Fresh mozzarella sales soar in summer, and we all know why. Just look in people’s shopping carts and you can tell what’s on the menu: insalata caprese. Again. At every dinner party, insalata caprese. On every buffet, insalata caprese. I enjoy the dish as much as anyone—especially with homegrown tomatoes—but sometimes I just want to switch it up. With hardly any more effort, you can make some juicy bruschetta for a dinner-party appetizer or quick lunch.
Read moreRisk-Taking Rancher Reaps Rewards
The question I wanted to ask Jack Rudolph and didn’t was what his father thought about his career change. None of my business, but still. I know what MY father would have said if I had had a fancy private-college education and opportunities in high-tech and then chosen to milk goats and make cheese.
Read moreFlower Power
This new cheese reminds me of why I really shouldn’t leave the house without makeup. Mom always said, “It’s what’s on the inside that counts,” but the truth is, appearance does matter. How else to explain why this fabulous cheese languished in the U.S. until the producer got the idea to coat it with herbs and flowers? Since then, the sluggish sales curve has spiked. Where’s my lipstick?
Read moreLights Out
Ah, a perfect wedge of Bleu Mont Dairy bandaged Cheddar, fresh-cut and fabulous. Ideally, every cheese you buy is in such pristine condition. But then there’s real life. Remember that cheese that tasted a little stale, a little cardboardy? Maybe a little bit like the plastic it was wrapped in? Pat Polowsky, a graduate student in food science at the University of Vermont, helped me understand how easily cheese goes rancid atretail. And what can be done about it.
Read moreWaiting for Ripe
It has been many years since Judy Schad released a new cheese, and here’s the three-word review: Worth the wait. Flora, the newbie, joins the other distinguished goat cheeses from Capriole, Schad’s pioneering Indiana creamery. Maybe you think the planet already has plenty of soft-ripened goat cheese, but I’m willing to bet that Flora floats to the top.
Read moreLightning Strikes Twice
Really, what are the chances? Two thousand cheeses in a competition and the Best of Show is a repeater? But that was the case in Denver last weekend when the American Cheese Society judges, tasting blind and scoring independently, awarded top honors to the same cheese that prevailed in 2014. I was among this year’s group of judges so I know the winner was worthy. But I tasted several other newcomers that impressed me almost as much.
Read moreUncommon Vision
Several years ago, at the American Cheese Society conference, I met a young woman who told me she planned to open a shop in San Francisco selling only domestic cheeses. Not smart, I thought. How could a cheese business survive without the European classics? Well, six years in, Sarah Dvorak’s Mission Cheese is so successful that it now has a Berkeley sibling—bigger, more ambitious and likely to launch a national trend. Shouldn’t every community have its own cheese bar?
Read moreHow Do They Do That?
A-may-zing. A terrific aged raw-milk cheese from Switzerland for $20 a pound. If you’re accustomed to paying at least half-again as much for the best Swiss cheeses, you may be asking yourself, “How do they do that?” I know I am. I asked the importer, who had one answer, but he also warned me that the price would likely climb. So now’s your chance.
Read moreEverything but the Bagel
Did you know everything-bagel seasoning was a thing? Me neither. But then I learned about a fresh sheep cheese spiked with it, and the cheesemaker told me she can’t make the spread fast enough. But of course. We love cream cheese on everything bagels. What if we just ditched the bagel?
Read moreLife Lessons at a Cheese School
Kiri Fisher’s cheese journey has been a difficult one, to say the least, marked by tragedy, natural disaster and rude awakenings. But Fisher, the spunky proprietor of the Cheese School of San Francisco and the new Fisher’s Cheese & Wine, which opens this week in California’s Marin County, has yet to hit a pothole she couldn’t get past.
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