with a little wax.
"The reason we iron cheeses is that once you cut into a wheel of cheese, it begins to die," Maniaci said. "It will no longer reach fruition. If you cut it young, it will stay young and it will keep dying. But when you iron it, its little living community can still maintain its fermentation."
Every cheese ripens at a different rate based on its density and moisture level. To experience the importance of ripening for just the right amount of time, try a bite of The Cheese Iron's Bonati Parmigiano Reggiano. The cheese has been ripened for just two years instead of five so that it retains more moisture and flavor. The Bonati family makes just four wheels of the cheese a day, and they age it themselves.
"There's some five-year-old Bonati's on the market, and they're just too old," Maniaci said. "They're just too brittle."
Among the more unusual selections at The Cheese Iron are a Forsterkäse from Rolf Beeler, a Swiss master affineur, whose job is to select and ripen cheese.
"He's got the Midas touch when it comes to affinage," Maniaci said. "He used to be a cheesemaker, but then he decided that affinage was much more exciting. When you're a cheesemaker, you're locked into a few cheeses. He dabbled in different recipes. But when you're an affineur, you go out and find all these great cheeses and you experiment."
Maniaci brings out a traditional Alpine Vacherin Mont D'or-style cheese from the high mountains of the Alps that was cut a little early. It's a raw cow cheese that has a slightly musty flavor.
"This is a cheese that when it's ripe, it's soupy," Maniaci said. "You cut the top off, and you just ladle it onto roasted chestnuts or potatoes."
Maniaci got turned on to cheeses 13 years ago, when he walked into Formaggio Kitchen in Cambridge, Mass. Passing through that door changed his life.
"I was in there for maybe an hour or so, looking at all the cheeses, walked out, and walked back in and asked for a job and then didn't look back," he said.
He worked there for four years, and has also studied affinage at Neal's Yard Dairy in London's Covent Garden. After he met Dutton, they started learning together and dreamed of opening their own cheese shop someday.
"We started traveling around the country working in different places and gaining experience," she said, "and finally, we knew we were ready."
The couple, who has one young son, chose the Portland area because they wanted to be near the ocean, they love winter and they were impressed with the great local food here.
"We visited several times here, and we had friends show us around," Dutton said, "and we just kind of knew right away. This is it, this is where we want to be."
Working with them in the new shop are Thomas Daly, formerly of the Portland Greengrocer, and Pat Bagg, who has 20 years' worth of experience catering and working with teas.
There's more to the store than the cheese counter. There's a pantry filled with pastas, olive oils and balsamic vinegars. There's a shelf of sweets, including local honeys and jars of sweet preserves called mustardas that go well with cheddar cheeses. There's charcuterie, an olive bar, a chocolate table, and oddities such as spiced Tasmanian cherries.
The store carries about 150 wines and will be adding more so that there can be wine-and-cheese tastings this winter.
But the centerpiece of The Cheese Iron is, of course, cheese. Come prepared to taste.
"We ask people when they come in, what kind of cheese do you like - goat, cow, sheep?" Dutton said. "What is your flavor profile? Then we try to go from there and direct them. By having them taste different cheeses, we can find out what they like. We're exploring this together. It seems intimidating, but we're not intimidating."
Staff Writer Meredith Goad can be contacted at 791-6332 or at:
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