{ Janet Fletcher / Food Writer }
Meg Smith Photography
How do you make the world’s best cheese? For one answer, I turned to Marc Druart, master cheesemaker and senior director of R&D for Emmi Roth USA. Roth’s Grand Cru Surchoix scored highest (98.882 points) at this year’s World Championship Cheese Contest, which makes it the World Champion Cheese. I wanted to know how you transform cow’s milk into a wheel that’s just one point shy of perfect.
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Meg Smith Photography
Get a hand lens ready. You’re going to want to take a closer look at this astonishing cheese rind. It is quite the wild kingdom, a thick crust of colorful, coexisting microbes. I’m not sure I have ever seen a more riveting surface on a cheese: suede gray, dusty brown, ivory, powdery yellow and rust.
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The typical grilled cheese sandwich never sees a grill. A panini press, maybe. Or a cast-iron skillet. Or a griddle. But for that flame-kissed taste, you need the grill.
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Meg Smith Photography
The gems from Switzerland just keep on coming. This latest, Vully Rouge, debuted in the U.S. last fall, although it has a 20-year history in Switzerland. Unlike Gruyère, Emmental, Appenzeller and other well-known Swiss cheeses, Vully Rouge is the creation of a single cheesemaker and it has thrived outside the PDO (protected designation of origin) system.
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When several merchants I admire recommend the same new creamery, that’s all the word-of-mouth I need. I may be slow to part with my cheese money but I’m not stupid. After hearing about Boxcarr cheeses for the third or fourth time, I bought a Boxcarr cheese. Then I tried another, and another—all of them good. Who are these people?
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Peggy Smith (left) and Sue Conley
Last week, Cowgirl Creamery co-founders Sue Conley and Peggy Smith announced the sale of their business to Swiss dairy giant Emmi. Emmi bought everything: the two retail cheese shops (in San Francisco and Point Reyes Station); the two creameries that turn out Mt. Tam, Red Hawk and the rest of the Cowgirl repertoire; and Tomales Bay Foods, the affiliated distribution company. Conley and Smith will continue to run the enterprise.
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My fava bean crop was a disaster this year—diseased leaves, low yield. I have no clue why, but the best gardener I know had the same issues so I’m not taking it personally. The upshot is that I have had to be miserly with the favas and the harvest is ending way too soon. In my garden, it’s now or never.
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New York’s Meadowood Farms specializes in sheep’s-milk cheese, which means the creamery is idle for several months each year. Sheep don’t produce milk year-round in any case, and Meadowood’s practice is to milk them only when they’re on pasture. In Cazenovia, just east of the Finger Lakes, that’s a lot of down time.
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If ever a cheese had promising genes, it would be this Wisconsin goat Cheddar. Introduced earlier this year, Trivium has more than two parents, actually—but that hardly raises eyebrows these days. “It’s the love child of our threesome,” claims Arnaud Solandt, one of the dads.
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With strawberries getting better by the week, it’s time to make fresh ricotta. You can do it. All you need is an instant-read thermometer and liquid rennet. Start to finish, the process takes less than 45 minutes. Imagine how good that first spoonful of warm, fluffy ricotta is going to taste.
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