News From The Cheese Caves

Here’s what TODAY has to say about Artisanal Cheese!

“For the food gift that keeps on giving, subscribe to Artisanal’s Cheese of the Month Club. Each month you receive three artisanal cheeses (about 1 ½ pounds) each at peak ripeness. You also receive notes explaining each cheese as well as serving and food paring suggestions. The program comes in 3, 6, or 12-month installments, $210 for 3 months.”

See full article here.

Jeffrey Roberts, author of The Atlas of American Artisan Cheese, is referenced by The New York Times as “a walking encyclopedia of American cheeses…”

Read the full New York Times article, “A Guide To America’s Cheese Trail”

On Friday, July 6, Jeffrey Roberts will be leading a tasting at the Artisanal Cheese Center. Jeffrey will be speaking about the growth of artisan production and lead a tasting of America’s most exquisite cow, goat, and sheep’s milk cheeses such as Uplands Pleasant Ridge, Hoja Santa and Rogue River Blue.

Read more about this class

The idea:
Simple entertaining with charcuterie & cheese.

The Point:
Join us at Artisanal and let us share some of our secrets to simple summer entertaining. Low maintenance and high quality is the key to making sure you enjoy your next summer party as much as your guests. You can even take these tips on the road and bring a charcuterie board as a host or hostess gift. You’ll learn what we mean by “charcuterie”, what cheeses to pair and how to create a charcuterie board based on your own personal tastes. And of course, don’t forget the wine, champagne, rose, port, we tried them all and see what we recommend serving at your next summer get together. Most importantly, keep it simple by skipping the hours of preparation, relax and enjoy instead!

Who:
Waldy jumped on the chance to do this research and asked Max to join him for a tasting to select the best pairings of cheese, charcuterie & wine.

When:
June 27th – save the date! We’ll do it in time for summer entertaining. In fact, we could teach this class once a season and keep the simple entertaining theme year round.

(more…)

This is truly amazing… wanted to post this fast in case someone reading this may actually want to go see it in the next half-hour! But I’d love to know the back story on this cheese. And will the Swiss deny it’s the biggest?

Restaurant Girl has a fun interview with Andrew Friedman on her site today. Andrew was co-Author of Chef Brennan’s, Artisanal Cooking: a Chef Shares His Passion for Handcrafting Great Meals at Home. Andrew speaks about how he got into the business of food writing, and where he hopes to go in the future, and about his own forthcoming book, The Weekend Warrior Cookbook, which he describes as geared toward hobbyist cooks, the “people who Rachel Ray left behind”!

This is brilliant. Earlier last week, Chowhound posted a wonderful call for mouth-watering stories, entitled: “Cheese – the best cheese experience you ever had” It begins with, “Roqfort, soft and squishy, pungently fabulous on crisp lavosh with a Temprinillo to divert the taste buds momentarily before returning to another heady mouthful.” Oh that does sound good. And the comments, … “A round of Brillat Savarin (triple creme), drowned in cognac soaked golden raisins….;” “Atwater Market in Montreal on visits back to my home town and picking up 4 Québec and/or French cheeses…;” “Large wedge of Beaufort cheese, some kind of dried ham, fresh baguette and wine for lunch while hiking Grand Balcon du Nord in the Alps;” … Check it out.. !

Fiscalini Bandaged Cheddar took home the gold for Best Extra-Mature Traditional Cheddar In The World at the 2007 World Cheese Awards.

From Heather Fiscalini:

John and I are so proud of our 18 month bandaged cheddar winning the Best extra-mature traditional cheddar in the World, this March, 2007 in London, England. This is the first time the Wyke Farms Trophy has been awarded outside of England for cheddar, and we are delighted to have brought this distinction to the United States.

(more…)

Last week, in our regular staff meeting, we were discussing the upcoming class on Women Cheesemakers. This is definitely going to be a terrific class, everyone here is certain of it. But it has been hard to get that word out! What’s so exciting about women cheesemakers? But that’s just the point. As we asked that question and our discussion got rolling, we came up with many more related questions that intrigued each one of us.

Jessica wondered why the craft of cheesemaking in America seems to be attracting more and more women. Alex related a little history of women on the farm worldwide, making cheese for their own families, and so on. I asked whether we should post a blog entry on whether or not this is traditionally “women’s work” … and was hammered with a chorus of derision and mockery… how could I even suggest such a reactionary outlook? Well, apparently I was not the first to wonder.
And as for Jessica’s question, read more here.

Meanwhile, here (below) are just a few of the women cheesemakers of the world that we know and love, and that you might encounter in the class next month, along with their farms and some of their wonderful cheeses.

(more…)

When I began working at Artisanal Premium Cheese, the company was in its infancy. I too was in my infancy, my infancy regarding exposure to and knowledge of artisan made cheeses. I had always been in love with cheese, but my experience with it was very limited. This was a fantastic opportunity and as I learned, I wanted to share the knowledge and the cheese with my friends and family.

Everywhere I went I brought cheese. Meeting a friend for drinks or dinner out? I had a little sample or two stashed in my bag for them to take home and enjoy later. (I would bring anything that looked good. Later, after reports that cheese had been forgotten in bags overnight, I had to revise this to any hard cheese that looked good.) Making a casual weekday dinner at a friend’s? Of course we would need cheese to nibble on before or after dinner. Invited to dinner? With the host’s permission, I would bring a carefully thought out selection to compliment the meal. On several occasions I have brought a one to two pound hunk of cheese as a hostess gift, sometimes for the same hosts. I have even brought samples to my doctor. Anytime I went home to my parents’ I always brought a large selection of cheese, eager to share with them all of my new and old favorites.

(more…)

I had never really given this serious thought before, but I came across these pages on cheesemaking.com a few days ago, and found it intriguing — exciting even!

Setting up your own cheese cave [Part 1]

Setting up your own cheese cave [Part 2]

What a great idea, if it could really work.

So I asked Alex Garcia, Artisanal’s Cave Manager what he thought.

(more…)