It’s A (Cheese) Marathon

January 23, 2018 janet@janetfletcher.com

Thirsty Bear Kazlov Stout with Rogue Creamery Smokey Blue / Ina Maria Bagne

If you want to get your Ph.D. in cheese and beer pairing, join me at Thirsty Bear, the San Francisco brewpub, for the ninth annual Cask & Queso on February 16. This is a marathon: Seventeen craft beers paired with seventeen cheeses. Good thing I’ve been in training. Even if you can’t go, you might be intrigued by some of the matches [link to post] from previous years. The Thirsty Bear team really gets it. No wonder this event, part of San Francisco Beer Week, always sells out.

Calling It Quits

January 16, 2018 janet@janetfletcher.com

I’m sad when any American cheesemaker shuts the doors, but especially someone as talented, spunky and ambitious as Wendy Mitchell. Mitchell’s ten-year-old Avalanche Cheese Company, in Colorado, won a heap of blue ribbons for its goat cheeses. Mitchell had an impressive record in business. What on earth happened?

Dutch Treat

January 9, 2018 janet@janetfletcher.com

Even dinner guests who tell me they detest goat cheese tend to devour the goat Gouda I serve. “This is goat cheese??” they’ll say, astonished by how sweet, silky and mellow it is. Yay! Another convert. How can you not love a cheese that tastes like it’s halfway down the path to candy? A fine goat Gouda like Brabander deserves to be loved by everybody, not just people with cow’s-milk allergies. Dutch rock-star retailer Betty Koster oversees the long aging, so no wonder it’s fabulous. Grab your cheese plane and a jar of fig jam and get to know one of The Netherlands’ tastiest exports.

Where’s the Soup?

January 2, 2018 janet@janetfletcher.com

I can hardly complain about the cold weather in Napa Valley. But still, my calendar says soup. Mushroom soup, minestrone, puree of everything-in the vegetable-bin soup. If it’s chilly where you are, make soup, and then bake up some flaky, tender Cheddar Chive Scones to go with it. Thirty minutes, start to finish.

Sleeper Hits of 2017

December 26, 2017 janet@janetfletcher.com

Seasoned greetings: Deer Creek The Blue Jay

American cheese merchants know they can sell triple-cream Brie without lifting a finger. But what fun is that? The best merchants take risks, bringing in new creations and unfamiliar cheeses that required some hand selling. And every year, a few of these newcomers click with customers and sprint away from the pack. I asked several top retailers from around the country about the new (or newish) cheeses that over-delivered for them this year.

Tarts on Fire

December 19, 2017 janet@janetfletcher.com

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.

This is Progress?

December 12, 2017 janet@janetfletcher.com

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.

Don’t Throw That Away!

December 5, 2017 janet@janetfletcher.com

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.

Sheep Without Borders

November 28, 2017 janet@janetfletcher.com

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.

Iowa's a Blue State Again

November 21, 2017 janet@janetfletcher.com

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.