A pretty Champagne cocktail to ring in the New Year? I’m a big fan of this one, which I think I invented but, like so many recipes, it probably already existed. Let me know if you know it by another name. I call it the Ruby Yacht. It is elegant, it shimmers in a flute, and it is way too easy to drink. If it becomes your house cocktail, well, you’re welcome.
Read moreSuperstar Cheeses of 2019
French showstopper: Tomme Brulée
What cheeses topped the charts at American cheese counters this year? For answers, I polled a few independent retailers around the country about their biggest hits of the past 12 months. I wanted to hear about newcomers that took off, sleeper hits that surpassed expectations and any under-performers that, for whatever reason, finally got traction.
Read moreCheddar’s Best Friend
After the turkey: Cranberry-pear chutney with Cheddar
I’ve been making cranberry-pear chutney for Thanksgiving for more than 20 years. I love my recipe, but it produces a lot. It calls for the whole bag of cranberries (may as well), plus pears, raisins, fresh ginger, walnuts. We eat it all weekend with leftover turkey, but it’s also terrific with cheese. Cheddar, Gouda, aged sheep cheese. If you’re a guest for Thanksgiving, bring this chutney with you and I bet you’ll be asked back.
Read moreAfter the Recall
Photo: Craig Jordan
his past summer, Consider Bardwell’s Goatlet catapulted to glory. For the third time in three years, it placed first in its category at the prestigious American Cheese Society judging. Four months later, the Vermont farm has ceased cheesemaking and its future is in doubt. A positive Listeria test in late September, every cheesemaker’s nightmare, led to a voluntary recall that could doom this 18-year-old enterprise. I didn’t really think co-owner Angela Miller would want to talk about this painful episode, but she surprised me. “I would very much like to help others by telling our story,” she said in an e-mail.
Read more100-Point Cheese
Perfection. You can’t do better than that. For Rogue Creamery’s Rogue River Blue, the perfect score rocketed it to the top of the World Cheese Awards in Bergamo, Italy, earlier this month. A grape leaf-wrapped cow’s milk wheel from Oregon, this luscious blue is now the 2019 World Champion Cheese, the first time a U.S. cheese has earned that honor. Created less than 20 years ago, it vanquished international cheeses with decades of history. Ironically, the winning wheel was not the one that Rogue president David Gremmels intended to enter.
Read morePeak Experience
I should have known the creamy cheese at twelve o’clock would be the class favorite. Never bet against a triple-cream. This one was delightful, I agree, but I found more to love in the six aged cheeses that followed—all of them mountain cheeses from Europe, all made with raw milk and animal rennet. So much tradition and expertise represented on one plate!
Read moreNext-Gen Urban Creamery
What good is cream cheese without bagels? The folks at Tomales Farmstead Creamery had the cream cheese down but couldn’t find a worthy bagel to spread it on. At least that’s the nickel explanation for their leap into the bagel business, with an ambitious new bakery-café in San Francisco. The sprawling former factory they rented was big enough for a little cheesemaking, too. So now San Franciscans have their own urban creamery whipping up cultured butter, cream cheese, quark, ricotta and ghee. Plus warm bagels. And craft beer. Hungry yet?
Read moreWhat Goes with Cheese?
Cabot Clothbound Cheddar with Nectarine and Serrano Jam
When I was first introduced to fine cheese—in France, many years ago—it came with nothing. At least that’s my recollection. Just beautiful cheeses, as many as you wanted from the restaurant trolley, with more fresh-sliced baguette in the breadbasket. Now, in the Instagram age, a cheese board with cheese alone looks naked and pitiful. Where are the nuts, the honeycomb, the preserves, the pickles, the locally made artisan crackers?
Read moreButter of the Gods
If my recent lunch at Edge had concluded with the bread and butter, I would have been happy. Of course, it didn’t—several fabulous courses followed—but it was the house-made pain au levain and cultured butter I couldn’t get out of my head. I knew I couldn’t reproduce this Sonoma restaurant’s bread, which John McReynolds, Edge’s culinary director, spent many months perfecting, but I figured the butter might be within my skill set. What gave it such incredible flavor? In a word: cheese.
Read moreTeleme in Trouble
Photo: Sara Remington
One of California’s iconic cheeses is in danger of extinction. Lights out. No more. Franklin’s Teleme has already been MIA since late last year, when Franklin Peluso reluctantly ceased making his supple cow’s milk classic, a former American Cheese Society Best of Show. The 74-year-old cheesemaker, whose grandfather devised the original recipe, has been trying to revive production ever since, with no luck.
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