Amazing Cheeses at the Boulevard Market in Tecumseh
Posted on 21 July 2007 under Food Destinations, Shopping
No, that’s not a plate of fried egg whites with fruit (although that also sounds good!) This is fried Halloumi cheese, which is a traditional goat and sheep’s milk cheese from Cyprus. The Boulevard Market over in Tecumseh, Michigan, is now carrying the G. & I. Keses brand of this incredibly delicious Halloumi cheese. This particular cheese fries-up beautifully all on its own. Right there in the store, co-owner Erica Aylward sliced some Halloumi straight out of the package, heated a little oil in an electric skillet, fried the cheese till it looked fantastic, and served samples with dried apricots to Adam and I. We didn’t want to stop eating it! (I think I owe Erica for about $5 worth of “samples” though …) It even looks great in the pan:
Since having some of this cheese and thinking about possibilities for a while, I realize the possibility exists for an interesting “gourmet” (I hate that word, but there’s no other yet) grilled cheese sandwich, where the cheese is grilled separately from the rest of the sandwich! Man, you could stack all kinds of stuff in there … greens, onions, chopped olives … in a hoagie roll that’s had its faced grilled on their own … Looking at what I just wrote, 10-year-old Ryan suggests stuffing omelets with fried Halloumi. Oh, yeah, there are all kinds of great dishes that come to mind.
One thing I’ve been trying to do without success is to get my camera into the cheese aging room at the Boulevard Market. Either I’ll forget my camera when John has all kinds of great cheeses in there, or, like yesterday, I’ll have my camera but they’ll have sold so much cheese the room is empty! Adam and I both kinda recall John or Erica saying they’re selling about 26 pounds of their own Northern Lights cheese each week! This is interesting, as the Northern Lights cheese, a soft cow milk cheese with garlic, peppercorns and paprika, was intended by John to be a “Christmas Holiday-only” cheese! Its popularity has just gotten a bit out-of-hand, and there was a fresh tub of it in the store yesterday. For my camera, there was at least some freshly-ladled curdled milk for Camembert cheese in their “cheesemoulds” back in the pasteurizing room at the Market. This cheese will probably be available in about three weeks. I may have to make a special trip out to Tecumseh about then in order to get some of what you see here.
One of our other favorite cheeses around here is the Smoked Gouda the Market carries. This is the wedge John and Erica have been cutting samples from, looking all rich and, well, smokey:
Do you know how it is when someone doesn’t want their picture taken, and then when you do try to take a picture of them, they almost intentionally mess up a perfectly good-looking face without being intentional about it? Mark my words, one of these days there will be a photo of John and Erica in this blog …
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22 July 2007 @ 12:33 am Posted by joey randall
Looks delicious, Dave. I can taste the essence of each delectable cheese through your writing and (I must add) great photos.
22 July 2007 @ 8:37 am Posted by LunaPierCook
Thanks, Joey! I think it took, like, six tries to get that first photo right!
23 July 2007 @ 11:52 am Posted by Stephanie A.
Ahhh. When I was in Turkey, we had this cheese and others that “had to be cooked” to make them delicious. It was so good - like a traditional fried cheese stick, without all the bad-for-you guilt.
I got some cheese from Boulevard Market a couple weeks ago. It was like cheddar, but with the parmigiana-like crystals in it. Loved it. Except it dried out rather quickly. Awesome light meal though - the cheese, some olives cured with something citrusy, some crusty bread, some orange cherry tomatoes and a sliced up hard boiled egg (also inspired by Turkish cuisine…come to think of it.) Lunchtime approaches.