While we have been hunkered down at home for the quarantine, we have been treating ourselves to great foods from artisans nationwide.

One of them is Jasper Hill Farm, in Greensboro, Vermont (in the “Northeast KingdomNortheast Kingdom”).

Jasper Hill sold its first wheels of Bayley Hazen Blue, their flagship cheese (photo #3), in 2003. Since then, with their own microbiology lab and scientists, they have been able to make incredible cheeses.

The cheeses are sold at fine retailers and e-tailers nationwide, and also on the Jasper Hill website.

Half of the cheeses online are made by Jasper Hill Farm, others are made by neighboring dairies and sent to Jasper Hill to take advantage of the huge, state-of-the-art, underground aging cellars.

The technology helps to make better cheeses. Just one bite of any of them tells you that you’ve arrived in cheese heaven.

Twice a month we order a shipment of our favorite cheeses, comparing similar styles (bloomy rinds, blues, cheddars, washed rinds) to pick the one from each group that we like the best.

We then re-order the “winner” along with our next group (and we keep notes on our preferences for future orders). And we never fail to add a wheel of our very favorite, the bloomy-rind Moses Sleeper.

We’re never without great cheeses on hand. We’d like to point the way to every turophile (connoisseur or fancier of fine cheeses).

Before you head to Jasper Hill Farm’s online storeJasper Hill Farm’s online store, check out the description of the cheeses that follow.

If you can’t make up your mind among the different cheeses, there are 13 curated gift boxes (scroll down), for yourself or for gifting.

We hope we’ve made it easier for you to choose among the 15 memorable cheeses.
 
 
15 MEMORABLE CHEESES

 
 
CHEESES BY CATEGORY

[1] Cheddar lovers will find joy in Cabot’s Clothbound Cheddar (all photos © Jasper Hill FarmJasper Hill Farm).

[2] A bloomy rind enthusiast’s delight: Harbison, with a creamy, spreadable center.

[3] One of the best blue cheeses anywhere: Bayley Hazen, Jasper Hill Farm’s flagship cheese.

[4] Oma, a washed rind tomme.

[5] Winnimere, a washed rind wheel, wrapped and ready to ship.

[1] An avocado “burger” or “sandwich” filled with whatever you like (photo © Love One Today).

[2] Instead of American cheese, use a Hispanic melting cheese like queso quesadilla (photo by Claire Freiermann © The Nibble).

What’s inside this avocado burger? Anything you want.

The idea is from Love One TodayLove One Today, the consumer website for the Hass Avocado Board and a source for everything avocado, including recipes.
 
 
BUILD YOUR AVOCADO BURGER

Starting with two avocado halves that form the “buns” or “bread,” you can add:

 
For our first avocado burger, we created the Ultimate Veggie Burger: veggie burger, lettuce and tomato, sweet onion, pickled vegetables, raw vegetables, roasted vegetables, sprouts…and melted gruyère cheese.

(Frankly, we went through everything in the fridge.)

We placed the Gruyère in a ramekin, melted it in the microwave, and poured it over the other ingredients piled onto the bottom avocado half; then put the top on and garnished the veggie burger with a toothpick of assorted olives.

A good lunch was had by all!

*Bacon, blue cheese, curry, garlic (i.e., aïoli—here’s the recipe), Dijon, hot sauce, lemon or lime zest. Just add any particular seasoning to taste.

May 29th is National Coq Au Vin Day (pronounced cuhk-oh-VAN). The name of this French country dish means “rooster with wine [sauce].”

The wine varies by local specialty and can be red or white: Burgundy in Burgundy, Riesling in Alsace, and so forth.

This classic dish is a bistro favorite, and one of the first French dishes many home cooks learn in the French repertoire.

Here’s a recipe. It’s a simpler preparation than the recipe from Chef Antoine Westermann, below.

Although the word coq in French means rooster or cock, most modern Coq au Vin recipes call for female chicken. It can be an old chicken: Tough birds with lots of connective tissue become tender meat after a long braise.

Older roosters and hens were preferred because more connective tissue creates a richer broth. In earlier days, chickens and roosters past their prime were headed to the braising pan or the stew pot.

In the U.S., standard recipes often call for red wine (often Burgundy or “red wine”) for braising, lardons (salt pork or bacon), button mushrooms, onions, perhaps garlic, and sometimes brandy.

The usual seasonings are bay leaf, parsley and thyme—usually in the form of a bouquet garni—plus salt and pepper. The pan juices are thickened with a roux.

The preparation is similar in many respects to Boeuf Bourguignon. The chicken is seasoned, dusted with flour, then seared in fat and slowly simmered in wine until tender.

 
THE HISTORY OF COQ AU VIN

Anecdotal talk traces Coq au Vin to ancient Gaul and the table of Julius Caesar, but it is generally accepted that the rustic dish existed long before then.

All a cook needed was wine and a rooster (both originating around 6000 B.C.E.).

However, it seems that the recipe was not documented until the early 20th century. A somewhat similar recipe, poulet au vin blanc ) chicken in white wine, appeared in an 1864 cookbook (source).

In recent centuries, Coq au Vin became a specialty in Lyon, a French culinary capital that also gave us:

 
Julia Child helped popularize Coq au Vin in the U.S. in her seminal 1961 cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking; and she frequently prepared it on her PBS cooking show, The French Chef.

It became a popular dish for entertaining, because much of the preparation is done before guests arrive.
 
 
BRAISE, FRICASSEE, SAUTÉ: THE DIFFERENCE

Coq au Vin is a braise. Related dishes are sautés and fricassees.

In Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Julia Child describes fricassee as “halfway between a sauté and a stew.” A sauté has no liquid added (besides the fat), while a stew includes liquid from the beginning.

A braise is first sautéed or seared at a high temperature, then cooked with a liquid or sauce for a longer time, at a lower temperature, in a covered pot.

In both Coq au Vin and Chicken (or veal) Fricassee, the meat is first braised.

The vegetables are usually carrots and onions or leeks, and they are generally served with dumplings, noodles, rice or roasted potatoes. A fruity red wine is a favored accompaniment to Coq au Vin (Beaujolais, California Syrah, Italian Dolcetto), a white wine for a fricassee.
 
 
RECIPE: COQ AU VIN

This recipe comes straight from the kitchen of Chef Antoine Westermann, who famously gave back his three Michelin stars to pursue “unfettered culinary creativity.”

A lifelong champion of poultry, Chef Westermann perfected the art of cooking fowl at his restaurant Le Coq RicoLe Coq Rico, with locations in Paris and New York City.

[1] Antoine Westermann’s coq au vin recipe (below), served in a pasta plate, a bowl with a very large rim (photo © Paste Magazine).

[2] The Coq au Vin recipe of Chef Antoine Westermann. The recipe is below (photo © Antoine Westerman | Le Coq Rico.

[3] He’s handsome now, but when he gets past his prime: Coq au Vin! (photo © Muhammad Mahdi Karim | Wikipedia).

[4] Pair Coq au Vin with a fruity red wine like Beaujolais (photo © Schott-ZwieselSchott-Zwiesel, which makes this special glass shape for Beaujolais).

Ingredients For 4 Servings

Total prep and cook time is 1 hour, 55 minutes.
 
For The Chicken

 
For The Marinade

 
Plus

 
Preparation

1. PREPARE the marinade: Peel and chop the carrots into pieces, wash and cut the leek into rounds, wash and cut the celery into chunks, peel and cut the onion into rings, and peel and crush the cloves of garlic.

2. PLACE the carrot, leek, celery, onion and garlic in a large bowl. Mix in the clove, thyme, bay leaf and wine. Place the chicken pieces in the marinade, cover, and put in the refrigerator to marinate for 24 hours. After the chicken has marinated…

3. POUR 7 tablespoons of olive oil into a cocotte (that’s French for a Dutch oven). Reserving the marinade, remove the chicken and cook over high heat until golden.

4. PLACE the marinade and vegetables in a pan and bring to a boil. Run through a strainer to clarify the liquid.

5. REMOVE the pieces of chicken from the pan and deglaze the pan with the chicken stock. Season with salt and pepper.

6. ADD the chicken, vegetables from the marinade, and filtered liquid. Cover the pan and cook over low heat for 90 minutes.

7. WASH the mushrooms and cut them into large pieces. Pour 3 tablespoons of olive oil in a pan and brown the mushrooms and bacon. Add salt and pepper.

8. REMOVE the chicken and place it under a sheet of aluminum foil. Add 1 tablespoon of flour to the cooking juices, stirring constantly. Adjust the seasoning. Return the pieces of chicken to the pan, and add the bacon and mushrooms. Cook for a few minutes on low heat.

9. CUT the bread into small cubes. Heat the butter and cook the croutons until golden brown.

10. PLACE the chicken in a baking dish. Distribute the bacon, mushrooms and croutons around the chicken. Evenly drizzle the sauce atop the dish. Reheat for a few minutes, so that the dish is very hot. Serve with egg noodles.

In conclusion: Cocorico!, French for cock-a-doodle-doo!

[1] Start with a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc (photo © Cloudy Bay WineCloudy Bay Wine).

[2] Mixed berries for muddling into your wine spritzer (photo © Green Giant FreshGreen Giant Fresh).

[3] Squeeze in a couple of lime wedges (photo by Hannah Kaminsky | The Nibble).

[4] Two of the 20 flavors of Polar Seltzer (photograph © Polar SeltzerPolar Seltzer).

[5] Coravin Wine System (photo © CoravinCoravin | Facebook).

May 25th was National Wine Day, and since then we’ve been enjoying a daily wine spritzer using the recipe below.

The recipe came to us from Coravin, a leading wine preserving system, which allows you to pour a glass from a bottle of wine without ever opening it.

Watch this short video for a demo.

Essentially, a thin needle goes through the cork and the wine is pumped into the glass. The cork heals after the needle is removed so the wine is safe from air.

If you purchase a Coravin System directly from Coravin.com, you can try it at home risk-free. If you’re not completely satisfied, you may return it within thirty days of the purchase date.

No one less than our favorite wine critic, Robert M. Parker, Jr., has hailed the Coravin System as “the most transformational and exciting new product for wine lovers that has been invented in the last 30+ years—this is a killer device.”

The models start at a fairly-priced $249.95 and up, and are a great gift for a wine connoisseur who wants to drink costly bottles a glass or two at a time.

Make yourself a wine spritzer—no Coravin required—as you contemplate the different models.
 
 
RECIPE: SKINNY WHITE WINE SPRITZER WITH FRUIT

A plain wine spritzer combines wine and carbonated water, and perhaps a wine wedge.

This one adds muddled berries and remains a low-calorie cocktail option.

Ingredients Per Drink

 
Preparation

1. MUDDLE the fruit in a wine glass, then fill the glass halfway with ice.

2. ADD the Sauvignon Blanc first; then add the seltzer to fill the glass.

3. SQUEEZE in the lime juice and stir. Add the whole pieces of fresh fruit and the squeezed lime wedges to garnish.
 

WINE SPRITZER HISTORY

In German, spritz means a splash or spray.

A Spritzer is a tall, chilled drink, made from white wine (still or sparkling) and soda water.

The Spritz Veneziano (Venetian Spritz or wine spritzer, as it’s called in the U.S.) is a wine-based cocktail, commonly served as an apéritif in northeastern Italy where Venice, and the Veneto region, are located.

The drink originated in Venice while it was part of the Austrian Empire (1815-1866), and is based on the Austrian Spritzer, a combination of equal parts white wine and soda water.

When the Habsburgs began to dominate the area of the Veneto, the Hapsburg soldiers, merchants, diplomats and administrative employees of who were stationed in the area, headed to the tavern for a glass of wine.

But they found that the wines from the Veneto were significantly higher in alcohol content than the wines to which they were accustomed at home.

They began to ask the tavern-keepers to spray a bit of water into the wine (spritzen, in German) to make the wines lighter. The original Spritz, in fact, was simply sparkling white or red wine diluted with water.

The Spritz Evolves

The first evolution of The Spritz arrived in the early 1900s, when siphons for carbonated water became widely available. They made it possible to make a sparkling Spritzer using still wine.

The trend moved beyond the taverns: Austrian noblewomen, who because of the siphon now saw the drink as glamorous, drank it and served it in their homes.

Over the years, the Spritzer evolved to include liqueur (Aperol or Campari, e.g., garnished with an orange slice) or a bitter (China Martini or Cynar, e.g., garnished with a lemon peel or olive).

In Venice and the surrounding Veneto area of northern Italy, Select, a local red bitter aperitif liqueur, is a popular pairing.

Our favorite version is the Aperol Spritz, prepared with prosecco, Aperol, and a topping-off of sparkling mineral water.

The Aperol Spritz is usually served over ice in a rocks glass or in a wine glass, and garnished with a slice of orange. Here’s the recipe.

The recipes for spritzers are numerous, depending on local tastes and bartenders (source).

Dukkah is a versatile Egyptian dry seasoning mixture of chopped nuts or chickpeas, plus a variety of flavorful seeds, spices and herbs.

In the old days, the ingredients were ground together in a pestle; today, they can be tossed into a food processor.

Dukkah is an extremely popular snack in the culinary melting pots of New Zealand and Australia, where it’s a perfect pairing with the local wines.

Pour a glass, cut up some pita or other bread, put some olive oil in a dish next to a dish of dukkah ground nut and seed mix, dip the bread into both, and that’s your snack along with the wine.

It hasn’t yet hit home (the U.S.A.) as a condiment, but that doesn’t mean you can’t be the leader in your crowd to discover it.
 
 
THE HISTORY OF DUKKAH

Thousands of years ago in ancient Egypt, somebody concocted a mixture of nuts, seeds and spices to consume with pita bread, aash baladi (also spelled eesh balady) dipped in olive oil.

The bread was first dipped into olive oil and then into the nut mixture. That mixture came to be known as “dukkah” (pronounced DOO-ka, from the Arabic dokka, meaning “coarsely ground”). It is still eaten today in this same traditional manner.

Beyond bread, dukkah’s greatest merit lies in its versatility. Its strong flavors and easy application can lend Middle Eastern pizzazz to meat, seafood and salads (more in the section below).

Yet dukkah remains largely absent from the average American home cook’s repertoire and even awareness. Have you heard of it?

Australians and New Zealanders have pull this ancient dish out of the days of yore and into their home kitchens. Now it’s your turn.

Below are a recipe template, plus a source to buy dukkah ready-made.
 
 
DUKKAH IS VERSATILE

Yet, you can cook with it, adding it to seafood, meat, salads and even a sweet version for desserts like French toast and caramelized bananas.

Savory Uses

 
Sweet Uses

Add coconut, a touch of sugar, and maybe some chopped dried blueberries, cranberries or raisins for use on your favorite sweet recipes. See the examples in Oregon Dukkah, below.
 
 
DUKKAH IS HEALTHY

Looking for healthy flavor?

 
All this, plus great flavor!
 

OREGON DUKKAH: BUY IT READY-MADE

Instead of chickpeas, Oregon Dukkah takes advantage of Oregon’s native hazelnut crop—with delicious results. Buy it and get ready to “dip like an Egyptian”—with bread dipped in oil (make it EVOO), the classic Egyptian way.

The varieties include:

 
You can purchase individual flavors at Vibrant Flavors.com.
 
 
MAKE YOUR OWN DUKKAH

It’s easy to make dukkah from scratch. Just combine and pulse your favorite ingredients: chickpeas, nuts, seeds, spices, dried herbs, and for those who like it hot, red chile flakes.

Don’t want chickpeas or hazelnuts? Experiment with other favorite nuts (almonds, macadamia nuts, peanuts, pine nuts, pistachios) and seeds in addition to, or instead of, sesame (flax, pumpkin, sunflower, favorite).

Many seasonings work (curry, crushed red pepper flakes, smoked paprika, turmeric, za’atar). And how about some shredded coconut?

While dukkah does not necessarily have to feature hazelnuts (although classic recipes do)

Ingredients

 
Preparation

1. PREHEAT the oven to 350°F and roast the hazelnuts in a pan, in one layer, for 10 to 15 minutes, until the skins blister.

2. REMOVE the nuts from the oven, wrap them in a kitchen towel and let the nuts steam for 1 minute. To remove the skins, rub the nuts vigorously in a kitchen towel. It’s O.K. if some of the skins won’t detach. Cool completely.

2. HEAT a skillet and dry-roast the sesame seeds until they are light golden brown and fragrant (be careful not to burn them). Remove them from the skillet and let cool.

3. ROAST the remaining seeds and spices until they darken (chickpeas that are already roasted do not require further roasting). When the ingredients have cooled…

4. COMBINE with the seeds and nuts and process pulse in a food processor into a coarse consistency (you can use a mortar and pestle instead).

If you overprocess and your blend ends up as a paste, use it up quickly in a dip, as a spread on chicken or fish, or any of the uses above.

5. STORE in an airtight jar in a cool, dark place for up to three months. The dukkah will keep longer than that, but will begin to lose its flavor.

6. MAKE extra dukkah to package in a small jar and give as gifts.

[1] Homemade dukkah in an airtight job. Just blend your favorite ingredients (photo © Pexels).

[2] Dukkah ingredients. In the original Egyptian recipe, chickpeas were used instead of hazelnuts (photo © Sheri W. licensed under CC BY 2.0CC BY 2.0).

[3] The classic: dukkah with bread and olive oil (photo by Hannah Kaminsky | The Nibble.

[4] Avocado halves with dukkah (photo © Ready Made | Pexels).

[5] Scallops and bacon with dukkah (photo © Stijn | Licensed By CC 2.0).

[6] Roasted carrots with yogurt sauce and dukkah (photo © Asab974 | iStock).

[7] Dukkah as a soup garnish with fried halloumi cubes; you can substitute croutons (photo © Asab974 | iStock).

[8] Poached egg with dukkah (photo © Daria Shevtsova | Pexels.