Cheesy Beef, Beefy Cheese

The first time I had Epoisse a part of me thought it was the best steak I'd ever eaten.

Thelma and Louise at Cato Corner

Epoisse is a raw cow's milk cheese from Burgundy, called the king of all cheese by Brillat Savarin. It is a washed rind, or "smear ripened" (I hate that term) cheese. A bacteria called B. Linen is inoculated on to the rind of the cheese which causes it to ripen quickly, turning it soft in texture and strong in aroma and flavor. In the States, we'd call this category stinky cheese, which gives us one of the few truly American cheeses, Limburger. This category of cheeses is my favorite. Big, bold, assertive, and complex . After gaining an appreciation for these bruisers one may find all others a little boring. My very favorite is actually made in America, at Cato Corner in Vermont, and is called Hooligan. Could there possibly be a better name for a cheese so pungent, such an assault on the senses, but so inescapably tempting? Your better senses tell you obviously you must stay away. But, no...

Anyway, Epoisse. Epoisse is big, brutal, runny, offensive and beautiful in every way. It comes packed in a small balsam box because it is so ripe, soft, and runny, that without reinforcement it would burst like a flood swollen dam. It quivers maliciously at the thought of escaping the walls of its overripe, nearly desiccated orange rind. It is a small wheel and typically eaten by cutting the top off and spooning the paste out and spreading it on dark bread within reach of a good, strong Flemish beer.

But the first thing you are struck by when you first eat Epoisse is that it unmistakably tastes like beef. Roast beef. Like soft, yielding, knee buckling beef fat. This made me wonder why more cow's milk cheeses don't taste more like beef. They have the same source, after all.

I was reminded of this connection tonight when tasting a roasted prime rib of beef. Prime rib is a cooking conceit I have had little love for for most of my career. In the Midwest, prime rib is a staple of every cheap buffet and mediocre steakhouse, every wedding banquet and hotel catering menu, and is despised by most cooks who take cooking seriously. It's usually badly executed and overpriced, prized only for whatever worn out cachet it still carries amongst very unfoodie types. But I sometimes develop a weakness for the abused culinary heroes of yesteryear. I begin to wonder why they came to prominence in the first place and think about what luster they lost and how we might regain it. To that end, we have recently been cooking whole rib primals for large groups at Reserve.

At Reserve we pride ourselves in our aging program. We bring large cuts in and dry age them for far longer than industry standard. This is a practice gaining a little popularity in high end steakhouses around the country right now. We buy green (un aged) beef and hang it in a very cold cooler for a minimum of thirty five days and it stays there until it sells. During one particularly long summer dry spell for beef sales we had a rib primal hang for nearly 100 days. Dry aging is the best means of aging beef, and long aging brings out the funk. As beef ages, bacteria and lactic acid go to work on the comparatively simple proteins, fat, and carbohydrates present in meat and break them down. When they break down they become very complex and nuanced. The same thing occurs when cheese ages. Up until 28 days, a steak will taste like a steak. After that, mushrooms, blue cheese, flavors of the deep woods or pasture. Normally these primals are cut into steaks and grilled. They are rarely, even in highly vaunted steakhouses, roasted whole. But today we did. And in the rib we roasted today: the flavor of nearly spoiled milk.

Sounds horrible, doesn't it? Believe me, it was not, and I have a dozen staff members who ate it and will attest to it's deliciousness. When I say nearly spoiled, I'm not talking about sour. I'm talking about the onset of fermentation, the positive acts that bacteria have on foods before they begin to biodegrade and become inedible. I'm talking about the development of amino acids (umami) in great number. The best way I can think to describe it is like the transformation that occurs when sugar is turned to caramel. For the most part, sugar is just sweet. Caramel is smoky, deep and rich. This was not the flavor of fresh milk, sweet and wholesome and clean. This was the flavor of age. Milk on the road to becoming parmesan.

Lactic acid also continues to break down connective tissue and soften muscle fibers. Around sixty five days or so the texture can become a little livery. Until then, the texture gets soft, supple, and incredibly tender. The rib we ate tonight was 50 days old and was tender enough to easily pinch a salty, garlicky snack off the crust of the roast. Here's the thing about a giant roast like prime rib. A good one will have a very soft, rare interior with a dark crust where most of the seasoning resides, even after a day or two of rest. The seasoning doesn't really make it's way to the middle, so the best forkful is a chunk from the middle and a sliver from the grey, slaty edge.

So, this was no Vegas buffet prime rib. This was prime rib in it's glory, long aged, perfectly cooked and seasoned. The group we served it to tonight ordered two but didn't even finish one. They picked at the first one, pushed it around and sneered at it because it was "still mooing". The great shame of wasting something so rare, so well executed by my cook Brian, so expertly aged & butchered by my sous chef Brandon...not happening. We ate it. The whole staff. We carved and attacked that rib like it owed us money. This cut and the people who cooked it took prime rib back to the mountain top. A great and glorious moment in the cuisine of middle America.