American Cheeses : The Best Regional, Artisan, and Farmhouse Cheeses, Who Makes Them, and Where to Find Them

by Clark Wolf; Scott Mitchell

• ISBN13: 9780684870021
• ISBN10: 0684870029
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-12-09
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Summary

In 1976, Clark Wolf ran a little cheese shop at the base of Nob Hill in San Francisco; in 1980 he became the manager of the San Francisco branch of the legendary Oakville Grocery. While the rest of America was on the verge of a decade of a morbid fear of butterfat, Wolf was looking for a source of local fresh mozzarella and newly devoted to the joys of rice flour-rubbed teleme and four-year-old Wisconsin cheddar. Today, we are all knee-deep in bocconcini and fresh goat cheese, and Wolf is a restaurant and food consultant. But glorious cheese, particularly American cheese, is still his passion.InAmerican Cheeses: The Best Regional, Artisan, and Farmhouse Cheeses, Who Makes Them, and Where to Find Them, Wolf gives us an in-depth look at the art and craft of cheese across the United States, and documents in words and beautiful black-and-white photographs the story of the talented and committed women and men who create this dairy ambrosia. He shares his expertise (with a touch of attitude) on how cheese is made, how to store it, and how to serve and enjoy it. Dividing the country into sections -- The Northeast and New England, The South, The Middle West, The Wild West -- he explores the cheese-making communities, discussing the kind of cheeses that are specific to each of the four sections of the country and profiling dozens of the most accomplished cheesemakers, from well-known national brands to the creators of small-batch, hand-crafted rarities. Each profile lists the kinds of cheeses available and contact information for producers and farms. At the end of each regional section is a selection of delectable recipes that showcase the best cheese of that area, from A Perfect Pimento Cheese of the American South to Blue Cheese Pralines from the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island in Michigan.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Learning to Taste	p. 1
What Kind of Food Is Cheese?	p. 8
How Cheese Happens	p. 10
Specialty, Artisan, and Farmstead Cheeses	p. 12
How to Buy, Store, and Serve Cheese	p. 14
The Families of Cheese	p. 21
How Much Is That Goat Cheese in the Window? (or, Take Me to Your Liter)	p. 26
This with That: Accompaniments and Pairings	p. 32
What the Heck Is Rennet?	p. 34
It's a Process	p. 35
Intolerance	p. 36
Wrapping, Rinds, and Ripening	p. 38
My Favorite Cheesemongers	p. 40
Hotbeds and Bastions of Cheese Culture	p. 43
The Northeast and New England	p. 45
The South	p. 107
The Middle West	p. 147
The Wild West	p. 183
Awards, Accolades, and Endorsements	p. 253
Awards	p. 254
Resources	p. 255
Festivals	p. 256
Metric and Other Equivalencies	p. 257
Index	p. 259
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

Excerpts

Introduction: Learning to TasteThis is a book about cheese. I've wanted to write it since about -- oh -- October 1980, the year I helped open the Oakville Grocery in San Francisco. We had nearly everything a passionate modern cook might want: free-range chickens, organic produce, cream-top milk in bottles, hand-gathered wild mushrooms, and fresh goat cheese lovingly handmade in Sonoma, California, and as good as any in France, or anywhere.I was hired as the cheese department manager. Then they discovered I couldmerchandise. That means making things look appealing in a way that made people grab and spend. I created abundance togo.They sent me to Manhattan to see how the big-city folks did it: the late-lamented original Balducci's; the early, highly stylistic Dean & DeLuca; some major Parisian players trying to conquer the States; the ill-fated Bloomingdale's food halls. I came back and immediately reverted to my California roots. I'd grown up surrounded by orange groves, lemon blossoms, and watermelons piled on wooden racks (Dad would wait until they dipped to six cents a pound before he'd cave and buy). Night-blossoming jasmine and heady garden roses gave me an inkling as to how things from the earth might look and smell, even in the soon-to-be-awful San Fernando Valley. So mostly I put things in bushels and baskets. It seemed to work.Two weeks after we unlocked the doors, I was doing all the buying and all the selling. Two months later, I was running the store. In my mid-twenties, I was really in a post-postgraduate course of all things good to eat and drink, and learning from some of the great talents in the food world.In those months before we opened, while I was madly gathering my cheese collection, I'd also be chatting and tasting with a group that might, from time to time, include Alice Waters, Marion Cunningham, Ruth Reichl, and, of course, our boss, Joe Phelps. We're talking some major palates.Once we got going, my learning took a slightly different course. Every week we'd take delivery of what could amount to dozens, and sometimes hundreds, of types of foods: jams, mustards, sauces, raw meat, truly frightening snacks, wild greens nobody could identify, hand-gathered wild mushrooms. But rarely did I have the offer of a new American-made cheese waiting on the tasting table.We'd decided that fresh mozzarella was a must-have, but there was nothing in the Golden State resembling that magicalpasta filata(pulled curd) ball I'd first seen floating in a pool of whey in the famed Formaggio Peck cheese emporium in Milan. I'll admit that the marble fountain with the carved figure of a boy spewing milky fluid up and into the carved scallop shell below may have affected my senses. But I clearly recall the nutty fragrance and tender "give"of the cheese somehow tasted of warm sunshine.At that time I was unable to find fresh mozzarella being made out west, so I burned up the phone lines trying to have some sent from somewhere. Finally I was able to convince some poor salesperson at the Polly-O Cheese Company in Brooklyn, New York, to send me a forty-pound block of frozen cheese curd.Up in the little apartment we'd rented as an office overlooking San Francisco on Russian Hill, we broke off bits from the massive lump of curd and dumped them into hot water. We kneaded and pulled and tried to use a wooden paddle to get a balanced, regular motion going. We achieved a sort of white rubber that bore little resemblance to mozzarella. But it taught me something. It taught me to look for benchmarks. I knew mozzarella, and this wasn't it.Since about 1983, I've led hundreds of tastings -- cheeses, oils and vinegars, wild mushrooms, herbs and spices. I always ask people what they do first when they set about to taste something new or try something they've had before, with a focus on better understanding just what it's all about. These are professionals -- sometimes teachers, chef