“We had more fame before we had fortune,” laughs Julia Grace, co-owner of Moonstruck Organic Cheese on Saltspring Island, B.C. “Cheese making looks great from the outside but it’s a very expensive business to run.” Fortunately for Ms. Grace and her partner, Susan Grace, when Moonstruck started making cheese in 1998, appetite for local food in British Columbia was burgeoning, and chefs were desperate for good local cheese. The two women now make nine cheeses (all certified organic), and Julia admits to a particular affinity for blues. She’s created three styles – Beddis Blue (raw milk) Blossom’s Blue (raw milk, their longest aged blue) and Baby Blue.
Baby Blue is a flavourful, small cheese weighing in at about 200 grams. It has a rich sour cream quality, and the typical blue flavours are not strong, but pronounced enough to add some savoury to the generally mellow, buttery paste. In its younger state (four weeks) Baby Blue is already molten around the edges and has a silky texture. As it ages it will ripen further and even liquefy from inside out. (Some chefs wait until it is completely soft, and then crack it like an egg over good bread.)
Julia explains that creating Baby Blue was a process that started with the idea of making a Cambozola-type cheese (a cross between a blue and a Camembert) from raw milk that would come in a small format. It turned out to be a fussy cheese to get right, especially when trying to balance the ripening speed of the exterior bloomy rind and the interior blue veining. Julia then decided to go the more traditional route and leave out the bloomy rind, concentrating on just using Penicillium roqueforti (blue mould culture). She also realized that in order to use raw milk, the cheese had to be made in a bigger format so it could handle being ripened the legal minimum of 60 days before being sold. Thus one idea became two cheeses. The larger raw cheese evolved into Beddis Blue, and the small pasteurized version became the Baby Blue.
Susan and Julia used to run an organic market garden, but ended up with a herd of Jersey’s when, “Susan met one and really liked her.” Embracing the idea of cheese making, Julia acquired a 1950s book from England called Cheesecraft, which became her bible. “I’m old-fashioned” she says when discussing her style of cheese making. “I’m trying to imitate something that could have happened in England or France 100 years ago.”
And because its cheeses are served in British Columbia’s best restaurants, including those in Whistler, this Olympic year could bring Moonstruck international exposure. Forget energy bars, Baby Blue is organic, protein-filled and the perfect size to fit inside the pocket of a ski jacket.
Sue Riedl studied at the Cordon Bleu in London.
On the block
Cheese: Baby Blue
Origin: Saltspring Island, B.C.
Producer: Moonstruck Organic Cheese Inc.
Owners: Julia and Susan Grace
Cheese maker: Julia Grace
Milk: pasteurized Jersey cow
Type: unpressed, surface ripened, blue, natural rind
Shape: 150- to 200-gram drum
Distributor: Moonstruck Organic Cheese Inc.
Availability:
B.C.:
Vancouver: Les Amis du Fromage, Thrifty Foods (various locations), Urban Fare, Whole Foods
Saltspring Island: Saltspring Island Market, Moonstruck farm store
Outside B.C.:
