Monforte Dairy Company

It is a testament to the success of Monforte Dairy Company that for months now I have been chasing its owner, Ruth Klahsen, for the opportunity to chat with her about her cheese.

When I first emailed her early in the spring, Klahsen was enthusiastic, but warned me that she was “drowning in milk.” She encouraged me to be persistent, and I was. And a recent visit to the dairy in nearby Millbank confirmed that she is, indeed, insanely busy.

Upon arrival, I was handed a hairnet, white coat and rubber boots and cheerfully encouraged to tag along as she cut wheels, wrapped and priced cheese, packed her son’s car with coolers headed for the farmer’s market, showed a couple of visiting Toronto chefs the ropes of making ricotta and generally dealt with anything requiring troubleshooting along the way.

Klahsen started Monforte (pronounced Mon-for-tay) in 2004 after having spent years as a chef in and around Stratford. She figured making cheese required the same skills “without the intensity” of restaurant service, and so she started with two cheeses – Paradiso (a semi-soft, washed rind cheese) and Toscano (a sharp, hard one).

Four years later, Klahsen is making roughly 20 types of sheep milk cheese and 10 kinds of goat. She is also the darling of chefs, food writers and gourmands alike. “The best cheeses in Ontario. Full stop,” Toronto Life recently trumpeted. Many of the province’s most buzzed-about menus include her products. And one can hardly open a magazine or newspaper that talks food and not encounter the Monforte name.

Klahsen has an artisinal approach to cheesemaking. She insists on small batches made by hand, and says she’s extremely picky not only about what goes into her cheese but about how the shepherds (19 Amish farmers near Ingersoll) handle the sheep. “They’re treated pretty naturally,” she says. “No herbicides or pesticides.”

Though everyone else is gushing, Klahsen remains modest, chalking her success up to simply being in the right place at the right time. She is also her own worst critic, insisting her cheeses are “not good enough yet. They could get way better.”

Sadly, Klahsen has not had a great deal of success in the Kitchener-Waterloo market. She had a small booth at St. Jacob’s market for awhile, but pulled the plug when she couldn’t cover the rental costs (more than she pays at St. Lawrence Market, interestingly) due to poor sales. A persistent expectation that food should be cheap, she believes, is part of the problem.

“I’d make less than $1000 in two to three days,” she told me. Meanwhile, she recently cleared $6500 in one day of sales in Toronto. She (with help from her son Ben and eight to 10 employees) covers 12 markets there on various days, and also has a strong presence at both Stratford and Guelph’s farmer’s markets.

And that, unfortunately, is where K-W cheese lovers will have to go to check out the full spectrum of Monforte’s products. Vincenzo’s in Waterloo does carry a select few, as does Knechtel’s Cheese at the Kitchener market.

Do be sure to try the herb-covered Piacere (pee-uh-cherry), which made Toronto Life’s list of 100 Tastes to Try Before You Die last December. And if you get your hands on a little tub of the spreadable, lemony Blossom, it’s total heaven smeared on a piece of crusty baguette and topped with a drizzle of honey.

As for where she sees Monforte going, Klahsen says she hopes to branch out into making more goat cheese and wants to experiment with water buffalo and cow’s milk, too. A slow food advocate, she has no plans to send cheese outside Ontario, preferring to stay local.

What makes her proudest, she says, is her collaboration with farmers – and the fact that 19 shepherds are thriving thanks to Monforte.

“When I’m dead and gone,” she says, “I hope people will say, ‘She helped save some family farms.’ And maybe, ‘She made good cheese, too.’ But mostly, ‘She helped save farms.’ ”

Urban Agriculture

I’ve written in this spot before about my own lack of gardening prowess, especially when it comes to edibles.

This year, I’ve broadened the range of potted herbs on my front porch. I’ve even branched out into heirloom tomatoes thanks to my mom, who started several plants from seed in the spring and gifted me with a couple that are now waist high.

But I guess I’ve always figured sustaining one’s self on homegrown produce was more effectively left to those in rural parts – people with acres of property, a barnful of seeds and tools, an encyclopedic how-to knowledge and a feverish work ethic.

That was, of course, until recently, after numerous encounters with various regular folks around K-W who are practically farming in their own backyards – right in the city. It’s been referred to as “urban agriculture” or “urban homesteading.” Some like to think of it as the “100 foot diet.” And during a time when many of us are thinking about food miles, fuel costs and the origin of what’s on our plates, it certainly makes sense.

Karin Kliewer, an avid organic gardener who lives in Kitchener, says she partner Greg Roberts are eating what they cultivate in their Duke Street backyard from March to December. In fact, they’re able to go all summer without buying produce.

Indeed, when I stopped by to visit, Kliewer made us a snack of flat breads (baked in an outdoor cob oven and topped with homegrown asparagus, greens, garlic scapes and fresh herbs) and homemade herbal tea.

Name it and it’s probably in their garden – grapes, apples, currants, shitake mushrooms, peas, lettuce, carrots, peppers, edible flowers, sorrel, borage, 20 varieties of heirloom tomatoes, the biggest oregano plant (no, shrub) I’ve ever seen. You get the idea. Everything is grown sustainably according to principles of permaculture – a somewhat complicated concept to explain in a short space, but one based on the notion that it’s better to work with nature than against it.

Kliewer says she and Roberts enjoy the perks of living in the city – being able to walk to work, for example – but felt they could still incorporate aspects of what most of us tend to think of as “rural living” into their lifestyle.

Not too far down the road in downtown Kitchener, Tim Simpson and partner Aura Hertzog have a somewhat smaller but nevertheless substantial plot in their backyard – they like to call it their “urban farm.”

Simpson grows his plants from organic heirloom seeds and is able to harvest and eat “things you’d never find in a grocery store” – Armenian cucumbers, strawberry spinach and Black Aztec corn, for starters.

Though his 22 tomato plants will yield more than the family can eat this summer, he’ll busy himself making tomato sauces and relishes. He’ll also do some freezing and plans to build a fruit cellar in the basement to house some canning and preserving. This way, Simpson says, they can extend their backyard eating into the winter and beyond.

Nina Bailey-Dick, a local food champion and yet another urban homesteader (beyond the fruits and vegetables, she has two hens in her Waterloo yard providing her family with eggs), says it’s all about starting small. A cherry tomato plant is a good place to begin. Or maybe some sugar snap peas instead of the typical clematis for your trellis.

“Just do one thing,” she says to those who might be intimidated by the notion of growing their own food. “You’ll be overwhelmed if you try to do everything at once. Just take one step at a time.”

Fresh Garlic

It’s the dry, grown-in-China garlic most of us are accustomed to – the kind that sprouts bitter green while sitting on the kitchen counter, the dehydrated cloves shrinking away from their brittle paper. Both are telltale signs it’s not fresh. And how can it be when it’s flown in from the opposite side of the earth?

Cooking with homegrown garlic, though, is mercifully dissimilar.

In spring, garlic can be harvested as “green garlic,” which looks more like scallions or thin leeks. Not long after come the scapes – long, curly stems ending in a flower bud. Farmers snap these off of garlic stalks to redirect the plant’s energy into growing a bigger bulb (instead of into producing a flower). They’re lovely and mild and can be chopped up and added to anything in place of garlic or onion. There are plenty of unique ways to use them, too. A friend recently brought me a jar of her homemade spinach-scape pesto.

Scape season is just ending – if you’re lucky, you might still find some at the farmers’ markets, but last week a couple of vendors told me that I was likely seeing the last of them. Not to worry, though, as there is plenty of young garlic for sale at the markets – these are early harvest bulbs with their tall, green stalks still attached that have not yet developed their papery skin. They’re more delicately flavoured than mature garlic and are practically juicy – a far cry from that awful, shrively stuff.

Here’s a recipe to inspire you. I used scapes, but if you can’t find any, substitute a head or two of fresh, thinly-sliced young garlic. Minced pancetta makes a nice addition, too – if you use it, throw it in at the same time as the scapes or garlic.

Barley Risotto with Fresh Peas, Garlic Scapes and Mint

3 quarts peas, shelled (reserve pods)
8 cups water
Salt
3 tablespoons butter
1 cup garlic scapes (or sliced young garlic)
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1-1/2 cups pearl barley
Freshly ground pepper
1/2 cup freshly grated parmigiano reggiano
A handful of fresh mint, thinly sliced

Rinse the pea pods and place in a sauce pan with lightly salted water. Bring to a boil over medium heat, reduce the heat to low, cover and simmer up to an hour. Strain and discard pods. Return broth to pot and keep warm over low heat.

In a large pot, melt 2 tablespoons of the butter over medium heat. Add your scapes or garlic, stirring often until soft. Add the peas and 1/2 cup of the warm broth and cook until the liquid has disappeared. Add the olive oil and, when it’s hot, add the barley and stir to coat well. Reduce heat to medium low, add about 3/4 cup of the broth and, again, cook, stirring often, until most of it is absorbed. Continue adding the broth 3/4 cup at a time, always waiting until each batch is nearly absorbed before adding the next batch. You’ll know it’s ready when the barley is tender and creamy but the inside is still firm to the bite. You likely won’t use all the broth. And be forewarned, this process requires some patience. So it is with risotto – but it’s worth it!

Remove the pan from the heat, season to taste with salt and pepper. Stir in the remaining tablespoon of butter and 1/4 cup of the cheese. Stir in the mint. Pass the remaining cheese at the table.
(Serves 4. Adapted from a Saveur magazine recipe).

Market Cookbooks

Beautiful as some of that produce is that we encounter in our farmers’ markets, sometimes a little inspiration is required. Such was my thought when I was handling some kohlrabi the other day: “If I buy this, what the heck am I going to do with it?”

I’ve similarly furrowed my brow over shell beans, beet greens and red cabbage, to name a few. There are always basic recipes – steam or boil or bake and eat it on the side – but the real fun, I think, is in creating something unexpected and exceptionally flavourful out of a simple vegetable you thought twice about buying in the first place.

Some of my favourite cookbooks – and certainly best-used (at least for half the year) – are those with a farmers’market theme. Here are a few that might generate some very tasty brainwaves as the farmers’ bounty starts rolling in:

The San Francisco Ferry Plaza Farmers’ Market Cookbook
By Christopher Hirsheimer and Peggy Knickerbocker
I visited this market building every day when I was in San Francisco a couple years ago – my own personal heaven and a market so deluxe, it gets its own book. This little guide (designed that way so you can take it to market with you) is sectioned by seasons and alphabetically lists a variety of produce. For each fruit and veg, there’s info about how to choose and store it along with a couple of recipes. Beets with Blue Cheese and Candied Walnuts is cooking perfection.

Local Flavors: Cooking and Eating from America’s Farmers’ Markets
By Deborah Madison
Madison, a Santa Fe chef, food writer and author known for her vegetarian cooking, traveled to markets all over the US in putting this book together. Many of them are profiled amongst the recipes, which are grouped according to category (greens, stone fruits, herbs and so on). There’s lots of useful info on fruit and vegetable varieties and some fun menu ideas, too. Last week I made Madison’s ragout with those aforementioned kohlrabis and some fresh peas, greens and herbs – yum. See the recipe below.

The Art of Simple Food: Notes, Lessons and Recipes from a Delicious Revolution
By Alice Waters
Another book from San Francisco – and not surprisingly, since the Californians have long been locavores. (A 12-month growing season helps). Much of the credit for that goes to Waters, founder of world-famous Berkeley restaurant Chez Panisse. This book doesn’t focus solely on farmers’ market fare, but, then again, because Waters is who she is, it kind-of does by proxy. See also Waters’ Chez Panisse Fruit and Chez Panisse Vegetables.

Jamie at Home
By Jamie Oliver
Perhaps you’ve seen the TV show companion to this book, where Oliver and his gardener putter about his vegetable patches and Jamie does his haphazard thing with what he grows in his outdoor kitchen. There are lots of fun, unpredictable ideas here –Hot and Sour Rhubarb with Crispy Pork and Noodles beats rhubarb pie for creativity any day.'

Simply in Season
By Mary Beth Lind and Cathleen Hockman-Wert
This little book with its comb binding was commissioned by the Mennonite Central Committee and is written by two American Mennonite women who thought, and rightly so, that we all needed to be reminded to connect with what we eat. They compiled the 300-plus recipes according to season and include a guide to choosing, storing, handling and serving various kinds of produce.

The Farmer’s Market Cookbook
By Richard Ruben
Grilled Summer Corn and Sugar Snap Pea Salad. Sweet Potato Braised in Apple Cider. Need I say more? Lots of beautiful ideas here, again all organized by season and with lots of info on produce varieties.

Market Ragout of Turnips, Kohlrabi and Peas

1 tbsp butter

6 spring onions or shallots, halved (I used a whole bulb of young garlic, sliced thinly)

6 or more small turnips, scrubbed and quartered (I omitted the turnip and used more kohlrabi)

2 or 3 small kohrabi, about golf ball size, peeled and quartered (I used fewer larger ones and diced)

1 thyme sprig

salt and freshly ground pepper

1 pound pod peas, shelled

a few handfuls baby spinach (I used beet greens because that's what I had in the fridge)

dollop creme fraiche (I omitted it)

4 large basil leaves

1. Melt the butter in a skillet and add the onions, turnips, kohlrabi and time. Add water to cover halfway and a teaspoon of salt. Simmer while you shuck the peas.

2. As soon as the vegetables are tender, after 12 to 15 minutes, add the peas and spinach and cook until the spinach has wilted down, a few minutes more. Stir in the creme fraiche and add the basil. Tasted for salt and season with pepper. Serve as a side dish or a course by itself.

Serves 2 to 4.