For most of its history, cheese has been a local affair. Farmers would bring their milk to a village creamery that could convert that milk into cheese and other dairy products. Cheese has always been the long term storage solution for extra milk—especially before the era of refrigerators. The creameries would produce the same type […]
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1. First things first: What cheeses should you get for a cheese board? The classic answer is to get a variety. Get a young soft cheese. An aged harder cheese. Maybe a blue. Maybe a goat or sheep’s milk option. That is still a safe and delicious way to go. But it’s not the only […]
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“Territorial” is a term of art for traditional regional British cheeses. As a definition it’s a bit loosey goosey. It can mean an area as big as a county where a cheese was made, like when it’s used for Lancashire or Cheshire. Or it can be as specific as the town where the cheese was […]
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I used to joke that The Netherlands only had one cheese: Gouda. Gouda in endless varieties, gouda with endless wardrobe changes. Gouda aged one year. Two years. Four years. Gouda with red wax. Gouda with black wax. To me, Dutch gouda was an enjoyable cheese, but monotonous, dull. It never got me excited. It never […]
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All chunks of Parmigiano Reggiano aren’t created equal—but you wouldn’t know that by looking at them. One 80-pound wheel of Parmesan looks pretty much like another. But there can be a world of difference in flavor between Parmesans made by different dairies. They’re all going to be good—but only a few are fantastic.
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Traditional cooking, the popular cooking of countries passed down through time, is the cooking of the poor because, let’s face it, there have been a lot more poor people than rich people in history. Traditional cooks figured out how to squeeze the last bit of flavor from the ham bone, to find flavor in foods […]
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Tucked deep into the green, rolling hills of Vermont’s northeast corner is America’s most groundbreaking cheesemaker—literally. A decade ago, the team at Jasper Hill Farm spent 10 weeks blasting into a hillside to build cheese aging cellars.
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In my twenty plus years in the food world, I’ve had the privilege of visiting some of the world’s best cheesemakers. The Comté aging caves of Marcel Petite in the Jura mountains of France. Jamie Montgomery’s bucolic estate in Somerset, England where they make traditional cheddar in the birthplace of the world’s most famous cheese. […]
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Close your eyes. Picture a farm. What do you see? A big red barn? Shady pastures? Some rooting pigs? Strutting turkeys and curious chickens pecking away at grubs? Idyllic green meadows sprawling across rolling hills, with a tawny brown cow or two lazily chewing cud in the warm summer sun as puffy white clouds roll […]
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I grew up thinking there were four kinds of cheddar: mild, medium, sharp, and extra sharp. Oh yeah, and a fancy fifth kind: white. Though I didn’t know it at the time, those cheeses are all products of essentially the same methods: milk from dozens or hundreds of sources all trucked to the cheese factory, […]
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