{ Janet Fletcher / Food Writer }
Photo: White House
President Biden held a State Dinner for the president of France last week and made headlines by serving an all-American cheese course. (Imagine the outcry if he hadn’t.) Of course, cheese people were eager to learn what the White House selected, and I personally would love to know if President Macron cleaned his plate.
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Left to right: Piave Vecchio, Taleggio, La Dama Sagrada, Point Reyes Toma, Bleu d’Auvergne
Seems like everything’s going up but the stock market. My neighborhood bakery just hiked the price of my favorite loaf by 33 percent. Ouch. That’s serious inflation. Cheese is hardly immune, and the stresses in the grain market guarantee more sticker shock to come. We cheese lovers just have to shop smarter. The values are out there. I’ve rounded up a few well-priced favorites for these inflationary times. There aren’t many cheeses that make me think “Is that all?” when I see what I’ve spent, but these dozen do.
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I was shaving one of my favorite cheeses the other day and thinking how underappreciated it was. Ricotta salata is my go-to for grating over pasta alla Norma—or any pasta with eggplant, tomatoes, zucchini or sweet peppers. Sometimes I mix it fifty-fifty with pecorino romano; sometimes I don’t. Often I shave it with a cheese plane into salads. Yet cheesemongers tell me it doesn’t sell so they’re reluctant to stock it.
I wondered if others who work in the cheese world had an Underappreciated List—cheeses they adore that don’t get enough love from the general public. So I asked. I’m hoping their answers will steer you to some great discoveries.
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It was a sad day for American cheese lovers when Ig Vella passed away in 2011. Losing this crusty, cantankerous, opinionated cheesemaker was bad enough. But what would become of Vella Dry Jack, his California company’s flagship creation? Would it change for the worse without his oversight? “I can tell you a lot of people were worried about it,” his daughter Chickie told me recently.
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Courtesy of the Cheese Board Collective
Chez Panisse may be the superstar of Berkeley’s Gourmet Ghetto, but The Cheese Board was there first. Fifty years ago, a young couple opened a tiny shop in an alleyway in North Berkeley, stocking it with cheeses they selected by paging through a distributor’s catalog. The first day’s gross was $95. “You’re going to make it,” predicted an initially skeptical Alfred Peet, whose Peet’s Coffee was next door.
Read moreI’m vaguely aware that my husband, Doug, maintains a list of cheeses that go well with Cabernet Sauvignon. You might imagine that I would be the one with that list, but no, he’s the go-to source. He’s the winemaker, after all.
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