After a long hiatus, Cowgirl Creamery’s beloved cottage cheese is back. Plump, tender curds in a thick and tangy dressing—ready to dollop on peaches for breakfast or top with cherry tomatoes for lunch. If you think of cottage cheese as grandma food, or grim diet food, prepare for a revelation.
Read moreCheese by You
They say that 90 percent of cheesemaking is cleaning up, which is why I’m content to remain just an eater. But if you’ve ever wanted to try your hand at home cheesemaking, I have the teacher for you. Merryl Winstein believes that you—yes, you—can make cheese just as good as what you can buy. All you need is fresh milk and the right recipes. And, wow, does she have the recipes.
Read moreEwereka! You Found It.
I’ve lived in California for 40-plus years and had no idea that “Eureka!” was the state motto. Apparently, that’s what you say when you strike gold. Spelled creatively, it’s also the name of a terrific new cheese from California’s Central Coast Creamery [www.centralcoastcreamery.com]. The Paso Robles cheesemaker struck gold with it last month, winning a blue ribbon for Ewereka, a sheep’s-milk wheel, in the American Cheese Society’s annual competition.
Read moreHow Rich Can Cheese Be?
Triple-cream cheeses are the industry’s gateway drug. Who isn’t seduced by all that buttery goodness? Cowgirl Creamery’s Mt. Tam, Brillat-Savarin, Explorateur—these luscious creations take cheese to the limits of richness. Pass the walnut bread. But now the triple-cream niche has a new challenger for the butterfat crown. Are you ready for quintuple-cream cheese?
Read moreBumpy Ride for Cheesemakers
This is not the Manhattan skyline. It’s the average price of milk paid to America’s dairy farmers between June 2012 and March 2018. Who can operate a business with price swings like this? Not surprisingly, many dairy farmers can’t. Between January and July of this year, 338 Wisconsin dairy farms stopped milking cows.
Read moreIs A2 Yogurt for You?
Yogurt. Blueberries. Now’s the moment. I’m a cheerleader for plain whole-milk yogurt because it’s so easy to add fresh fruit myself. The challenge, in some markets, is finding yogurt that meets my specs: plain, whole milk, stabilizer-free (no pectin, no gelatin) and not Greek. Straus Family Creamery is my go-to, but a new California yogurt checks all those boxes as well. What’s more, it’s made with A2 milk.
Read moreThin is In
The last time I was in France, visiting Comté producers in the Jura Mountains, I thought I might find a beautiful old cheese plane in an antiques shop. But I didn’t know how to ask for a cheese plane in French, and my French host—a veteran of the cheese business—was no help. He had no clue what a cheese plane was.
Read moreNow Here’s a Fresh Idea
From Turin to San Francisco is 9,500 miles, a long journey if you’re a cheese. Fresh cheeses like ricotta and mozzarella have to travel by air, which makes the cost spike. Inspections or missing paperwork can delay entry, further shortening the precious selling time. So here’s one Italian creamery’s solution to the fresh-cheese challenge: produce it in California. Northern Italian know-how meets West Coast milk.
Read moreRogue Creamery’s Next Chapter
Rogue Creamery the Oregon producer of some of America’s most acclaimed blue cheeses, has a new partner: the French dairy giant Savencia. Good news? I wasn’t sure. I’ve been a huge fan of Rogue since David Gremmels and Cary Bryant bought it, in 2002, from Ig Vella, whose father founded it. Gremmels and Bryant had zero cheese experience. But Gremmels had the marketing chops and Bryant, who knew microbiology, quickly mastered the cheesemaking. Ig mentored them both until his death in 2011.
Read moreBuffalo Stampede
You’re not imagining it. Buffalo are roaming all over American cheese counters these days. Buffalo ricotta, mozzarella, Camembert, blue. I haven’t spotted a buffalo Cheddar yet, but surely any day now. From a curiosity to (almost) mainstream in a decade, cheese made with rich water-buffalo milk is having its moment. Many are good; a few are great.
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