The annual Fancy Food Show in San Francisco in January is equal parts delight and dread for me. While it’s energizing to see so many amazing cheeses and cheese people in one place, my appetite always peters out before the cheese does. It’s agonizing at the end of the day to look at gorgeous mountain wheels from some new Swiss affineur and think, “I just can’t.”
Read moreMexico’s Ambassador of Cheese
With The New York Times ranking Mexico City as the top travel destination for 2016, maybe you have moved this vibrant capital higher up on your bucket list. If you do go, make time for Lactography, a petite cheese shop inside the hip Mercado Roma.
In a space the size of a walk-in closet, Carlos Yescas and his sister, Georgina, have amassed hand-crafted cheeses from all over Mexico. On a mission to help rural cheesemakers find markets, these two evangelists are trying to elevate the image of their country’s dairy output and persuade Mexicans to take their own cheeses seriously.
Where Cheese Begins
During college, I spent half of my sophomore year studying in Aix-en-Provence, in the south of France. That’s where I learned to love cheese in all its forms, from stinky puant de Lille (literally, the “reeking cheese from Lille”) to rock-hard chèvres. I often ate lunch in the university cafeteria because it was so tasty, and more often than not, the meal ended with little containers of Petit Suisse, a super-fresh cream-enriched cow’s milk cheese that you sprinkled with sugar and ate like yogurt. What a delicious and wholesome dessert.
Read moreHigh Spirits
I know I’m late to this party, but I’m just learning how appealing a fine brandy can be with cheese. Not every cheese, of course, but many firm aged cheeses have roasted nut, caramel and brown-butter notes that complement the heady aromas in a brandy glass.
Read moreStrong Bread
I’ve never met a fruitcake I didn’t like, but panforte is first among equals. I only make it at Christmas time for some reason, although it’s a nice companion for cheese year round. I’ve tweaked this recipe over the years to get the spicing just where I want it and the right proportion of fruit to nuts. (Lots of nuts.) It keeps a long time, but not at my house.
Read moreSchloss is Boss
With immigration such a hot-button issue, it’s worth pondering what the American cheese industry would look like if “secure the borders” had been the policy in the past. Immigrants were this country’s first cheesemakers— British, Dutch and Germans in the East and Midwest; Italians, Swiss Italians and Portuguese in Northern California. These European transplants didn’t just make our cheese; they were the customers, too, especially for smelly cheeses like Marin French Schloss.
Read moreI Scream, You Scream
San Francisco’s Fancy Food Show is always an over-the-top experience, with so many new products and competing tastes that it’s hard to focus. When a cheese stands out in this cacophony—so much that I recall it months later—it’s a good bet that the cheese isn’t speaking to me alone.
Read moreWas Cheddar Ever Better?
It’s the people’s cheese, an item on grocery lists everywhere every week. Cheddar makes the ooze in mac-and-cheese and the molten blanket on many a burger. But that’s the cheap stuff. The other Cheddar, made by hand in clothbound wheels, is cementing America’s reputation for craftsmanship.
Read moreIt's a Whopper
This cheese is big. No, it’s ginormous. It’s Edelweiss Creamery’s Emmentaler, one of only two Swiss-style cheeses still made in the U.S. in the traditional massive format.
I learned a few things about Emmentaler recently from Bruce Workman, a Wisconsin Master Cheesemaker and owner of Edelweiss:
Not That Swiss Cheese
Every summer I lead a cheese tasting for the Society of Medical Friends of Wine, a group of Bay Area physicians with a shared interest in fine wine. We have never had a problem filling the seats until this year, when one of the doctors—a Swiss native—suggested a Swiss theme for the tasting. He got no resistance from me: I loved the idea. Some of the most impressive cheeses I’ve had in the last few years have been new arrivals from Switzerland.
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