Cheddar’s Best Friend

November 19, 2019 janet@janetfletcher.com

After the turkey: Cranberry-pear chutney with Cheddar — **After the turkey:** Cranberry-pear chutney with Cheddar

I’ve been making cranberry-pear chutney for Thanksgiving for more than 20 years. I love my recipe, but it produces a lot. It calls for the whole bag of cranberries (may as well), plus pears, raisins, fresh ginger, walnuts. We eat it all weekend with leftover turkey, but it’s also terrific with cheese. Cheddar, Gouda, aged sheep cheese. If you’re a guest for Thanksgiving, bring this chutney with you and I bet you’ll be asked back.

After the Recall

November 12, 2019 janet@janetfletcher.com

his past summer, Consider Bardwell’s Goatlet catapulted to glory. For the third time in three years, it placed first in its category at the prestigious American Cheese Society judging. Four months later, the Vermont farm has ceased cheesemaking and its future is in doubt. A positive Listeria test in late September, every cheesemaker’s nightmare, led to a voluntary recall that could doom this 18-year-old enterprise. I didn’t really think co-owner Angela Miller would want to talk about this painful episode, but she surprised me. “I would very much like to help others by telling our story,” she said in an e-mail.

100-Point Cheese

October 29, 2019 janet@janetfletcher.com

Perfection. You can’t do better than that. For Rogue Creamery’s Rogue River Blue, the perfect score rocketed it to the top of the World Cheese Awards in Bergamo, Italy, earlier this month. A grape leaf-wrapped cow’s milk wheel from Oregon, this luscious blue is now the 2019 World Champion Cheese, the first time a U.S. cheese has earned that honor. Created less than 20 years ago, it vanquished international cheeses with decades of history. Ironically, the winning wheel was not the one that Rogue president David Gremmels intended to enter.

Peak Experience

October 22, 2019 janet@janetfletcher.com

I should have known the creamy cheese at twelve o’clock would be the class favorite. Never bet against a triple-cream. This one was delightful, I agree, but I found more to love in the six aged cheeses that followed—all of them mountain cheeses from Europe, all made with raw milk and animal rennet. So much tradition and expertise represented on one plate!

Next-Gen Urban Creamery

October 15, 2019 janet@janetfletcher.com

What good is cream cheese without bagels? The folks at Tomales Farmstead Creamery had the cream cheese down but couldn’t find a worthy bagel to spread it on. At least that’s the nickel explanation for their leap into the bagel business, with an ambitious new bakery-café in San Francisco. The sprawling former factory they rented was big enough for a little cheesemaking, too. So now San Franciscans have their own urban creamery whipping up cultured butter, cream cheese, quark, ricotta and ghee. Plus warm bagels. And craft beer. Hungry yet?

What Goes with Cheese?

September 24, 2019 janet@janetfletcher.com

Cabot Clothbound Cheddar with Nectarine and Serrano Jam

When I was first introduced to fine cheese—in France, many years ago—it came with nothing. At least that’s my recollection. Just beautiful cheeses, as many as you wanted from the restaurant trolley, with more fresh-sliced baguette in the breadbasket. Now, in the Instagram age, a cheese board with cheese alone looks naked and pitiful. Where are the nuts, the honeycomb, the preserves, the pickles, the locally made artisan crackers?

Butter of the Gods

September 16, 2019 janet@janetfletcher.com

If my recent lunch at Edge had concluded with the bread and butter, I would have been happy. Of course, it didn’t—several fabulous courses followed—but it was the house-made pain au levain and cultured butter I couldn’t get out of my head. I knew I couldn’t reproduce this Sonoma restaurant’s bread, which John McReynolds, Edge’s culinary director, spent many months perfecting, but I figured the butter might be within my skill set. What gave it such incredible flavor? In a word: cheese.

Teleme in Trouble

August 27, 2019 janet@janetfletcher.com

One of California’s iconic cheeses is in danger of extinction. Lights out. No more. Franklin’s Teleme has already been MIA since late last year, when Franklin Peluso reluctantly ceased making his supple cow’s milk classic, a former American Cheese Society Best of Show. The 74-year-old cheesemaker, whose grandfather devised the original recipe, has been trying to revive production ever since, with no luck.

Rind by Design

July 30, 2019 janet@janetfletcher.com

For me, the standout cheese at last year’s American Cheese Society competition was a new hay-covered Vermont beauty named Calderwood. Entering for the first time, Calderwood placed second in a field of 1,800 entries. An auspicious debut, but frustrating for its new fans because almost nobody could get the cheese. One year later, distribution has improved; I have a big piece in my kitchen. (We’ll taste it in my upcoming cheese and beer class.) And I’m headed for this year’s ACS conference in Richmond, VA, where we’ll see if lightning strikes twice for Calderwood.

Happy Birthday, America!

July 1, 2019 janet@janetfletcher.com

Raspberries, blueberries, ricotta…what could be more American? Italian immigrants are a huge part of America’s cheesemaking story, past and present. They brought their know-how and taste memories with them and created their own made-in-America interpretations of mozzarella, burrata, Fontina, Gorgonzola and Parmigiano-Reggiano. What would American cheese counters be today without the Swiss, German, Dutch, Portuguese and Mexican immigrants who arrived with little besides their work ethic and built our cheese factories and dairy farms? Let’s toast all these hyphenated Americans on the Fourth of July.