Ever eat a slice of cheese but stop at the rind, unsure of whether or not it's safe for human consumption? Zoe Brinkley of New York City-based cheese shop Murray's Cheese reassures you that yes, you should try eating the rind ("Do you like it? Then eat more. Do you have wax and shreds of cloth in your teeth? Don't eat that one"), before going on to identify different rinds and why they exist. Look at the Affineur's Concept Map to get a quick glance at cheese taxonomy.
For all you Seattleites and those from neighboring areas in the Pacific Northwest, the 2008 Seattle Cheese Festival starts tomorrow and runs through Sunday afternoon. Held outdoors every year at the wonderful Pike Place Market, the fourth annual Seattle Cheese Festival is open to the public, has a suggested admission of $1, and represents one of the largest gatherings of cheese aficionados in the country.
On display (and available for sampling) are hundreds of cheeses from around the world, and for the more serious turophiles, there are seminars and panels, cooking demonstrations, a wine garden and a children’s scavenger hunt. (Seminars, panels, and the wine garden have additional admission fees.)
Our Quebecois cousins to the North may speak a different language and enjoy the solace of universal health-care, but when it comes to comfort food their North American tendencies peek through in the form of poutine, a fancy word for cheese fries with gravy.
OK, well they're a little more involved than that. The cheese is really a helping of fresh cheese curds, made soft by the heat of the fries, and the gravy is Canadian-style barbecue chicken gravy, which is quite different than traditional American gravy—dark, thick and vinegary. Last weekend the Boston Globe profiled Chez Ashton, a chain of Quebecois fast food restaurants that many consider as serving the best poutine around.
A reader of my blog wrote me recently with an interesting question:
I work at a Whole Foods in SoCal, we are debating which cheese is rightly called the "King of Cheese." My boss says Reggiano. I disagree, but not in whole. Most sites say Stilton is the "King of Cheese," more so than Reggiano (internet search). However, Stilton is called "the King of English Cheeses" at some sites as well. Would this make Reggiano "the King of Italian Cheeses?" Maybe you can point me in some direction to get this debate settled for me, either way.
I have seen each of these cheeses referred to as the King of Cheese, but I have also seen others as well: Comté, Gruyère, Roquefort. Legendary gourmande Brillat-Savarin apparently dubbed Époisses de Bourgogne the "King of Cheese." Truly, there is no end to the number of cheeses we turophiles are willing to elevate to royal status. But which cheese is the real King of Cheese?
Last year, the New York Times reported about the battle in Normandy over how its beloved Camembert could be made. It was a classic David-meets-Goliath tale of cheesy proportions: on one side you had large dairy operations lobbying the French authorities to allow them to call their cheeses Camemberts even if they had been made with pasteurized milk; on the other side you had the small-scale traditional Norman cheesemakers, still making the cheese from raw milk, ladling every scoopful of curd by hand, trying to fight this change to the decades-old A.O.C. legislation.
Well, the Guardian reported this weekend that David was victorious: A.O.C. Camembert must still be made with raw milk.
The Pop Shop, which offers 31 different grilled cheese variations on their menu, put up a good fight with their sandwich called "The Calvert"--jack cheese, roasted turkey, bacon, avocado, and house dressing (balsamic mayo) on foccacia. Flay countered with his delicious-sounding Grilled Brie and Goat Cheese with Bacon and Green Tomato sandwich. In the end, Flay's sandwich won by a hair, with the judges saying it was a tough decision and that there were no losers.
As I tend to like fresh cheese in spherical form, I was instantly drawn to Marianna's homemade labneh, a creamy, fresh, Middle Eastern cheese made from strained yogurt and preserved in olive oil. Follow Marianna's directions to make it at home; it's part of a typical Middle Eastern breakfast!
With the housing market tanking, financial companies imploding, and the dollar weaker than a gin and tonic on the rocks, some are finding it hard to cough up the small fortune required these days to buy even the most basic artisanal cheese plate. Add to that the stress of Uncle Sam breathing down your neck this time of year, and you'll end up deciding to avoid cheese altogether.
After all, cheese can be quite expensive, and is one of those foods whose quality generally increases with the price. Small dairies cannot take advantage of the economies of scale afforded by a large herd, but, all else being equal, a small dairy will usually make a better cheese, since the farmers and cheesemakers are better able to control quality across the entire operation. So what's a turophile to do during these tough times? Get your hands on Vermont's own Grafton Village Cheddar.
As an American kid the phrase "curds and whey" entered my vocabulary at a bizarrely early age, though I had no idea what it meant. If cheese was a slick square-shaped orange sheet wrapped in clear plastic, then curds and whey must certainly have been some strange agrarian relic of a bygone era. So I was really shocked to learn, from Mr. Wizard of all people, that curds and whey was simply a stodgier term for a very normal food: cottage cheese.
I have always been fond of cottage cheese, an admittedly simple food whose milky sweet taste almost plays second billing to its texture: chunky curds bathed in rich, smooth whey. And even though it pains me to admit it, I can say without irony or apology that there aren't too many food pairs better than cottage cheese and cantaloupe. So when this month's Saveur magazine published a recipe for Ayib Be Gomen (Ethiopian Collard Greens and Cottage Cheese), I felt I had to revisit this versatile staple of the supermarket dairy case.
God knows that if I had a 1200-pound block of cheddar cheese lying around, I'd be tempted to carve it into something. And by "something" I mean "a mangled lump," not a detailed replica of the Statue of Liberty—I don't quite have the skill of champion cheese carver Troy Landwehr, who made his cheese statue over the course of four days.
Watch 35 hours of cheese carving condensed into two minutes, after the jump. [via CurdNerds]
Not long ago, the New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission began a program to outfit all yellow cabs with a backseat multifunction TV screen, one that can track the cab's location with GPS, show up-to-the-minute weather reports, and broadcast clips from local news shows. I kind of hate these screens because they make me nauseated (as does reading in cars), but the other day when I happened to see a short clip from ABC news about a local ricotta cheese making operation, I just had to watch.
Despite its status as a tired, dowdy party trick, Fondue remains a seriously delicious way to enjoy cheese. Artisanal Bistro has undoubtedly revived the lost art, offering two regular choices on their menu as well as a fondue of the day, all of which highlight the cheeses themselves in a deeply satisfying way. The classic blend features a mixture of Swiss Alpine cheeses Gruyère, Emmental, and Appenzeller, but this week the Associated Press published a recipe for a low-fat Cheddar and ale fondue that promises to mimic the creamy texture of the real thing using puréed white beans. Curious indeed.
Saturday night I went out to dinner with two friends, one who does not have children and one whose daughter just celebrated her first birthday. The former suggested that I might want to order a certain salad, but the new mother said, “No, she can’t have feta! You can’t eat soft cheese when you’re pregnant.” Sheepishly I thought of the occasional salads with pasteurized feta I had been enjoying at home and asked, “Isn’t it okay if it’s pasteurized?” Granting that her doctor is very conservative, she said she had been told to avoid soft cheeses like feta altogether. The week before at a dinner party, another friend (who is a little farther along in her pregnancy than I am) had mentioned her doctor’s opinion that anything pasteurized was safe.
Understanding what is and is not likely to give me listeriosis has been vexing. There’s a lot of conflicting information out there because there aren’t "safe foods" and "unsafe foods"—just relative levels of risk. My two biggest questions have been, "Can I eat pasteurized soft cheeses? And can I eat raw milk cheeses if they are hard and aged, like Parmigiano Reggiano and Gruyère?" I think I’ve finally worked it out, at least well enough for myself.
Then again, did the dish ever go out of style? As has been mentioned here before, the New York Times stirred up controversy two years ago by publishing a widely popular recipe that flagrantly snubbed béchamel lovers everywhere. Still, a fundamental question goes unanswered: what are the best cheeses to use for this classic dish?
The ongoing revolution in American artisanal cheesemaking really had its origins in the "back to the land" movement of the 1970s and early 1980s. In 1979, Laura Chenel began teaching people in this country that cheese didn't have to be made from cow's milk. Even before that, in the fall of 1975, Mother Earth News ran this wonderfully detailed story about farmstead goat cheesemakers in Andalusia, Spain—an article that I happened to stumble upon this week thanks to the wonders of the web.
I'm assuming this article was aimed at hippie homesteaders experimenting with "off the grid" communal living, but for us plugged-in 21st-century cheese lovers, it offers an amazing glimpse into some truly regional and traditional foodways.
When I first saw this photo of "mshalalé" cheese on Marianna's blog, Swirl and Scramble, I thought it was a bundle of pasta. Marianna explains that the name of the cheese means braids/braided. The cheese, which is from the Middle East around Lebanon, Syria and Jordan, is usually served drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with nigella seeds. She describes the taste as, "not too strong, slightly stronger in taste then mozzarella, firmer and a bit saltier too."
Posted by Jamie Forrest, February 19, 2008 at 11:00 AM
Well it's only February, and 2008 is already living up to its title as the Year of the Cheese Cave. According to an article in last week's Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Fermo Jaeckle, one of the founders of legendary Wisconsin cheese company Roth Käse, has purchased an underground cave that used to be the site of a huge marijuana-growing operation 40 miles northeast of Nashville. Jaeckle, of course, plans to age some serious cheese down there beginning in 2009.
The cave is more than five football fields long, and at 100 feet below the surface of the earth, with stable temperature and humidity, is a perfect place to age cheese. The property was auctioned off last year, and Jaeckle's winning bid was for $285,000, a price he says is well below what he might've paid for it otherwise.
Literally speaking, tomme is French for "wheel of cheese." Unsurprisingly, this not-so-descriptive term is used to refer to a wide array of cheeses, many of which are of medium size and weight and made in the mountains of the Haute-Savoie in France. Across the border, the Italians make a related cheese that has a similar name: toma. But can we get any more specific? Do tommes share any unique qualities that separate them from other varieties?
Posted by Robyn Lee, February 10, 2008 at 12:00 PM
Never before had I seen anything so marvelous that involve melted cheese product until the the nacho cheese fountain graced my monitor. DJ Grocery, creator of the mind-blowing General Tso's Philly cheesesteak, couldn't resist the temptation to fill his wife's chocolate fountain machine with cheese. I hear ya, man...I hear ya.
It turns out cheese fountains areacceptable alternatives to chocolate fountains, along with barbecue sauce fountains and egg nog fountains. However, I'd rather believe that the ideas behind these non-chocolate fountains come about because while staring quizzically at the ornamental food display contraption someone thinks, "Well, I'm gonna fill this with [insert questionable liquifiable food product], and no one's going to stop me."
Posted by Jamie Forrest, February 5, 2008 at 11:00 AM
One of the pitfalls of being a curd nerd in New York City is the brutal reality of having to transport your purchases home from your favorite cheese shop via the always crowded, chronically curmudgeonly subway system. Obviously I don't have the luxury of having a cheese shop anywhere near where I live, and since I never leave a cheese shop without at least one real stinker, this is a chronic issue for me. I have cleared out subway cars as if I haven't bathed for weeks. But I like my cheeses as stinky as they come, and I'm not going to let a little social awkwardness deter me from perfection.
The Super Bowl only comes around once a year, and you've otherwise been doing really well sticking to your New Year's resolution to eat healthier, so why not go a little crazy and make a killer blue cheese dip for your Super Bowl party? The key, of course, is choosing the right blue cheese.
Zoe, the affable affineur at New York's Murray's Cheese, helped me narrow down the selection to a few great contenders. I tested three very different blues with the same base, and it may be surprising but your choice of cheese really does matter.
Posted by Jamie Forrest, January 15, 2008 at 10:30 AM
In their latest newsletter, New York's famed Murray's Cheese has boldly dubbed 2008 the "Year of the Cave." In addition to their regular selection of cheese education classes, they have begun offering tours of their five aging caves to the general public. What a great chance to see some of the skill and magic that go into the practice of affinage, or cheese-aging, from some of the country's most renowned affineurs.
Posted by Jamie Forrest, January 8, 2008 at 10:30 AM
I'm not much a fan of winter in New York. The farmers' market in Union Square is all but shuttered, the weather tends more toward wintry mix than winter wonderland, and night falls even before the local news has kicked off. But there's one thing I look forward to every winter, something that's only available when the temperature drops below 60. I'm speaking of course of Vacherin Mont d'Or, also known as Vacherin du Haut Doubs—a pungently delicious washed-rind cow's milk cheese from the Jura mountains of Switzerland and France.
Posted by Jamie Forrest, January 3, 2008 at 10:45 AM
Michael Claypool and Sasha Davies started Cheese By Hand way back in the spring of 2006 with the mission of visiting American cheesemakers large and small and conducting audio interviews with them about "their craft and their lives." Over the course of that summer they took a cross-country trip starting in Vermont, posting a ton of blog entries and some rough audio files about such esteemed American cheesemakers as Rogue Creamery in Oregon and Crave Brothers in Wisconsin. Yesterday they posted the first completed interview, a conversation with Mateo Kehler of Jasper Hill Farm in Vermont.
Posted by Jamie Forrest, December 18, 2007 at 11:00 AM
A couple weeks back, on a blustery morning at the Union Square Greenmarket, I had a very interesting conversation with Karen Weinberg of 3-Corner Field Farm. A small dairy sheep farm on New York's border with Vermont, 3-Corner Field produces outstanding farmstead sheep's milk cheeses and yogurts. If you can get your hands on their luscious, showstopping bloomy-rind cheese called Shushan Snow, you will not be disappointed.
On this particular Wednesday, Weinberg was also selling a couple of aged Pyrénées-style cheeses, one of which was perfectly smoked by the Monks of New Skete. As we stood teeth-chattering among her hanging sheepskins, the topic of vegetarian cheese came up, and I discovered that Weinberg has some really interesting, if contrarian, ideas about the subject.
"I don't know what I want. I usually like Kraft cheese—do you have any of that kind?" Ask this question to Stephanie Vander Weide at artisanal cheese shop Cowgirl Creamery and she will bust your ignorant ass. Not really. But she will be justifiably annoyed.
Posted by Jamie Forrest, December 11, 2007 at 9:00 AM
The holidays are a great time to serve cheese at all of the 46 parties you're planning to host, but it's also a great excuse to give cheesy gifts to all the curd nerds in your life. And it doesn't just have to be a cheese of the month membership either. Here's our guide to the best in cheese-related holiday gifts, which range in price from ridiculously affordable to stunningly opulent. (Prices don't include shipping unless otherwise noted.)
Posted by Jamie Forrest, December 4, 2007 at 10:15 AM
Clearly someone at Kraft Foods has given the inmates the keys to their asylum. In the latest example of Web 2.0 gimmickry, the company famous for its American pasteurized prepared cheese product has launched a MySpace page calling for video submissions that demonstrate "the simple joy that comes from enjoying a grilled cheese sandwich." The contest, oddly named "Have a Happy Sandwich," lets MySpace users vote for their favorite videos, with the highest vote-getter winning a $50,000 grand prize.
While I love grilled cheese sandwiches as much as the next guy, I just don't see how a campaign like this is will induce me (or anyone else) to buy more Kraft Singles. Then again, the page has attracted more than 2,000 "friends," so what do I know? For me, though, the proof is in the videos, some of which are just too painful to watch.
True Italian mozzarella is made from the sweet, rich milk of the water buffalo. Not to be confused with the American bison, the water buffalo has its origins in Asia and, according to Wikipedia, was introduced to Europe in the Middle Ages by returning Crusaders. Many good cheese shops carry mozzarella di bufala that is flown in fresh from Italy every day, since the shelf life of this wonderful cheese is only 24 to 48 hours. At present there is only one domestic producer creating fresh mozzarella from water buffalo milk: Woodstock Water Buffalo in South Woodstock, Vermont.
Posted by Jamie Forrest, November 12, 2007 at 10:00 AM
Cheeseheads unite! Late last week the Senate began discussing the $286 billion Farm Bill, and reports are surfacing that the current bill includes a plan for increased spending on, among other things, artisan cheeses. The provision, co-sponsored by Senator Patrick Leahy of America's artisanal dairyland, Vermont, would help support this "promising new sector of the dairy industry."
Unfortunately, the bill will probably not be passed in its current form, as the White House has threatened to veto it without significant amendments. Republican Senator Judd Gregg (NH) said, "I'm not sure many Americans would agree that stress assistance programs for farmers or artisan cheese centers are a good use of their hard-earned dollars."
Posted by Jamie Forrest, November 6, 2007 at 10:45 AM
Two weeks back, Fort Collins, Colorado, was ground zero for goat fanatics from all across the country. It was the site of the annual American Dairy Goat Association conference, where every year a competition is held to choose the best goat cheeses in the country. This year's winner was Redwood Hill Farm's California Crottin. Modeled after the Loire Valley's Crottin de Chavignol, California crottin is a tangy, crumbly goat cheese with a pearl-white paste and a subtle, earthy flavor.
Posted by Jamie Forrest, October 30, 2007 at 11:15 AM
Last week officials from the California Department of Food and Agriculture, along with local police, arrested a California couple on "felony cheese manufacturing charges" after they were found with 375 pounds of illegally-manufactured soft cheese at a market in San Bernadino County.
"Bathtub cheese," as it is known on the street, is made by unlicensed cheesemakers (whether in a tub or in a stockpot) and can cause some serious food-poisoning (listeria, E. coli, salmonella) if manufactured under less than sanitary conditions.
Posted by Jamie Forrest, October 23, 2007 at 10:00 AM
Like that of wine, the world of cheese can be very intimidating to the newcomer. So many varieties to choose from, representing a host of different regional specialties, milk types, pasteurization methods, etc. It helps to have a good book to guide you on your cheese explorations, and to that end there are two new books that ought to provide some clarity.
Posted by Jamie Forrest, October 16, 2007 at 10:30 AM
If you want to try your hand at making cheese at home, the easiest one to start with is Ricotta. Ricotta is traditionally made with the whey left over from making mozzarella. In fact, the word ricotta in Italian means "recooked" and refers to the fact that the whey is cooked and curdled again after the first batch of cheese is made. However, it is also possible to make ricotta directly from whole milk, and even store-bought milk works well (whereas with most other cheese, store-bought milk will not curdle properly).
Posted by Jamie Forrest, October 9, 2007 at 12:00 PM
The story of Stichelton is the story of a couple of brave entrepreneurs trying to reclaim a tradition of English cheesemaking that went the way of so many other traditional foodways. In 1989, England suffered an outbreak of gastrointestinal illnesses that was blamed on raw-milk Stilton, a cow's milk blue cheese made in the counties of Derbyshire, Leicestershire, and Nottinghamshire. Subsequently, Stilton cheesemakers decided to switch to using pasteurized milk, and in 1996 the European Commission granted the cheese the status of “protected designation of origin” (PDO). From that moment, if a cheesemaker wanted to create a raw-milk Stilton, he would be legally obliged not to use that name.
Last weekend the small, medieval town of Bra, Italy, about 50 miles south of Torino in the Piedmont, played host to the Slow Food's biennial cheese festival. The festival features cheesemakers from around the world, with special attention given to those producers crafting old recipes and local specialties (as part of Slow Food's Presidia program). The focus of this year's festival, which attracted an estimated 150,000 visitors over four days, was on the cheeses of Eastern Europe.
Hoping to head off regulation that might make their products illegal, several prominent American dairies, including Redwood Hill Farm in Sebastopol, have formed the Raw Milk Cheesemakers Association.
The association aims to ensure the safety of domestic cheeses made from unpasteurized milk by helping members implement safe manufacturing practices.
For consumers with a taste for these cheeses—among them Redwood Hill's goat feta and Jasper Hill Farm's Constant Bliss—the new group may help keep their favorites available. And for raw-milk cheesemakers eager to make the safest product possible, the RCMA could provide expertise.
Posted by Jamie Forrest, September 18, 2007 at 11:15 AM
Huddled in the Champlain Valley, between the Adirondack Mountains to the east and Vermont's Green Mountains to the west, Dancing Cow Farm is producing outstanding raw-milk and organic cheeses after only two years in business. Founded in 2005 by former computer software engineer Steve Getz and his wife Karen, who moved to their 243-acre Vermont property from Eastern Pennsylvania, the farm is so called because of a little dance that their 18 Guernsey and Jersey cows do when they are enjoying a fresh, ungrazed pasture. In fact, all the cheeses they make have dance-related names, like Menuet and Sarabande.
Posted by Jamie Forrest, September 11, 2007 at 1:00 PM
About the author: Jamie Forrest publishes Curdnerds.com from his apartment in Brooklyn, New York, where he lives with his wife, his daughter, and his cheese.
Ed's post from yesterday got me thinking about locally made cheeses, and how lucky I am to be in New York City, close to the prolific cheese-producing areas of the Northeast. The Hudson Valley is filled with cheesemakers, and more open up every year. Coach Farm in Pine Plains, New York, has been around for almost 20 years and makes wonderful fresh and aged goat cheeses, as well as goat milk and yogurt.
Relative newcomer Nettle Meadow Farm in Thurman, New York, makes an amazing triple cream Camembert-style cheese called Kunik that's buttery-rich, tangy, slightly grassy and is made with goat's milk and Jersey cow cream.
Posted by Jamie Forrest, September 4, 2007 at 2:15 PM
Labor Day has just passed, of course, but we should bear in mind the difficult, ceaseless work that goes into making cheese. It requires intense amounts of backbreaking, sometimes tedious effort, from herding the animals to milking them twice a day, from cutting and stirring the curd to flipping the wheels during aging. Cheesemaking also represents an ongoing sanitation challenge; since milk is a veritable feast for bacteria of all kinds, every piece of cheesemaking equipment that comes into contact with it must be diligently washed. Mateo Kehler of Jasper Hill Farm in Vermont has even gone so far as to call cheesemaking "glorified dishwashing."
Posted by Jamie Forrest, August 28, 2007 at 10:30 AM
Last week, English-language culture site The Norway Post published an enlightening article on a rare Norwegian cheese called Gamalost. The name literally means "old cheese," and, according the article, dates back to Viking times, when it was used to "enhance sexual prowess." The cheese, whose odor has been described as reminiscent of an old sock, is, perhaps predictably, losing favor among Norway's youth.
From the article:
"Phewww! That stuff is nasty—smells like my dog's bed, but my Grandpa loves it!" was a typical answer when I asked some teens in Balestand, Norway, if they ate Gamalost cheese.
Posted by Jamie Forrest, August 21, 2007 at 10:45 AM
Wisconsin-based Sargento Foods, the giant industrial cheese producer known for its ubiquitous shredded cheeses, has announced a new line of products available next month called Artisan Blends. This line of bagged shredded cheese will come in six varieties, all of which feature "artisan" cheeses from Wisconsin and Italy: "Parmesan made with Zanetti imported Grana Padano (Italy); Parmesan & Romano made with Grana Padano (Italy); Whole Milk Mozzarella and Whole Milk Mozzarella & Provolone made with Burnett Dairy Whole Milk Mozzarella (Grantsburg, WI); Double Cheddar made using Sharp Cheddar from Maple Leaf (Monroe, WI); and Swiss Blend made with Roth Käse Grand Cru Gruyere (Monroe, WI)."
Posted by Jamie Forrest, August 14, 2007 at 12:45 PM
Updating a story from last week, we talked to Rob Kaufelt, proprietor of Murray's Cheese, for some more details on the deal they struck with The Kroger Company to help expand the grocery chain's specialty cheese selections. Needless to say, we think the following exchange will provide some real excitement for cheese lovers in the Midwest.
Legendary New York City cheesemonger Murray's has just signed a deal with Kroger in which it will help expand the grocery chain's specialty cheese selections. From the press release announcing the pact:
"We're thrilled to be pairing with Kroger," says Rob Kaufelt, President of Murray's Cheese. "As one of the nation's largest retail grocery chains, this opportunity gives Murray's an unprecedented chance to fulfill our mission, which is, simply, to bring great cheese to everyone."
"Our partnership with Murray's allows us to build on their expertise as we expand our cheese offerings for our customers," said Jeff Burt, Vice President of Deli Bakery Merchandising for Kroger.
Each cheese is marked with an alphanumeric code- you can see them on the stickers in the photo. This prevents the judges from knowing for certain what any individual cheese is, who it was made by, etc. Bob and I would taste each cheese together- discuss- complete our judging sheets separately and then move on to the next. A lot of people have asked me about spitting- I found that it didn’t make much of a difference because you’re not taking big bites or many bites of each cheese and spitting out a mouthful of food into a bucket just didn’t work for me. So I pretty much fully ate all of them.
The 2007 American Cheese Societycompetition was one of record-breaking proportions, with a total of 1,208 entries received from 200 companies, a 27 percent increase over last year. This year’s Best in Show award went to Suttons Bay, Michigan, cheesemaker Leelanau Cheese Company for its Aged Raclette. Raclette is both a variety of cheese and a means of serving it. A semi-firm, cow's milk cheese traditionally from the Swiss and French alps, it is usually melted by fire or heat lamp and accompanied by cornichons, pickled pearl onions, and boiled fingerling potatoes. Its great meltability also makes it a wonderful cheese to incorporate into a fondue.
This week the American Cheese Society will hold its annual conference and competition in Burlington, Vermont. The ACS was founded in 1983 to provide "American cheesemakers with educational resources and networking opportunities" and to encourage "the highest standards of cheesemaking." Over those 24 years, the organization has seen the artisanal cheese industry in this country grow immensely; last year's conference in Portland, Oregon, saw record numbers of attendees.
The past ten years have seen an explosion in the production of American artisanal and farmstead cheese. From Laura Chenel’s chèvre, which in the 1970s was one of the first farmstead cheeses to be produced in the United States, to the recent publication of Jeffrey Roberts's Atlas of American Cheese, a guidebook to the hundreds of farms producing excellent domestic cheeses, a culture of great cheese is truly beginning to thrive here. Like the wine renaissance in California in the 1970s, at the heart of the development of fine cheese in the U.S. is a deep respect for French cheeses and cheesemakers, who have been honing their traditional craft for centuries and have even provided training for many of the best cheesemakers in this country.
In fact, concurrent with the explosive growth in domestic cheese has been a comparable expansion in imports of French cheese to America. According to the Cheeses of France Marketing Council, which has recently launched a campaign called Parlez-Vous Fromage to educate American consumers on the variety and quality of French cheeses available here, exports to this country have more than doubled over the past ten years. Clearly our taste for good cheese knows no boundaries, and this increase in consumption of French cheese here in America can only bode well for the continued burgeoning of our domestic production.
I like a well-aged Comté, nutty, fruity and sweet, as well as Époisses, the king of all stinky, runny cheeses. What are your favorite French cheeses?
About the author: Jamie Forrest publishes Curdnerds.com from his apartment in Brooklyn, New York, where he lives with his wife, his daughter, and his cheese.
The Health News Digest is running an informative piece this week on lactose intolerance. According to the article, an estimated 30-50 million Americans (or about 10 to 15 percent of the population) may experience the characteristic symptoms of lactose intolerance. The symptoms are caused by the lack of the enzyme lactase, which breaks down lactose, or milk sugar, into the more digestible simple sugars glucose and galactose. On the flip side you have Jeffrey Steingarten, "the Man Who Ate Everything," who claims that lactose intolerance is an overblown contrivance of a nation of deluded and finicky eaters. Perhaps the truth, as is the case with many things, lies somewhere in the middle?
In most aged cheeses, lactose is largely absent. Most of it is carried off in the whey that is separated out during the cheesemaking process. Following removal of the whey, whatever small amount of lactose is left in the cheese is then consumed over the course of aging by active bacterial cultures and converted to the more digestible lactic acid. Therefore cheeses that are young and have a high water content such as Cottage Cheese or Ricotta will consequently have more lactose than more firm, older cheeses like Gruyère or Parmigiano-Reggiano. Yogurt is also quite digestible, since it is produced with lactic-acid producing bacteria similar to those in cheese.
Of course, lactose intolerance falls on a spectrum for many people—some people are okay with one or two glasses of milk while others feel symptoms even with hard cheeses. Where do you fall on the spectrum of intolerance?
About the author: Jamie Forrest publishes Curdnerds.com from his apartment in Brooklyn, New York, where he lives with his wife, his daughter, and his cheese.
Everyone has their own version of a Food Sur-Thrival Kit, a small group of reasonably priced go-to foods that we try to keep around at all times, so that no matter how bedraggled we feel when we get home, we can whip up a pleasure-inducing, satisfying meal in 20 minutes or less at any time on any day of the year. You not only survive on these foods, you thrive on them. Hence the name.
Here's my Food Sur-Thrival Kit.
Kossar's bialys: (fresh or sliced and frozen) A toasted bialy is just one of life's greatest and simplest eating pleasures. It supplies my daily requirement of crispness and crunchiness. Once the bialy is toasted, I melt a slice of Kraft Deli Deluxe American cheese (see below) on each half—perfecto!
Kraft Deli Deluxe American slices: They're tangy, they taste like cheese (not cheese food), they're already sliced, and they don't have that shine that suggests they were made in a factory on another planet
Pre-cooked Penne or Fusilli: If they pre- or par-cook pasta in good Italian restaurants we can, too. I prefer Barilla, but I sometimes have difficulty finding its penne and fusilli.
Grated Parmigiano-Reggiano: I know the food police are going to arrest me for not grating my own, but so be it. I can live with that
Nueske's bacon: It's smoky, it's sweet, it's porky. What more could you want out of a food? Makes anything you do with the rest of the kit better
Allan Benton's bacon: It's in the same class as Nueske's and is a little cheaper, but it's mostly available by mail
Patsy's or Rao's marinara sauce: I know these two brands cost a couple of bucks more than Prego, but they actually taste like sauce you would make yourself if you had the time
Häagen-Dazs Raspberry Sorbet and Vanilla Yogurt Bar: 100 calories of fruity, sweet, creamy deliciousness
Lately the news media have been abuzz with reports of risingcheeseprices, and the effect this is having on the nation’s pizzerias. Cheese is the most expensive ingredient that goes into making pizza, so the reported 55 percent price increases this year have surely given pizza joints a run for their money. Pizza Hut and Papa Johns have both raised the prices of their plain pizzas to match those of their one-topping pizzas.
Some have blamed the price increases on the rising costs of cattle feed, costs that in turn have been propelled by higher demand for corn in the production of ethanol fuel. Unfortunately this will all come to a head at some point in the future because there simply isn’t enough corn to feed all our cars in addition to our cows. I’d say let’s choose cheese instead, and ride our bikes more!
About the author: Jamie Forrest publishes Curdnerds.com from his apartment in Brooklyn, New York, where he lives with his wife, his daughter, and his cheese.
No, not that kind of grilled cheese. We’re talking about cheese that can be cooked directly on a grill. Of course, you wouldn’t want to try this with just any cheese. Tossing a wheel of Brie on the barbecue might be a fun party trick, but grilling up slices of halloumi, a fresh, white cheese from Cyprus, is real summer magic.
Traditionally made from the mixed milks of goat and sheep, halloumi is somewhat of a cross between the flavor of feta and the texture of mozzarella, although it differs from the latter, and of course from most other cheeses, in that it doesn’t melt when cooked. You may have come across halloumi in the Greek dish saganaki, a flashy appetizer in which the cheese is fried or broiled, doused in ouzo and set aflame. Molyvos, near Carnegie Hall in New York City, serves a classic version of the dish, bright in flavor and refreshingly simple. And Michael Psilakis, chef-owner of the rustic Greek spot Kefi on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, takes the idea a little further, using the cheese as a textural accompaniment in his grilled hangar steak entrée.
Halloumi’s ability to stand up to heat without melting also makes it great for the barbecue. Cut the cheese into slices 1/4 inch thick, and brush it with olive oil. Place on a medium-hot grill, and cook two minutes per side, or until it is golden brown. Drizzle with lemon juice, and garnish with a sprig of fresh mint.
Clearly there are many variations on this theme. Are there any spots near you that do something interesting with this versatile cheese?
About the author: Jamie Forrest publishes Curdnerds.com from his apartment in Brooklyn, New York, where he lives with his wife, his daughter, and his cheese.
Cheese gendarmes, please note that the untreated, raw-milk cheese had been smuggled in by a third party unrelated to either me, Steingarten, or the fellow from Artisanal.
I'd heard that the World's Largest Wheel of Cheese was going to be on display at Grand Central Station here in New York but decided I was too buzy/lazy to go check it out myself, but my friend Ranjit went yesterday and took this photo. The 1,323 pound wheel is a Gouda made by Beemster in the Netherlands last July and its trip to New York was sponsored by local heroes Murray's Cheese.
It looks fantastic and Ranjit said Beemster's cheese is delicious (he had a slice from a smaller wheel) but I have to admit I'm kind of disappointed by the size of it. A six foot wide cheese is not something to sneer at, to be sure, but I figured something that would hold such an impressive title would be far bigger—say, the size of the trampolines put up outside burning buildings, or an above-ground backyard pool?
Lindsay Schechter and Kendra Scott are the Houston Dairymaids, and they sell artisanal cheeses from all over Texas. Wait, what? Alison Cook of the Houston Chronicle follows the Dairymaids around town and discovers Texas cheese is finally coming of age:
[Paula] Lambert has brought her smooth, pungent Blanca Bianco, a proudly stinky aged cheese made with raw cow's milk, its rind hand-rubbed daily in white wine.
Chrissy Omo, an 18-year old Blanco cheesemaker who's a freshman in college, causes a buzz with her CKC Farms Baby Caprino, a soft-ripened goat cheese with a white rind like velvet, its creaminess underlain by a fascinating tang of watercress.
The pinnacle of the evening is the cylinder of Ste. Maure goat's cheese from Pure Luck in Dripping Springs, made by Amelia Sweethardt. It's a gorgeous, sophisticated cheese that could pass muster on the snobbiest French table, its slightly chalky exterior giving way to a near-liquid core. Sweethardt makes 48 of these prizes per week, period.
I can guarantee you that the cutest, most joyous food-related item you will see this week, maybe even this entire month, will be this series of commercials for Parmigiano Reggiano, a.k.a. parmesan cheese:
Can you go wrong with dancing, singing vegetables? Excited about cheese? In Italian? I think not. [via Brandon Eats]
Ever eat a slice of cheese but stop at the rind, unsure of whether or not it's safe for human consumption? Zoe Brinkley of New York City-based cheese shop Murray's Cheese reassures you that yes, you should try eating the rind ("Do you like it? Then eat more. Do you have wax and shreds of cloth in your teeth? Don't eat that one"), before going on to identify different rinds and why they exist. Look at the Affineur's Concept Map to get a quick glance at cheese taxonomy.
Not long ago, the New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission began a 
Saturday night I went out to dinner with two friends, one who does not have children and one whose daughter just celebrated her first birthday. The former suggested that I might want to order a certain salad, but the new mother said, “No, she can’t have feta! You can’t eat soft cheese when you’re pregnant.” Sheepishly I thought of the occasional salads with pasteurized feta I had been enjoying at home and asked, “Isn’t it okay if it’s pasteurized?” Granting that her doctor is very conservative, she said she had been told to avoid soft cheeses like feta altogether. The week before at a dinner party, another friend (who is a little farther along in her pregnancy than I am) had mentioned her doctor’s opinion that anything pasteurized was safe.
Well it's only February, and 2008 is already living up to its title as the 
One of the pitfalls of being a curd nerd in New York City is the brutal reality of having to transport your purchases home from your favorite cheese shop via the always crowded, chronically curmudgeonly subway system. Obviously I don't have the luxury of having a cheese shop anywhere near where I live, and since I never leave a cheese shop without at least one real stinker, this is a chronic issue for me. I have cleared out subway cars as if I haven't bathed for weeks. But I like my cheeses as stinky as they come, and I'm not going to let a little social awkwardness deter me from perfection.
In their 
I'm not much a fan of winter in New York. The farmers' market in Union Square is all but shuttered, the weather tends more toward wintry mix than winter wonderland, and night falls even before the local news has kicked off. But there's one thing I look forward to every winter, something that's only available when the temperature drops below 60. I'm speaking of course of 
Michael Claypool and Sasha Davies started 
A couple weeks back, on a blustery morning at the Union Square Greenmarket, I had a very interesting conversation with Karen Weinberg of 
Clearly someone at 
Two weeks back, Fort Collins, Colorado, was ground zero for goat fanatics from all across the country. It was the site of the annual 
Last week officials from the 
If you want to try your hand at making cheese at home, the easiest one to start with is 
Updating 
," who claims that lactose intolerance is an 
