I live in a pretty food-savvy place (Napa Valley) so I was surprised when nobody at my local supermarket knew where the crème fraîche was. The clerks didn’t even know what it was. I finally located some in the store but it wasn’t the product I was hoping for, from nearby Bellwether Farms. It was a French brand I had never tried. And OMG, was it amazing. I needed it for an ice cream recipe but kept sneaking little spoonfuls.
Read moreSuperstar New Cheeses from Europe
“How many cheeses do you have to eat to become a cheese expert?” someone asked me recently. As if there’s a checklist. I’m not counting, but I did add several remarkable new cheeses to my life list last week. I led a tasting of “New Arrivals from Europe,” including the beauty pictured above, and I was blown away by these newcomers.
Read moreCacio e Pepe Croutons? Genius.
Meg Smith Photography
Leave it to John McConnell, one of my favorite Napa Valley chefs, to dream up a new take on cacio e pepe. How did grated pecorino plus black pepper became America’s favorite flavor? It’s everywhere. Cacio e pepe potato chips. Cacio e pepe pizza. Cacio e pepe pasta sauce in a jar. (No, thanks.) McConnell anticipated this trend with his cacio e pepe croutons, which perk up the Caesar he serves at the Bruschetteria food truck in St. Helena.
Read moreBuzziest Creamery in America
Top: Linedeline (left) and Shabby Shoe; bottom (l to r): Sunny Ridge, Afterglow and St. Germain
In last week’s post, I polled retailers around the country about their favorite new American cheeses. Laura Downey, who owns the Greenwich Cheese Shop and Fairfield Cheese Shop in Connecticut, replied immediately. “Veronica Pedraza is making some of the best cheese in the U.S. at the moment,” wrote Downey. Wow. I’ve written about Pedraza before but not since her latest career move: to a new goat farm and creamery in Wisconsin, where she has creative freedom and an employer with deep pockets. Time for an update on this rock-star cheesemaker and what seems like the “buzziest” creamery in America.
Read moreBest New American Cheeses? Ask a Monger
Monger favorite: Alemar Cheese Apricity
After a long pandemic pause, American creameries are launching new cheeses again. Hooray! Optimism is trouncing uncertainty and yielding some exciting newcomers for our cheese boards. American Cheese Month—that would be May—is a great time to celebrate this creativity and encourage our cheesemakers to keep at it. I asked some of the nation’s leading retailers to name a new domestic cheese that they’re loving. Consider this your bucket list for the months ahead.
Read moreDutch Sheep Cheese for Gouda Fans
You don’t see sheep cheese from the Netherlands every day, so I leaped on this one as soon I learned of it. The Dutch make mountains of cow’s milk cheese—about 2 billion pounds a year—but not much else. Goat cheese amounts to less than three percent of the country’s production and sheep cheese is barely a blip. But maybe that’s changing. Ewephoria, a sheep Gouda crafted for the American market about 20 years ago, found an instant fan club (not surprising—it’s like cheese candy), and this newcomer deserves a warm welcome, too. Made with organic milk and matured for six to eight months in the Treur Kaas cellar, this Gouda-like beauty—christened Beppie—is as creamy as a caramel.
Read moreRind Your Own Business
If there’s one question I can count on getting in every cheese tasting I lead, it’s “Can you eat the rind?” I used to have a convoluted answer. Then Mateo Kehler, the wise man behind Vermont’s Jasper Hill Farm (along with his brother Andy), distilled it. “Rind your own business” is Kehler’s concise version of what I was trying to convey: Try the rind. If you like it, keep eating it. If you don’t, cut it away. Kehler also told me that he works harder on achieving a perfect rind than on any other aspect of his cheese.
Read moreCorsican Treasure
My husband and I spent three weeks in Corsica a few years ago (do it!), and our visit happened to coincide with a two-day cheese fair celebating the island’s shepherds. We ate a lot of rustic and wonderful sheep cheese and I met at length with Catherine Le Beschu, then the director of an organization that was trying to protect these vanishing cheeses. She told me, to my surprise, that Corsicans don’t eat the herb-coated sheep cheese that is the island’s most famous export. Fleur du Maquis (pictured above) and Brin d’Amour—so similar they’re often mistaken for each other—are insanely delicious so I don’t get why Corsicans disdain them.
Read moreGoat Cheese for the Big Leagues
Gran Capra—"big goat cheese”—is certainly that. You rarely see goat cheeses in large formats, nothing close to an 80-pound Parmigiano Reggiano or Gruyère. But “rarely” doesn’t mean never, and here’s proof that hefty goat cheeses are technically possible. Weighing in at about 50 pounds, this one may well be in a league of its own and, flavorwise, I can’t think of another cheese quite like it. Some shoppers may look at Gran Capra and see a grating cheese—an alternative to Parmigiano for people with cow’s milk allergy or intolerance—but I view it as a compelling table cheese, especially with a few drops of fine balsamic vinegar.
Read moreKhachapuri at Any Cost
What’s your personal inflation marker? For a lot of folks, it’s the price of gas or, these days, the soaring price of a dozen eggs. In the Republic of Georgia, I was amused to learn, it’s the cost of khachapuri, the gooey cheese bread that is a daily staple in this small nation.
Read more