America’s artisan cheesemakers have fought several David-versus-Goliath battles with the FDA in recent years. The agency has threatened to ban aging on wooden shelves, to outlaw ash in cheese (that pretty gray ripple in Humboldt Fog) and to implement unattainable standards for raw-milk cheese. The FDA is supposed to protect public health, but there’s little science to support these proposals.
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Franklin Peluso, maker of Teleme (pictured above), is profiled in the new Oxford Companion to Cheese.
Some key facts about the new Oxford Companion to Cheese: 3-1/2 pounds, 325 contributors, 855 subjects (including my entry on Franklin Peluso, creator of the Teleme pictured above). “We hope readers will dip into one entry, only to emerge someplace else entirely,” writes Catherine Donnelly, the project’s editor-in-chief. That certainly happened to me when I first cracked open this tome on tommes and skipped from “bread pairing” to “Piave” to “pregnancy advice.”
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