Posts Tagged ‘integration acres cheese’

Sesame Batard filled with Baek, (white) Kimchi

 

Springtime to me is all in the crunch, the crunch of a fiddlehead fern and the spring ramp, the crunch of the asparagus and don’t forget the crunch of a great crust on a springtime bread.

 Last weekend I baked alot of stuff to sell at the Athens Farmers Market and was unable to take many photo’s because my tent kept blowing away. I was able to carry out a concept based on a wierd idea to introduce crunchy kimchi into some bread that was slit open like a gutted lizard. The problem with this concept is moisture. Any kimchi is bound to soak the hardened gluten strands of any fired-up bread. Enter some fabulous local chevre from the great cheese makers at Integration Acres, like the dollops of chevre on the pizza al metro, (above) with ramps, tomato and provolone.

                 

So along with the “Sunny-side-up” croissants that Jake the baker made with an almond pudding and apricot, (left) and the traditional Pizza Margherita, (right) I crashed forward into the hinterlands of bread sanity, until I found it.

 A great insane loaf of Asian deliciousness! Now, first the kimchi.

    

I first cooked an amazing amount of napa cabbage and kohlrabi with salt. After they became acceptably limp, I rinsed with cold water and rung them out like the laundry. I then introduced some garlic, rice vinegar, pickled Jeruselem artichoke and turnip and the rest of my pears and apples that have been “red kimchi’d” for at least three months- sweet, spicy and naughty- funky to say the least. After one day, this white kimchi didn’t really “have it goin on”, so I added alot of lime and lemon juice, cumin seed and the best thing ever- pickled cayenne peppers from Cowdery Farms! To this I made a dough of black and white sesame, Korean pepper powder and cilantro.

 

Above is the video of our crazy baking and pizza frenzy at 3 a.m. in Athens, Ohio. I do have to endure bumping into delivery drivers and pizza makers at this busy time on a Friday night at Ohio Univerisity.  Here I am rolling up these Asian batards before proofing.  (Don’t worry, I took my hat and beard net off for this video, whatta ya think, we’re some hill-jacks from…Athens, Ohio?)

 

After these great batards were proofed, baked and cool, I slit them and filled them with the Integration Acres chevre, (fresh goat cheese), that I mixed with fresh chopped ramps, mushroom stock and Chinese five spice. This enabled me to stuff the white kimchi in the loaf without turning it to mush.

 I sold out of all forty batards within an hour then thought that I wanted to take one home…dang.

 

Fabulous Local Cheeses from Integration Acres

Chris Chmiel and his wife Michelle Gorman are self-starters. They are the living, breathing examples of sustainability and have created value from practically nothing. By using hard work, tenaciousness and old-world craftsmanship, they’ve turned the milk from their goats into some of the best cheeses on the planet.

 

Michelle and Chris have also rescued a long-forgotton Ohio fruit which used to rot on the ground and transformed it into a much sought-after culinary treat. Oh, and in their free time, they were also were sucessful in getting the State of Ohio to name the paw-paw the State fruit!

 

 The cheese aging room holds a treasure-trove of a delicious variety of cheese. My son Jake loves his paw-paw blueberry pop.

Chris and Michelle are the owners of Integration Acres and their cheeses were in one of my first blog entries. Their goat feta was also highlighted in a wine-pairing finalist in the Wine Spectator Video Contest that also featured Jorma Kaukenon who was gracious enought to create a magnificent guitar soundtack. It was during this time that I learned, (the hard way), never to let a goat near my crotch.

 

Just like in the Parma region of Italy, Chris feeds the whey from cheesemaking to his lucky pigs. Is Prosciutto di Albany on the way?

Today, I visited Integration Acres again and got a first-hand look of true cheese artisans at work. The cheeses produced here range from a Tomme, to Gouda, Cheddar, Blue, Chevre, Feta to Romano. This is all done in small batches, much like the European cheesemakers of old and it blew me away!

Here is the video journal of my visit.

My next entry will include some pizzas using some chevre, Griffins Dream and the Blue cheese featured here. (although, they are beckoning me right now…)