The oldest cheese in America also happens to be one of the youngest. The fresh little guy pictured here is only three to four days old when packaged, but the creamery has been making it since 1865. Correct me if you know better, but I don’t believe any domestic cheese has been in commercial production longer. More to the point, it’s delicious: moist, mild and milky, the perfect segue to spring.
Read moreDouble Your Pleasure
A cheese debut from Jasper Hill Farm is always a news event, but when the debutante is a crowd-pleaser like this one, I can almost hear the stampede. If you love buttery, silky double- and triple-cream cheeses—and retailers say you do—this Vermont beauty should go on your bucket list. It launched only last November so shops are just getting their first shipment, but you can probably locate some Sherry Gray now, before its fame spreads. Peculiar name for a cheese but, as always with Jasper Hill, there’s a back story.
Read moreFondue Champion Tells All
I did not think I had much to learn about fondue until I spoke to Joe Salonia, a FonDuel champion. This friendly annual competition among people in the cheese business—mostly retailers and distributors—is the Olympics of melted cheese, with the public invited to taste and judge the entries. FonDuel took a pandemic pause last year, but Salonia has earned first and second place finishes in the past. (The latter result, he assures me, was “very close.”) With Valentine’s Day looming, it seemed like a good time to get some tips from a master on a dish that’s meant to be shared.
Read moreWhen a Cheese Dies
“No more Landaff” is not a phrase I wanted to read this year, or ever. I loved this cheese. But New Hampshire’s Landaff Creamery is closing, and its signature cheese—Landaff—will soon live only in memory. It makes me sad to lose a farmstead producer and to realize how quickly and quietly a unique cheese like Landaff can essentially go extinct. You might want to snap up a wedge while you can; you’ll find a mail-order source in my post.
Read moreNew Blue to Dream About
Do you eat more blue cheese in winter? I know I do. That big, spicy flavor is what I want when it’s cold outside. I love it melted on polenta, crumbled in an escarole and radicchio salad with walnuts, or on a cheese board after a bowl of vegetable soup. So this new blue from New York landed in my kitchen at just the right time. I think it’s dreamy, and even my husband—not a blue-cheese enthusiast—gave it a rave.
Read moreMargrit Mondavi’s Blini
I’m looking forward to lowering the curtain on this no good, very bad year. At my house, we’ll be celebrating quietly with Margrit Mondavi’s blini and a bottle of bubbles. I had the pleasure of collaborating with Margrit on two memoirs, and her buckwheat blini recipe is in one of them. The wife of vintner Robert Mondavi, Margrit was a fine cook but, by her own admission, not a patient one, so she made her blini with baking soda, not yeast. She put crème fraîche on top, but I have labneh in the fridge and like the tang.
Read moreYour British Cheese Checklist
Of course you want some buttery Stilton on your holiday cheese board. So do I. But Britain has so many more sublime cheeses to try. Alas, with a no-deal Brexit looming, Britain’s cheesemakers are at risk, potentially facing a huge drop in sales to Europe. Time to show them some love. I asked Tracey Colley, who runs the UK’s Academy of Cheese, to name the 10 British cheeses that every American cheese lover should know. Availability is spotty, unfortunately. Importers have been reluctant to bring in the best from Britain because punitive tariffs implemented last year have made these costly cheeses even more so. Stephanie Ciano of World’s Best Cheese, an importer, says she is hopeful that the tariffs will disappear under the new Administration.
Read moreTurkey Chilaquiles Time
At the small neighborhood market where I buy essentials for Mexican cooking, the meat counter has thick Mexican-style crema and slabs of moist queso fresco in bulk so I can buy just as much as I need. With Thanksgiving looming, I’ll need some of both for turkey chilaquiles. My husband and I are splitting a turkey with friends (I joked that I wanted the front half), but even so, we are sure to have plenty left over for one of my favorite cheese-topped Mexican dishes.
Read moreRelish Tray Reboot
Crème fraîche makes the most luscious deviled eggs, a discovery I made only recently. For a client who needed some holiday recipes, I was playing around with ways to dress up stuffed eggs without resorting to budget-busting caviar. I landed on crème fraîche, which gives the filling a subtle tang, and smoked trout on top to make them festive. Eureka. Open a sparkling wine or a Riesling and reboot your Thanksgiving relish tray with these two-bite beauties.
Read morePumpkin Cheesecake Encore
The definition of eternity, they say, is two people and a ham. I’m recalling that wisecrack as I contemplate the Thanksgiving menu for my bubble of two. Cenk Sönmezsoy’s luscious pumpkin cheesecake has become a holiday tradition at our house, but it serves a dozen at least. My husband and I could polish it off, I have no doubt, but I’d rather take that option off the table. So I wanted to try to cut the recipe down—for my own sake and for those of you who might also be having a smallish gathering this year.
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