You read it here first: Tarte flambée is the pastry trend of the year. I’m seeing it everywhere—okay, three places lately—and I’m so happy it’s having a moment because I’ve loved this Alsatian specialty forever. For New Year’s Eve with the first glass of Champagne…well, that’s my plan anyway. I’m pretty pleased with my recipe. Even in a home oven, the crust comes out super-crisp around the edges, with creamy fromage blanc, onions and smoky bacon on top.
Read moreThis is Progress?
My home library is stuffed with cheese books. (You’re surprised?) I have cheese books that make me hungry and dry dairy-science textbooks that don’t. I have cheese cookbooks, encyclopedias, compendiums and memoirs. I have cheese books in four languages. But I don’t have any cheese books as smart, provocative and well written as the new Reinventing the Wheel: Milk, Microbe, and the Fight for Real Cheese by Bronwen Percival and Francis Percival.
Read moreDon’t Throw That Away!
One of my first jobs in the food world was working for a French pastry chef. I was just the cashier for his bakery, but I hung out in the back a lot. The best lesson I learned from Marcel was not to waste. He would use his thumb to scrape the last drop of egg white out of the egg shell. (“That’s the profit,” he would tell me.) No wonder I never throw away chard stems or Parmigiano-Reggiano rinds. The cheese rinds add body and flavor to bean soup, and I’ve recently learned that they make amazing stock.
Read moreSheep Without Borders
And now for something completely different. Swiss producer. Raw sheep’s milk. Washed rind. I don’t know of any cheese that fits that description other than the one you’re about to meet. Oh, and the milk is organic and from French Basque sheep transported to the Swiss Alps. They don’t seem to mind: the views are great, and the shepherds speak French. The ewes quickly adapted, and the cheese made with their milk is one-of-a-kind.
Read moreIowa's a Blue State Again
Welcome back, Maytag Blue. We’ve missed you. Just in time for holiday cheese boards, this beloved Iowa product has returned to shops. It has been almost two years since Maytag Dairy Farms suspended production, in the aftermath of a positive test for Listeria in two lots of cheese. (No related illnesses were ever reported.) The road back has been longer and costlier than the owners imagined, but they managed to find a silver lining in this traumatic experience.
Read moreYour Next Favorite Cheesecake
Spoiler alert for my Thanksgiving guests: We’re having cheesecake for dessert. This cheesecake, which could be the best cheesecake ever. From the most beautiful baking book ever. Last month, 13 pastry chefs came to my house with desserts they had made from this stunning new book, and I heard the most raves for the pumpkin cheesecake. If I can make it—and I did for this photo—so can you. What’s Thanksgiving without pumpkin? And what’s a meal without cheese?
Read moreHealing Power of Cheese
Mood lifter: Tomme de Fontenay
Last month’s wine-country wildfires were cruelest to those who lost loved ones or their homes, but those with businesses in the affected areas are also struggling. What will the future look like for a cheese counter whose best patrons are temporarily homeless? One highly regarded Sonoma County cheesemonger took a particularly big hit.
Read moreCheese for the People
Courtesy of the Cheese Board Collective
Chez Panisse may be the superstar of Berkeley’s Gourmet Ghetto, but The Cheese Board was there first. Fifty years ago, a young couple opened a tiny shop in an alleyway in North Berkeley, stocking it with cheeses they selected by paging through a distributor’s catalog. The first day’s gross was $95. “You’re going to make it,” predicted an initially skeptical Alfred Peet, whose Peet’s Coffee was next door.
Read moreYour Cheese & Beer Checklist
Here they are: the five cheese-and-beer pairings to try before you die. No rush, right? You have time. But please don’t wait to try these duos. They are fall-weather friendly, and each is practically a religious experience. Let’s just say these are no-fail, road-tested, unimpeachable pairings, and I want to share them with you in time for the party season. So you have homework to do, but here’s the study guide. You’re welcome.
Read moreCheese Raises Dollars for Napa Disaster
It has been quite the week here in smoky Napa. The least of my worries was that I had to cancel a cheese class, leaving me with 12 pounds of fabulous cheese in the fridge. Nothing to do but donate it to an evacuation center or to the nearby first-responders’ station.
To my chagrin, neither would take it. “We can’t take perishables,” the evacuation center worker told me. “We have a caterer,” the guard at the first-responders’ camp said. Okay, then. Reject my cheese. I have a better idea.
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