A silky flan strikes me as just the right, light finale for a candlelit dinner for two. This one, with ricotta, is the love child of crème caramel and cheesecake. I have made it often, following the recipe in A Fresh Taste of Italy by Michele Scicolone.
Read moreWe Have a Winner
She is California’s first-ever winner of the Cheesemonger Invitational, and she prevailed in a landslide. Jessica Lawrenz, you rock. The 32-year-old monger from San Diego vanquished 34 other contestants from around the country in this grueling test of talent. She cut, she wrapped, she paired, she plated. And then, she almost blew it.
Read moreTea Time
If you think chamomile is just for tea, meet Camilla. This raw-milk gem from Northern Italy, with its chamomile cloak, deftly marries innovation with tradition. Friends who tell you they don’t like goat cheese will have to reboot after tasting this one.
Read moreGouda at Last
Where’s the Gouda? Every time I see the Giacomini sisters who own Point Reyes Farmstead Cheese, I nag them. Every time I see their cheesemaker, Kuba Hemmerling, I nag him. Where is that aged Gouda you said you were making? I’ve been asking about it for years. They’ve been stonewalling me for years. And now, ladies and gentlemen, the Gouda.
Read moreSnack Attack
Shortly before I piled the cheese curds on a platter, sprinkled them with homegrown Espelette pepper and surrounded them with olives, I learned that this was a really lame idea. Cheese curds are supposed to be scarfed down like popcorn, straight from the bag. “They’re the potato chips of dairy,” says Jeanne Carpenter, a cheesemonger in Madison and authority on Wisconsin cheese. Obviously, I did it anyway, because fresh curds are rare where I live and worth some ceremony, and these were the best I had ever had.
Read moreTen Under $20
(l to r): Raschera, Taleggio, St. George, Campo de Montalban, Chevre in Blue
Yikes. Does your credit-card balance look like mine? I know January sends many of us into fits of austerity, but cutting back doesn’t have to mean cutting out. Keep eating cheese! I prowled my local cheese counters for tasty options under $20 a pound and had no trouble assembling a list of worthy contenders. These ten selections deliver amazing value and most of them are in shops year-round.
Read moreSleeper Hits of 2016
The nation’s cheese merchants know better than anyone which new cheeses are about to catch fire. They sample dozens of newcomers during the year, fall in love with some and—perhaps more important—discover which ones click with consumers.
Read moreCrunch Time
Maybe you have made gougères in the past. Maybe you like your recipe. But you’re going to like this one better. I got it from Napa Valley caterer Sarah Scott, who cooks dinner parties for a lot of the local wine families. If I’m invited to a party and find Sarah in the kitchen, I am so happy. Her gougères are perfection: crunchy outside, airy within. With that first glass of sparkling wine, they’re just what you want.
Read moreIt’s Back!
Meg Smith Photography
Two years (and then some) without the luscious Gabriel Coulet Roquefort. How did we survive? Now this much-missed Roquefort is back in the U.S., armed with all the lab analyses and clean bills of health that the FDA requires. If you were worried about consuming France’s most famous blue cheese (I wasn’t), worry no longer. Imported raw-milk cheeses like Roquefort get more scrutiny than raw chicken, and you can guess which one has the better safety record.
Read moreThree's No Crowd
Meg Smith Photography
Does the world need another truffled cheese? Probably not, in my estimation. Too often, these cheeses seem gimmicky to me, with a heavy-handed or artificial truffle scent and unremarkable cheese underneath. Oh, but wait. I think I’ve just found the star of your New Year’s Eve cheese tray.
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