Crème fraîche makes the most luscious deviled eggs, a discovery I made only recently. For a client who needed some holiday recipes, I was playing around with ways to dress up stuffed eggs without resorting to budget-busting caviar. I landed on crème fraîche, which gives the filling a subtle tang, and smoked trout on top to make them festive. Eureka. Open a sparkling wine or a Riesling and reboot your Thanksgiving relish tray with these two-bite beauties.
Read morePumpkin Cheesecake Encore
The definition of eternity, they say, is two people and a ham. I’m recalling that wisecrack as I contemplate the Thanksgiving menu for my bubble of two. Cenk Sönmezsoy’s luscious pumpkin cheesecake has become a holiday tradition at our house, but it serves a dozen at least. My husband and I could polish it off, I have no doubt, but I’d rather take that option off the table. So I wanted to try to cut the recipe down—for my own sake and for those of you who might also be having a smallish gathering this year.
Read moreThe Soup We Need
Nothing is predictable as I write this except that we’re in for an emotional week. Soup to the rescue. It nourishes, soothes and sustains us, and a bean soup like this one even waits for us. Make it now, enjoy it later. The fat Greek white beans called gigandes produce an especially creamy result, but chickpeas, cannellini beans or cranberry beans would be just as successful in this recipe. I crumble feta on top (of course I do), and garnish with pickled Greek peperoncini for some zip.
Read morePeak Season
If you enjoy Swiss mountain cheeses, get yourself to a shop in the next few weeks for some of the best cheese we get from Switzerland all year. Retailers across the country are just starting to receive wheels from the Alp they “adopted” several months ago, sight unseen. The eight-year-old Adopt-an-Alp [http://www.adopt-an-alp.com/learn#Abou] program links traditional Swiss cheesemakers—the kind who make cheese only in summer in remote high-elevation huts—with American merchants who want to support these practices. We consumers get to experience phenomenal raw-milk cheeses that hardly ever left their region before. Don’t procrastinate; these gems go fast.
Read moreEverybody Loves a Winner
Has so much deliciousness ever been assembled on Zoom? Sixteen blue-ribbon cheeses. Four tastings. The best of the best. Oh, and a bonus cheese on the final evening. That’s the new “Cheese O’Clock” series in a nutshell, folks. My co-conspirator in cheese, Laura Werlin , and I hope you will join us for this virtual cheese party/cheese class/deep dive. We’re tasting exclusively American Cheese Society Blue Ribbon Winners, grouped into four themed tastings
Read moreWhiz-Kid Cheese
Sixteen-year-old cheesemaker Avery Jones has another hit on her hands. Last year, the California teenager took a top award at the American Cheese Society competition for Aries , her first entry. Her latest debut, a bloomy-rind sheep cheese called Leo, looks destined for a bright future, too. As if these whiz-kid achievements weren’t enough to impress, Avery recently presented a check for $2,200—five percent of her sales—to AmpSurf, a nonprofit with personal meaning for her.
Read moreWhat Goes with Cheese?
Autumn duo: Jasper Hill Farm Whitney with apple chutney
Americans didn’t pioneer the practice of pairing cheese with condiments, but we have certainly embraced it. When I teach cheese-appreciation classes, I can count on being asked, “What should I pair with this cheese?” I’m Old School and believe that good cheese is perfectly complete by itself, yet the condiments keep coming and I have to admit that they make a cheese platter more beautiful and, to some, more enticing. While sampling some new American-made mostarda, I flashed back to some of my earliest experiences with the cheese course, as a 22-year-old in France, where I encountered some firm “do’s and don’ts” about the plâteau de fromages.
Read moreCheese Judging in Covid Times
No Summer Olympics. No James Beard Awards, at least not for chefs. No American Cheese Society conference. Not even a Miss America pageant. We’re becoming so accustomed to events being canceled that’s its noteworthy when they aren’t. When the Good Food Awards Foundation announced that it was moving forward with its annual competition and awards, I was pretty skeptical, because…well…tasting. In groups. But they figured it out. I was a Good Foods Awards cheese judge last weekend and the crazy scheme worked.
Read moreIs That Shipping Charge Too High?
One of these days, we’ll feel totally comfortable with going into cheese shops again. In the meantime, a lot of us are ordering online. As you can imagine, shipping cheese is not remotely like shipping books. Novels don’t need gel packs and insulated boxes. If your book gets stalled in a warm warehouse over a weekend, no harm done. A Planet Cheese reader recently complained to me about a merchant’s shipping charge, so I thought I would dig a little more deeply. Are sellers raking it in on the shipping, or does it really cost that much to get the Brie to you?
Read moreTrio of Lovelies
For all those who say they don’t like goat cheese, here are three to change their mind. I would bet on it. How can you not love these beauties? I get why people dislike those chalky, overly tart fresh chèvres that smell like a goat barn. I don’t like them either. But goat cheese can be silky, sweet, nutty and mellow, with an aroma like pale caramel. These three gems (one is mixed milk) are absolutely worth the hunt—each an original creation made by a single producer.
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