Add this ice cream to the short list of good things to emerge from this unrelenting pandemic. When truckloads of crème fraîche started returning to Vermont Creamery in March 2020 because supermarket warehouses were closed, creamery leadership got creative. “We had two weeks to move it or lose it,” recalls Adeline Druart, the company’s president. So they moved it. Joining forces with a nearby company that operated an ice-cream truck, they debuted Maple Crème Fraîche Ice Cream, sending all proceeds to the Vermont Foodbank. Dumping the crème fraîche would have been easier, but that’s not how they roll in Vermont.
Read moreMascarpone Sundae Any Day
I’m pretty sure that most mascarpone sold in this country ends up in tiramisu. Not a bad fate, but mascarpone can do more than that. If you’ve never made mascarpone ice cream, go dust off your ice cream machine. Memorial Day weekend is imminent, and no matter what you put on the grill, this strawberry mascarpone ice cream sundae will be what you remember.
Read moreCalling It Quits
Photo: Jim Paussa
I’m sad when any American cheesemaker shuts the doors, but especially someone as talented, spunky and ambitious as Wendy Mitchell. Mitchell’s ten-year-old Avalanche Cheese Company, in Colorado, won a heap of blue ribbons for its goat cheeses. Mitchell had an impressive record in business. What on earth happened?
Read moreTurning Point
Thirty-three years ago, two idealistic young people barely out of college joined forces to start a cheesemaking business. They scrounged up $2,000, borrowed twice that much and launched Vermont Butter & Cheese (now Vermont Creamery). Last week, Allison Hooper and Bob Reese—still partners and still friends—announced that they were turning the keys over to new owners: Land O’Lakes, a vast international agricultural co-op with $13 billion in annual sales.
Read moreBanned at the Border
We’ve been hearing ad nauseum about border walls, but who knew there were butter walls? Even some folks in Wisconsin are just now realizing that their state—“America’s Dairyland”—has an impenetrable fat fence. No immigrant butters from France, Italy or Ireland, or any other foreign country, are permitted on Wisconsin grocery-store shelves. At least one Kerrygold fan has resorted to driving to a neighboring state to score some Irish butter. I’m a Kerrygold enthusiast, too, but my laid-back state (California) lets me have all I want, no questions asked.
Read moreTiny Cheese, Giant Buzz
“I don’t know if we’ve ever introduced a new cheese that has had this much instant acclaim,” said Vermont Creamery owner Allison Hooper about the recent debut of St. Albans. “We didn’t anticipate it.”
Read moreWhere Cheese Begins
During college, I spent half of my sophomore year studying in Aix-en-Provence, in the south of France. That’s where I learned to love cheese in all its forms, from stinky puant de Lille (literally, the “reeking cheese from Lille”) to rock-hard chèvres. I often ate lunch in the university cafeteria because it was so tasty, and more often than not, the meal ended with little containers of Petit Suisse, a super-fresh cream-enriched cow’s milk cheese that you sprinkled with sugar and ate like yogurt. What a delicious and wholesome dessert.
Read moreWe Have a Winner →
Vermont’s Tarentaise Reserve took top honors at the American Cheese Society’s annual competition last week, surpassing 1,684 other cheeses to earn the prestigious “Best of Show.” I served as a judge and concur that this awesome two-year-old wheel deserved the recognition. It was my first choice. (Judges taste blind, but the distinctive concave rim of this 20-pound wheel gives it away.) Honestly, though, I tasted at least a half-dozen other cheeses that I would have been happy to see at the top. That’s a testament to the growing prowess of America’s cheesemakers.
Read moreUps and Downs with Feta →
The same purchase provided the high and low moments on Planet Cheese last week. The high was finding Vermont Creamery goat feta at Oxbow Cheese Merchant in Napa, my neighborhood shop. Vermont Creamery makes some of my favorite bloomy-rinded goat cheeses (Bijou and Bonne Bouche among others), and a sublime cultured butter as well. But I didn’t know the creamery made feta.
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