{ Janet Fletcher / Food Writer }
Roasted Concord Grapes with St. Agur/adapted from The Art of the Cheese Plate
Sixteen years ago, I wrote a cookbook inspired by some of the enticing cheese plates I was seeing in restaurants. That little book, The Cheese Course, is still in print, but restaurant cheese plates have since evolved into a platform for competitive creativity that I could never have imagined. Two new books—both from New York City cheese authorities—demonstrate the state of the art.
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Move over, mozzarella. Burrata—a cheese that most Americans had never heard of a decade ago—is summer’s breakout star. I know that from restaurant menus, from observing grocery carts and from these stats from Di Stefano Cheese, the Southern California burrata producer whose product I adore:
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When Daphne Zepos died, too young, in 2012, she left behind a cheese-import company and a business partner dedicated to perpetuating what they had started. Essex Street Cheese Company introduced many Americans to fine Comté and aged Gouda hand-selected from the best French and Dutch cellars.
A year after her death from cancer, Zepos’s business partner Jason Hinds traveled to the Greek island of Sifnos to assist friends and family in spreading her ashes. While there, he had an epiphany.
Read moreRebecca King makes some excellent aged cheeses in California’s Monterey County with milk from her 100 ewes. But if you want to taste her fresh cheese, Sweet Alyssum, now’s the moment. In early October, her flock will start a two-month sabbatical, resting up for the lambing season that begins in December.
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Many cheesemakers and brewers know that their products are better together. But lately some American artisan cheesemakers are taking the relationship further. By washing their cheese with local brews, they’re producing some unique one-off wheels that deserve a permanent place in the firmament. Jasper Hill’s Gose-Washed Willoughby, part of a new beer-themed series from this Vermont creamery, proves how rewarding the collaboration can be.
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Raw-milk beauties: Scharfe Maxx and Bleating Heart Fat Bottom Girl/Meg Smith Photography
It’s looking like the days are numbered for the FDA’s 60-day rule. Introduced in 1949 to protect public health, the regulation requires all cheeses—domestic or imported—made with unpasteurized milk to be matured for at least 60 days. Conventional wisdom held that cheeses aged that long would be too dry, acidic or salty to harbor deadly bacteria like Listeria and Salmonella.
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Cheese champ: Chris Roelli
For cheesemaker Chris Roelli, last week’s American Cheese Society “Best of Show” ribbon must feel like sweet vindication. Roelli spent years trying to persuade his father to get back in the business after the elder Roelli shuttered his Wisconsin cheese plant in 1991. The family had struggled to make a living producing commodity Cheddar and other low-priced cheese—the type that ends up shredded on a fast-food taco. “When we closed the doors, we were making literally a penny a pound,” Chris told me.
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Bayley Hazen Blue|Meg Smith Photography
Developing a taste for cheese is easy. Understanding cheese science? Not so much. The chemistry behind cheese is complex and still holds many mysteries for dairy scientists. Recently, I stumbled on a new blog, Cheese Science Toolkit, aimed expressly at people like me—people ill-equipped to wade through technical journals but hungry for more detail than the popular press gives.
Read moreSuch a sad moment for France right now and for those of us who kick-started our culinary careers there. I first learned to appreciate cheese as a college student in Provence—I certainly didn’t grow up with the good stuff—and I had my first encounter with a cheese course in France. At farmers’ markets in Aix-en-Provence, I discovered goat cheeses as quivery as custard and others as hard as rocks. And I began to suspect that I would never exhaust the country’s cheese repertoire.
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Mostly goat: Velvet Sister
Nothing makes cheese taste better than seeing the place where it’s made. Alas, most American creameries don’t welcome visitors. Sanitation is the main issue, and few small producers have the staff for tours. But in California’s scenic Anderson Valley, Pennyroyal Farmstead Cheese is charting a different course. In March, the three-year-old Boonville creamery opened a tasting room and began offering tours. From anywhere, it’s worth the journey.
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