Eight years have passed since I wrote about Sharpham Rustic in the San Francisco Chronicle, and I have hardly seen this lovely cheese since. Why it isn’t more popular eludes me. The price has not budged on this English farmstead beauty. I paid $22.99 a pound then, which probably seemed like a lot, and $22.99 a pound recently, which now seems like a bargain.
Read moreEasy as Pie →
Years ago, the best cheese shops used to sell a baked ricotta imported from Italy. It had a pale, firm, sliceable interior and a dark, crusty skin. I haven’t seen baked ricotta in years, and even back then, it appeared so sporadically and unpredictably that I eventually decided to recreate it myself. Apart from draining the ricotta, which takes a few hours, it’s a five-minute recipe.
Read moreWhere the Bufala Roam →
For years, the only buffalo-milk cheese available in the U.S. was Italian mozzarella di bufala. It came from the Campania region around Naples, where the water buffalo were. But that’s rapidly changing.
Read moreAll Washed Up →
About 20 years ago, a small group of French shepherds who supplied sheep’s milk for Roquefort decided to break away and establish their own creamery. A risky venture, certainly, but they were unhappy with the Roquefort system and thought they could bring more value to their milk if they made their own cheese.
Read moreTriangle Love →
Created with chefs in mind, Bermuda Triangle appears on a lot of restaurant menus but not so often at retail. So when a local cheese merchant told me he had some, I leaped on it. I hadn’t tasted Bermuda Triangle in years.
Read moreTable for Two →
Somewhere it is cold outside. Not here in Napa Valley, but somewhere. This balmy winter has all the plants confused; someone just told me they saw a pomegranate blooming, which is about four months early.
Read moreLittle Stinker →
I hope you like strong cheese. This sweet-looking little guy had to move into the isolation ward at my house when it threatened to stink up everything in sight. I enjoy that decaying-mushroom smell at dinner time, but not when I open the fridge to hunt for breakfast. My husband couldn’t take it, either, so he put the cheese, still in its cardboard box, inside another lidded container and banished it to the outdoor fridge.
Read moreShow Time →
Amid the endless jams, honeys, pickled fruits, syrups, crackers and other accompaniments for cheese at last week’s Fancy Food Show in San Francisco, these glamorous Italian mustard fruits (mostarda) stood out. Aren’t they lovely? If you are assembling a cheese board for a special occasion, consider investing in a jar. (They’re not cheap.) Or take a jar to a cheese enthusiast when you’re invited to dinner.
Read moreIn a Bleu Mood →
With Roquefort so dominant in the French blue-cheese niche, it’s hard for alternative French blues to gain traction here. But Roquefort producers have tangled with the FDA in recent months, and some producers are no longer shipping it. That leaves a little more shelf space for delights like Bleu des Causses, a sublime and underappreciated cave-aged wheel from the same region.
Read moreWelcome Back, Mimolette →
After an absence of more than a year, the pumpkin-hued Mimolette is back. I spotted it at Bay Area cheese counters at holiday time—with that screaming orange interior, you can’t miss it—and retailers told me it was selling briskly. But they couldn’t explain why the FDA had apparently softened its stand on this dangerous import.
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