"The Fat Man's Candy" or "How Cheese Changed my Life"

The holidays are over, and as I look in the mirror, I see a flabbier version of myself staring back, a look of confused anxiety on my face as I realize what six weeks of over-indulgence can do to a man. This year was gonna be different – this was the year I stayed away from third helpings of the festive pecan sugar log, rejected another lap around the buffet table, the year I avoided the face-first forays into the creamy Frito-laden dip. That plan ended the minute the eighth swan went a’ swimming, unfortunately, leaving me swollen, sullen and looking for the ghost of Jack Lalanne, and he isn’t even dead yet. When New Year’s Day rolled around, I seized upon the first day of the New Year as the perfect time to right my ways.
But then the cheese called. Well, not the cheese itself but the cheesemonger, dashing my hopes for a slimmer future. Cheesemonger? What in the name of Cheez Whiz is a cheesemonger, you ask. Until two weeks ago I too had no idea, but any job that features cheese in the title can’t be all that bad, so I went to learn more, casting my weight loss plan aside like an unopened Absizer.
There are those who care more about the Doodle than the Cheez, who consider cheese a sidekick and nothing more. Then there are those who see cheese for the glorious creation it is, finding a partially filled glass of milk and caring nothing about the half-empty versus half-full argument, demanding only to know what moron blew the chance to turn that milk into cheese. I love cheese not as the corner man but as the main event - the Muhammad Ali of the meal rather than the Bundini Brown. Cheese, I believe, is the pinnacle of human existence, the reason for life itself, and the only real thing that separates us from our simian cousins. Cheese – the fat man’s candy, milk’s leap into immortality – it has many names, each of them beautiful. I will never have enough cheese.
I enter Butter’s on Main Street in Concord, and Keith Dickey is standing there, waiting for me, a look of detached determination on his face. He greets me and hands me an apron. “Are you ready to work,” he asks with a wry smile. Keith’s been the proprietor of Butter’s since he opened its doors in the summer of 2006. After years as an archaeologist and then an investment banker in Manhattan, Keith, his wife and daughter moved to Concord, and soon after he poured all that archaeology money into Butter’s, creating a destination for cheese lovers across the Granite state.
After a quick tour of the store, a beautifully renovated space with exposed brick, cases teeming with cheese and fancy meats (think prosciutto, not porterhouse), shelves stacked with gourmet snacks, crackers, oils and wine, Keith gestures to an enormous wheel of cheese resting on a butcher’s block table in the store’s front foyer. “You’re going to cut that up,” he says and points to a table nearby covered in cheeses of all sizes. “And then we’ll tackle those.” I’m reminded of the line from the film, Field of Dreams, when Kevin Costner’s dad asks, “Is this heaven?” I expect Keith to read my mind and respond, “No, Tim, this is a cheese shop,” but he just smiles and gets me working on the wheel.
My first job as a cheesemonger, or one who sells cheese, is to cut it before I can sell it. The title of cheesemonger, I later realize, is a more unofficial one, like “parade grand marshal” or “celebrity spokesmodel,” except that this requires fewer decorative sashes and more skill. Keith introduces me to a beautiful wheel of Parmigiano Reggiano, and we wipe it down to remove the excess oil. He explains that this 80 lb. wheel of Italian cow’s milk cheese has aged for at least two years, its birthday burned into its rind. He offers a quick lesson in how to open it. I learn that a true cheesemonger never cuts this wheel; rather he breaks it into pieces slowly, using a set of special tools – a cross between spackling trowels and fancy hood ornaments. Within seconds my heart rate’s racing as I drive the tools inch by inch into the massive circle. A small crowd gathers – it’s not every day you see a small man wrestling with a large wheel of expensive cheese – and as I twist the tools in the opposite direction, the wheel opens and the most amazing smell releases into the air, drawing the three or four onlookers closer. Keith offers us a taste of the uneven shards, and the cheese explodes with flavor. It’s sweet, salty, robust and delicate. Parts of it crunch like candy as others melt softly in my mouth. Keith stands back as we each seem to be discovering this cheese for the first time, blown away by its aroma, texture and taste.
But I’m here to work, so I keep cutting, the halves into quarters, the quarters into eighths and so on until Keith and his team wrap the cheese into sections for selling. Next up we attack what looks like a curling puck, and I learn it’s an Ascutney Mountain cheese from Vermont, its slightly hard texture yellow with the milk of the jersey cows that’ve had a hand in its production. Its taste is dense and rich, not quite as intense as the Parmigiano but subtler, more subdued.
We finish with the Ascutney Mountain, and Keith gives me a lesson in wrapping. “True cheesemongers take special care to wrap cheese the right way,” Keith explains as he shows me the correct technique. “You don’t want any wrinkles – the ghost effect is the goal,” he says as he deftly wraps a half-wheel of the cheese we’ve cut without a single fold in the plastic wrap to be seen.
I continue cutting, first a soft Fourme D’Ambert, using a wire to slice it into two large discs, then use a double-handled, 24-inch blade to open a five-year old huge wheel of Gouda, its smokiness shattering my taste buds as I pop the gleaned remnants in my mouth. We talk cheese as I work.
At this point, I feel like the Trekkie at a Star Trek convention who’s wandered into Leonard Nimoy in the men’s room and struck up a conversation about the episode where Abe Lincoln and Captain Kirk band together to fight Genghis Khan and the Klingons. Keith tells me about the foundations of cheese making (“It’s all about the milk,”) and how there are strict rules governing around selling cheese made with raw versus pasteurized milk. Keith says things like, “My Stilton is stuck in the harbor,” “You don’t want bleu on your cheddar,” and, “Notice the piquant flavor.” And by the time he describes the “mushroomy nuttiness of Brie,” I feel like my older sister during her Leif Garrett stage, listening to his record as she flips the pages of Tiger Beat with Leif shirtless on the cover. Dreamy.
Keith continues, tells me about the role of rennet, the enzyme essential to the cheese making process. He explains how bacteria is to cheese what Big Papi is to the Red Sox – the critical element that turns regular milk into a winner. I learn that bleu cheese’s mold comes from penicillin and that the crust on the outside of a nice wheel of Brie is all mold as well. “All cheeses are living, breathing things,” Keith explains as I cram another fistful of soft Brie in my mouth. I can barely form sentences now I’ve eaten so much cheese, and when Keith offers me a few sips of wine he’d been sampling earlier, I might not make it home in one piece. We say our goodbyes, and as I leave, my hands and shoulders sore from the cutting and opening, my New Year’s resolution is in tatters. But I don’t care. Weight may come and go but cheese is eternal.