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Say Cheese!
Brian Boitano’s New Double Lutz
Strolling Berkeley’s Gourmet Ghetto
The Thrill of the Grilled
It’s Long Way to Tiramisu
Cheese Fever, Arkansas Style
Ahwahnee Mac
Mom Made
Cheese Yesterday and Today
English Officials Say No to Annual Cheese Event
100 Years of Cheese Consumption
Fetes with Feta
World's Top Champ Cheese
Go Go Gruyère!
Steve Jobs: A Head of Himself
Love Cheese? Hey, it’s Trendy.
Easter Pashka
Celebrating Pizza
Go for Gougères
Smile and Say “I Do”
Artisan or Artist?
The Grilled Cheese Invitational: “Almost scary pursuit of perfection in a grilled cheese sammich.”
Mac and Cheese Makes Headlines
May: The Merry Month of Burgers
Soup and Sandwich
Smooth News
Grilled Cheese Invitational: On-Scene Report
Wisconsin Legislature Gets Microbial About Cheese
High School Food Fight Punishment: Cheese
Top Chef Masters Duke It Out Over Grilled Cheese
World Sandwich Sensations
Perfect Summer Apps
Iron Chef Gets the Blues
A Toast to Seattle Suds
Celebrating Asparagus
Goats, Cheese and a Changed Life
The Artisanal Approach to Grilled Cheese
Cream Cheese: Three Make- Right-Now Recipes
Who Wrote the Book on Cheese?
Burgermania
Summer Meals Get Simple
Miami Nice
Cheese Head Bike Helmets
Supermarket Sneak Peak
All the Cheese in China
Carving a Cheesy Niche
Bourdain Owns Up to his KFC Secret
Whey To Go
Flat-Out Wonderful: 51 Fabulous Sandwiches
Science Turns to Cheese
Fab Food for the Fourth
A Smart Tessellating Tip from Subway
French Comté Cheese Straight from the Source
All the Cheese in China
Cheese Meets Utopia at the American Cheese Society Annual Conference
Cheese, a part of a sensible diet
Friendly's Grilled Cheese BurgerMelt
Blue Cheese Ice cream
Get the Goat
A Matter of Degrees
Cheese Appreciation 101
Cheese-Minded in Seattle
Tell Us How Say Cheese Stacks Up
Mad for Mozzarella
Terms of Discussion
Luck of the Irish
Fresh Approach
Add Cheese and Toss Gently
Delicious Synergies: Pairing Cheese and White Wines
Kidding Around
A Goat Cheese Odyssey
The Idiot’s Guide to Mascarpone
Brown Paper Bag Perfection
Two no-bake desserts that say cheese
Editorial
Other Categories
Back CoverBeverageCheese CourseCheese ForumCooking with CheeseEditorialQuick Cheese KitchenSC UpfrontThe Cheese BoardWorld Cultures
If summer does, indeed, have its dog days, they surely arrive in August. Everything seems to move in slow motion and the inclination to cook serious meals ebbs to low. But the appetite to indulge doesn’t necessarily go away, especially when the object of desire is dessert. Here are two recipes that don’t require heating an oven, making them seasonal slam dunks.
New York City insiders who know Ronnie’s secret text number can have a grilled cheese sandwich delivered to them at the street corner of their choice, made and biked over by a surreptitious chef who only gives out his first name. Because he is operating outside of health department regulations, Ronnie keeps it all very hush hush but fans rave about his made-to-order sandwiches. The secret to an unforgettable sammy, he says, is cooking them first in a pan and then wrapping the sandwiches in aluminum foil for a quick blast in a 500F oven. As many as 40 New Yorkers each day seem to think he’s got the best grilled cheese in town.
Lore has it that the discovery of cheese was something of a happy accident, an unplanned consequence of milk being tucked in a shepherd-of-yore’s saddle l bag—most likely a sheep’s stomach. A little bit of agitation from the movement of the rider, along with enzymes from the sheep’s stomach, was enough to curdle the milk and the rest, as they say, is cheese history.
There’s magic to be made in partnerships of white wine and cheese. We’ll drink to that, especially in summer months.
‘Tis the season for salads, when hunger for lighter foods aligns perfectly with a glorious abundance of fresh ingredients. Fourteen recipes offer inspiration and a delicious option for every occasion.
Thousands of varieties of cheese exist in the world but all can be classified as either fresh or aged. Simple enough but within the fresh umbrella a multitude of possibilities exists.
Inventive farmhouse cheeses are positioning Ireland as Europe’s cheese-making frontier. Happily, a growing number of are available stateside.
There’s nothing like the right lingo to make cheese adventures more fun—and informative. Here, from a man who can talk his way around the entire cheese universe, is guide for becoming fluent in the language of cheese.
Since it was launched in January of this year, Say Cheese has received lots of great emails from readers. We’ve learned which recipes they try—and like best, what types of
cheese their children gobble with the greatest delight and heard about how much they enjoy indulging their passion for cheese.
From August 25 – 28, 2010, 400 or so of the nation’s top cheese makers will settle into Seattle for the American Cheese Society’s Cheese-A-Topia conference, an intensive, all-about-cheese event with a strong emphasis on professional education. Much of the agenda is geared to the pros who create cheese—sessions include TK. Several stand-out happenings are aimed at the general public, though, so mark your calendars and make plans to visit this can’t-miss cheese extravaganza.
Learning about cheese is within easy reach of anyone who has a sense of adventure and access to a good cheese store. Here are some tips to jump-start the journey.
So you think chefs are one up on home cooks in every regard? Commenting about the culinary advantages home cooks have (yes, there are some!), cookbook author, television chef and food authority Jacques Pepin once noted that at home, cheese can be served at the proper temperature. In restaurants, ordinances require that it be chilled until serving time.
August is National Goat Cheese Month and if you need a reason to fall in love with this family of cheeses—for the first time or all over again--this is it. Flavors that range from fresh, clean, milky and mild to sharp, assertive and endlessly expressive ensure that there’s a goat cheese for every palate. In celebration of goat’s milk cheeses, here are some styles to seek out and savor.
Blue cheese Ice cream may not replace chocolate and vanilla as the all-time favorite flavors but it is edging into the mainstream in delicious ways. Small amounts of blue-veined cheeses enrich the creamy, cold base. Other additions might include figs, walnuts and at one Scottsdale, Ariz., ice cream shop, Medjool dates.
Pizza restaurants added extra cheese years ago, stuffing the crust with an extra dose of the deliciously melty stuff. Now, hamburgers are taking a similar approach, adding cheese to the bread. The latest is Friendly’s burger that’s tucked in between two grilled cheese sandwiches. Okay, so it’s caloric overload but seriously, how bad can it be?
Cheese—and even chocolate milk—are welcome components of sensible diets, a point that was made at a recent dairy-industry conference held in the nation’s capital. A registered dietitian told the group, “Dairy products are the major contributors of three of the four nutrients of concern with public health implications identified in this report, calcium, potassium and vitamin D.”
As names go, Cheese-A-Topia says it all. The official name for the 2010 American Cheese Society conference, it signals a cheese-intensive experience in a place that is, from a food perspective, pretty special. If it’s not Utopia, it’s pretty close to it.
French cheese making is among the most tradition-bound arts in the world, its processes in some ways no different now than they were hundreds of years ago. A visit to the region where Comté, the most widely consumed hard cheese in France, is made demonstrates how the ancient craft carries on in a most delicious way.
It may be the most populous nation in the world but China’s consumption of cheese is almost too small to be measured. One cheese maker in Beijing is trying to change the habit. Liu Yang learned the art of cheese making while living on the island of Corsica and, one taste at a time, is trying to introduce the Chinese to the pleasures of cheese.
Subway, the giant sandwich chain, rolled out a new way to arrange cheese on its sandwiches, maximizing the cheese-per-bite ratio. For cheese lovers, it makes perfect sense, guaranteeing goodness from start to finish. The Chicago Tribune’s coverage includes a photo that tells the whole simple story. Simply cut the cheese into triangles and fit them together like the perfect puzzle.
The best Fourth of July feasts include food that dazzles as much as the fireworks display. Grills are often the center of the culinary action, set sizzling with burgers, ribs or chicken. For burger aficionados, the Lee brothers, two Southern food champions, devised a delicious riff on pimiento cheese. Swiss cheese and banana peppers stand in for the classic formula’s Cheddar and pimientos. The results are burger-ready perfect.
Making science interesting and understandable to a younger audience is the aim of an online program that one scientist in Great Britain is proposing. To tease up interest, the show's host, Stephen Curry, likens science to cheese. "Science, like cheese, comes in many forms," he says. "It doesn't have to be hard." Watch the promo and then hope that the show goes live online.
Sandwiches are platforms for creativity, between-bread build-outs that artfully combine ingredients for maximum effect. New York magazine picked that city’s 51 top stack-ups and no surprise, more than half—fully 28 of them, including those in the first, second and third place—counted cheese among the stand outs. And not just any ol’ cheese. Cloth-bound Cheddar, Bel Paese, caciocavollo, fontina, ricotta and Provolone are among the types that distinguish this globally inspired list.
Foods evoke memories: of places, experiences, shared laughter. Vacations, especially, beg to be remembered through meals so a common post-vacation exercise often involves recreating on home turf the meals that made the travels memorable. Sometimes it’s a simple sauce, a new vegetable or an especially decadent dessert. A blogger for the Washington Post aimed to extend the pleasure of Abruzzo, Italy for her family by learning to make mozzarella. She shares the formula.
Anthony Bourdain, the bad boy of the food world, has traveled the world eating the gross, the weird and the off-the-wall for No Reservations on the Travel Channel. In this interview with Slashfood.com, he not only fesses up that his daughter is a typical grilled-cheese kinda gal but that gasp! KFC’s mac and cheese is his guilt-ridden food secret.
Think of Sarah Kaufmann as the Brancusi of Brie, the Picasso of Parmesan, the Monet of Manchego. Armed with a set of tools, an infinite eye for detail and enough restraint not to eat her subjects, this sculptor uses cheese as her medium for projects that have included the Eiffel Tower, a tractor, astronaut and Seattle’s Space Needle.
With the world’s largest population, China is a vast market for many products. Cheese is one of the many as-of-yet-untapped opportunities. If one Beijing-based entrepreneur has his way, that soon will change.
The International Dairy-Deli-Bakery Association Show took place in Houston in early June and among the many aisles of exhibits, food trends to note were on display. This annual, open-to-the-trade event is where food buyers for supermarket and specialty food stores go to shop for the items that will soon show up in their cheese cases, bakery shelves and deli counters.
Exactly why the company selected the aroma of stinky cheese isn’t clear but with a newly released helmet, bicyclists can count on that inescapable smell to alert them when the helmet has been damaged in a fall. Small cracks that can diminish the helmets’ safety and effectiveness will release wafts of microencapsulated cheese scent.
Salads are never better than when they are built around seasonally fresh produce. Miami Chef Chris Nealon’s summer-inflected salad of Spinach, Grilled Corn, Cranberries and Blue Cheese exploits that idea in the most delicious way. Mild baby spinach and a flavorful jolt delivered by blue cheese makes this one a winner.
Summer is delightfully leisured, a time for indulging in seasonal simplicity, especially when it comes to meals. Real Simple magazine, for which easy style is a mantra, chronicled its 50 most popular recipes. At the top of the list? Last-Minute Lasagna, a cheese-topped treat for family meals. Also making the cut are such delights as Chicken Quesadilla Pie, Macaroni and Cheese and Chicken with Parmesan, Garlic and Herb Crust. Start cooking at Real Simple.
Burgers are a summertime staple, made for backyard grilling, picnics and parties. There are endless ways to enjoy them, from straightforward beef patty and cheese to more involved versions that add such ingredients as chevre, hot sauce, pineapple, feta and pimiento cheese. Find ideas for creating memorable burgers at Independent Mail.
Nearly every single aspect of cheese—making, selling, cooking with it, enjoying it-- is a potential story, a point well substantiated by this roundup of recent cheese-centric books listed in the Washington Post’s All We Can Eat blog. From the extensively illustrated World Cheese Book to the quirky and personal musings found in Cheesemonger: A Life on the Wedge, there’s a title for every taste.
An eight-ounce brick of cream cheese in the refrigerator is like a culinary insurance policy, assurance that a multitude of quick preparations are within easy reach. Here’s a trio of ways to whip it up into something simple, delicious and widely appealing.
Terrence Brennan, chef/owner of Artisanal and Picholine, with locations in New York City and Seattle, offers tasty proof that grilled cheese can go deliciously upscale and still deliver the sought-after comfort-food factor. He shares recipes for Fresh Mozzarella, Tomato and Basil Grilled Cheese with Aioli; Cheddar, Apple and Bacon Grilled Cheese; and Comte Grilled Cheese with Organic Truffle Honey.
Herds of adorable animals romping about in a pastoral setting, the alchemy of milk transformed and indeed the very notion of a country-squire lifestyle complete with hand-crafted foodstuffs—is it any wonder that cheese making is the culinary craft du jour, the fantasy held by countless dreamily romantic urbanites?
Asparagus speaks the language of spring, its slender green stalks an edible sign of seasonal change. Although it is in the market nearly all year, May and June mean local supplies rather than bunches shipped in from far-flung locations.
As if you really needed a reason to add a slab of cheese to your favorite burger, consider this: it’s National Burger Month. Whether burgerfest takes place in the kitchen, backyard grill or in a restaurant, there are plenty of cheeses that add extra oomph to the beefy base. All-burger-all-the-time website burgerbusiness.com celebrates Burger Month with a featured burger of the day. Find inspiration for daily burger explorations.
Seattle Beer Week kicks off on May 13 and, despite the timeframe alluded to in the name, it runs through all the way through May 23, offering a refreshing lineup at every step of the way. The sudsy stuff may be the event’s star but cheese plays a part, too. Check out the schedule for specials dinners, bar crawls and tastings and perhaps plan a crawl all the way up to Seattle.
The secret ingredient for this week’s celeb-chef smack-down wasn’t as much of a surprise—or a culinary challenge--as it sometimes is. No eels or kidneys for the dueling chefs Jose Garces and challenger Kelly Liken to whip up masterpieces on command. This time, it was a bit of a gift, albeit a deliciously pungent one. When the silver domed cover was lifted, blue cheese awaited. Liken showed she was game but in the end, Garces ruled. Those who have tried his almond-stuffed dates with blue cheese sauce, served at Mercat a la Planxa in Chicago, totally get that the man has the blues down to a sublime science.
The call for simple appetizers and cocktail snacks seems to escalate during spring and summer, when impromptu entertaining is a bigger part of the social landscape. Here are two recipes that can be put together quickly and without a lot of fuss.
If you sometimes find little lumps of cheese in your macaroni and cheese recipe, you’re not the first cook to face that conundrum. It all comes down to the cheese, a topic for which a culinary sleuth at the Lexington Herald-Leader offers a solution. Read the smooth solution here.
Some duos are destined to be together and just like Fred and Ginger, hat and gloves and fireworks and the Fourth of July, grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup are a pitch-perfect match. Whether simple and sublime or all gussied up, the partnership continues to be deliciously strong, as the Boston Herald reports.
If macaroni and cheese still seems like a ho-hum, stay-at-home meal, recent high-profile citations might help disprove that notion. First, the Hollywood odd couple of Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher made PEOPLE magazine’s website when they were spied cooing and cuddling over a plate of macaroni and cheese at New York City’s Cafeteria restaurant.
Heidi Gibson, who provided some sensational grilled cheese tips and recipes for the Spring issue of Say Cheese, won her seventh (!) trophy at the Eighth Annual Grilled Cheese Invitational in Los Angeles this weekend. Her entry, which will be on the menu of The American Grilled Cheese Kitchen when it opens in San Francisco next month, was for the Sunday Brunch Grilled Cheese Sandwich. Yum!
Cheese sandwiches can flaunt many forms, a truth that other countries make deliciously clear. France has the croque monsieur while from the United Kingdom comes Welsh rarebit and Mexico the quesadilla. Here are recipes to get started on a global romp.
Television’s celeb chefs often are asked to whip up mega-fancy creations that test every ounce of their kitchen skills. For the Quickfire Challenge on a recent episode of Bravo’s Top Chef Masters, the contenders went through the competitive paces with grilled cheese. Find out who nailed the technique to win.
High school students who used their cell phones to plan a massive cafeteria food fight got their punishment in the form of cheese sandwiches. For two days, American cheese on white was the only lunch option available to students at Atlantic City High School. Although some would say the meals were yummo, students continue to bemoan what they thought were Spartan meals.
Wisconsin--the Dairy State--takes its cheesy output so seriously that it has proposed naming lactococcus lactis the official state microbe; the microbe is an essential component in cheese making. Passed by the Assembly, the bill has been moved to the state Senate for approval. The same bill would name Milwaukee-based Harley-Davidson the official state motorcycle.
Consider for a moment the Grilled Cheese Invitational. The name sounds quite proper and respectable. It will be held at Los Angeles Center Studios in downtown Los Angeles on April 24, thousands of people are expected to attend (5,400 showed up last year) and trophies are awarded to the winners.
What exactly allows cheese makers or their products to be described as artisanal? For a term that is very much in vogue, there is no clear consensus, only an abundance of opinions and spirited discussion about the traits required to wear the label.
Cheesecakes have occasionally been a bride’s choice for the wedding cake but some couples are turning to cheese cakes—tiered constructions made entirely of savory cheeses.
A fancy French name can make any food sound ultra posh and hard to prepare. But with pate a choux, a world of delicious baked treats is easily in reach. The same dough used for cream puffs and profiteroles also forms the foundation for a savory snack. Add a little Comté or Gruyère cheese to turn the dough into gougères (pronounced goo-zhehr), crisp, light and elegant little perfect cocktail snacks.
Every day may be a holiday but April 5 is one to get deeply serious about: It’s National Deep Dish Pizza Day. First celebrated in 1979 by Uno’s Chicago Grill,it’s as good a reason as any to get have an extra-cheesy pizza pie for dinner.
Not all Easter culinary traditions revolve around eggs. In Eastern European countries, a lovely molded dessert made with cottage cheese and cream cheese, is a spectacular centerpiece.
Consumers are moving up in the cheese world, their interest sparked by travel and television shows that make it a trendy topic. And once they learn about new varieties, they’re intent on first-hand experiences.
Think of it as a new app for cheese, ideal for those with too much time on their hands: creating visages out of blocks of mozzarella. Ken Aversano, a writer for food website The Cooks’ Den, and his wife Diane, carved Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ face from a chunk of cheese, adding the requisite eyeglasses and five o’clock shadow (with ground pepper). In a salute to the upcoming release of the iPad, they placed the sculpture in a plate of pad Thai.
Gruyère got a great big shout-out last week when a Swiss-made rendition was named the World Champion—the best cheese in the world—at a judged event in Madison, Wis.
The World Cheese Championship winners were announced on Thursday and although domestically made cheeses showed strong as category winners, the Swiss swept in for the World Champion and First Runner Up while an Austrian-made cheese was named Second Runner Up.
With its deliciously salty tang and creamy texture, feta cheese is an ideal recipe ingredient. Nigel Slater offers two to try right now, an omelet with spinach, caramelized onions and baked feta with beets and chickpeas.
The USDA’s Economic Research Service tracks and records the minutiae of American eating habits, an endeavor that it has undertaken since 1909. Its newest report gives a snapshot of what we’re eating more of and less of and the news is good for cheese.
Slamming the brakes on a tradition of several hundred years, a cheese-rolling event in Gloucestershire, England has been canceled. Citing crowds of 15,000 that had vastly outgrown the space, officials say they hope it can be brought back in 2011. Seven-pound wheels of cheese, made by an 83-year old cheese maker who is “shattered” at the news, are competitively rolled down a steep hill.
They sit there like dusty sentinels, holding space on countless bookshelves, often overlooked in lieu of flasher and newer titles that dazzle with the flash of today’s flavors. Buried within the pages of old cookbooks, though, are memories of meals past, some dog-eared, others with scribbled notes: the recipe worked, it was ‘good,’ what the cook changed to make it her own.
To be fair, cheese most likely was first made to extend the shelf life of a surplus of cheese. So when Daniel Angerer, chef at New York’s Klee Brasserie, had a little extra milk on hand, he made cheese. Thing is, the milk was from his breast-feeding wife. He blogged about it and New Yorkers took note.
The setting of Yosemite National Park’s The Ahwahnee is magical and so, too, is the macaroni and cheese served at its award-winning restaurant. While many versions of the all-American classic are based on Cheddar cheese, the Ahwahne’s is a paean to Parmesan.
In most parts of Arkansas, it is simply called cheese dip and it is absolutely ubiquitous—at restaurants, parties and just about any gathering of two or more people that includes food. A gloriously irresistible, chip-ready mixture based on melted cheese and salsa or spicy tomatoes, it is more than just a tried-and-true recipe. It just might be the unofficial Arkansas state dish, a point advanced by Nick Rodgers in his spirited, cheese-lovin’ documentary, “In Queso Fever.”
Homemade tiramisu isn’t a fearsome prospect—many of us have put together the gloriously layered dessert with great results. But one blogger took the task to a whole new level, making all the components from scratch, including mascarpone cheese.
Say Cheese magazine’s Spring issue will celebrate National Grilled Cheese Sandwich Month, an April tradition that is, to some minds, every bit as important as opening day at the ballpark. Our appetites are whetted after reading about one town’s take on the best grilled cheese sandwiches.
When the history of the American food movement is written, Berkeley will be identified as the epicenter and one of its cheese shops a major force in shaping a movement that began in the 1960s on Shattuck Avenue. A modern-day walking tour remains a deliciously memorable romp.
Gold Medal skier Lindsey Vonn’s homeopathic remedy (she rubbed cheese on her bruised shin and who are we to argue with the results) isn’t the only Olympic connection that involves cheese. Skater Brian Boitano, who nabbed gold in the 1988 Games, launched his “Lutz and Lutz of Cheese” mobile food cart in San Francisco’s Precita Park over the weekend. The $1 grilled cheese sandwiches sold out in a flash; he also sold skewers of grilled cheese with potatoes, mac and cheese and individual cheesecakes. The launch was filmed for his Food Network series, “What Would Brian Boitano Serve.” Season two begins March 7.
Welcome to the premiere issue of Say Cheese, a magazine entirely devoted to cheese—celebrating it, using it, learning about it, discovering its history and stories and, most importantly, enjoying the many fascinating aspects that define it.
Cheese is more than just a fabulous food. It is a deliciously diverse cate...