Each month, your Neighboring Food Co-ops feature our region’s artisan cheesemakers by offering a specially selected cheese at a great price. Look for the “Cave to Co-op” sign in the cheese section at your local food co-op. To find one near you, visit www.nfca.coop/members.
This Month’s Selection:
TUBBY, SPRING BROOK FARM,VT & CROWN FINISH CAVES, NY
A raw cow milk, natural rind – aged over 1 year cheese
Tubby is a collaborative effort between Spring Brook Farm in Reading, Vermont and Crown Finish Caves in Brooklyn, NY. This 30 pound Alpine-style cheese is traditionally handmade in a copper vat and washed in brine for one year to encourage the development of beneficial microflora. Crack into one of these big wheels and prepare to be enveloped in its piña colada aromas. Tubby’s paste is bright yet brothy with a rind like crunchy peanut butter that will leave you craving another bite. Tubby is named for one of Brooklyn’s prominent 19th century architects, William Bunker Tubby.
Crown Finish Caves is a cheese aging facility located in an 1850’s lagering tunnel thirty feet below the street in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, located in the historic former Nassau Brewery building in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. The caves are the old lagering tunnels of the brewery, and at approximately 50 degrees fahrenheit year round, they are the perfect temperature for aging cheese. Crown Finish does not make cheese, they just age it; this is a centuries old practice called “affinage,” and is a prominent industry throughout Europe. They receive young cheese (AKA “Green Cheese”) from local, artisan producers, as well as from some more distant producers, even one in Italy!
Most of the cheese is produced less than 250 miles from NYC, and it is always received when it is between 1-14 days old, and no rind has developed. They ripen all cheese in the ideal conditions of those historic tunnels, which were renovated into a state-of-the-art licensed NYS Dairy Plant. At full capacity, the main tunnel holds 22,000 pounds of cheese, and it’s almost full.
Melissa Clark’s Cheese Puff with Tubby
serves 4
- 3 large eggs
- ½ C whole milk
- ½ C all-purpose flour
- ½ t kosher salt
- freshly ground pepper
- 3 ounces grated Tubby cheese
- 3 T unsalted butter
pre-heat oven to 400°F
Whisk together eggs, milk, flour, salt and pepper in a bowl until smooth. Stir in the grated cheese. Melt the butter in a 9-inch ovenproof skillet. Swirl the melted butter around to coat the bottom and sides completely. Pour in the batter and put the pan in the oven. Bake until golden and puffed, 30 minutes. Sprinkle with salt and serve!
CAVE TO CO-OP IS A PARTNERSHIP BETWEEN PROVISIONS INTERNATIONAL AND THE NEIGHBORING FOOD CO-OP ASSOCIATION (NFCA) TO SUPPORT LOCAL, ARTISANAL CHEESE PRODUCERS IN OUR REGION AND MAKE THEIR PRODUCTS MORE EASILY AVAILABLE TO CO-OP SHOPPERS. THE NFCA IS A NETWORK OF MORE THAN 35 FOOD CO-OPS IN NEW ENGLAND, LOCALLY OWNED BY MORE THAN 130,000 PEOPLE LIKE YOU. FOR MORE INFORMATION, PLEASE VISIT WWW.NFCA.COOP.