FOOD & DRINK

Masters of cheese

As the national Festival of Cheese hits town, some tips for serving, storing and appreciating the aromatic artform

By Kitty Crider
SPECIAL TO THE AMERICAN-STATESMAN
Wednesday, August 05, 2009

Cubes of Cheddar, Swiss and pepper Jack .

The cheese tray is ready.

Let the party begin.

Or not.

That trio of cheeses might be familiar. But Austin, even with its strong queso roots, is much smarter in the summer of 2009. It can party with the hippest cities in the country, to the coolest music, with extraordinary artisanal cheeses that will raise your host status instantly. Evidence lies in the fact Austin is host to the annual conference of the American Cheese Society this week and that the city's food lovers support dozens of cheese departments here, including two that each stock 700-1,200 cheeses daily.

If you want to join the hip cheese crowd but lack the confidence, here's how to give that party tray a simple summer makeover. Get a 12-inch surface of wood, bamboo, china, marble or terrazzo and set out three selections of cheese, says Kelly Sheehan, lead cheese monger for Central Market on North Lamar Bulevard. Only three? If you offer five or six cheeses, she says, it is harder to remember and differentiate the flavor of each.

But make those three selections special: vary the milks, textures, colors and flavors. Include one soft cheese such as Brie , goat cheese or Camembert . Add a semisoft cheese such as a blue. For the third selection, offer a hard cheese such as Cheddar, Parmesan, Asiago or manchego .

Put out a knife for each cheese to keep flavors separate, and garnish the tray with fresh or dried fruits, a few olives, nuts or preserves for color and flavor. Place thin, plain baguette slices or unflavored crackers nearby. Encourage guests to sample mild cheeses first, ending with blues, smoked or flavored ones.

Cathy Strange, global cheese buyer for Whole Foods Market Inc., prefers a larger selection of cheeses, four to seven, for entertaining. Make them seasonal. Goat cheese is great for summer because it's light, a creamy cheese that's good on a cracker with fresh, seasonal berries. Another choice might be a nice summery sheep's milk cheese such as Nancy's Hudson Valley Camembert. Always include a blue cheese, but if your guests are novices, go creamy and not spicy or acidic. Include an aged Gouda or Gruyère on the tray. Not only are hard cheeses familiar to guests but they also look pretty and smell good when sliced with a cheese plane.

Realizing that it has been a tough economic year, shop smart. Artisanal cheeses, many of which are handcrafted, tend to be more expensive than mass-produced cheeses, often running $15-$25 or more per pound. Don't cringe. Most people purchase only a portion, not a full pound. If you are on a budget, ask the cheese monger for suggestions for good-value, good-flavor cheeses to balance the board. Figure a half-ounce per cheese per person and do not hesitate to ask full-service cheese shops to cut to order, Strange says. And ask for a small taste to be sure you like what you'll be serving. Cheeses are a living product, and flavors change with age.

Have the cheese department write down the names of your selections so you can impress your friends.

Now you have a party where people will take notice of the food and you.

Cheese tray assembled by Cathy Strange of Whole Foods Market

• Roth Käse Gruyère Grand Cru (Wisconsin)

• Rogue Creamery Oregon Blue (Oregon)

• Crave Brothers Farmstead Fresh Mozzarella (Wisconsin)

• Cypress Grove Humboldt Fog (California)

• Pure Luck Red Chile Chèvre (Dripping Springs)

Cheese tray assembled by Kelly Sheehan of Central Market

• Pure Luck's Hopelessly Bleu (Dripping Springs)

• Capriole O'Banon wrapped in bourbon-soaked chestnut leaves (Indiana)

• Beehive Promontory Habanero Cheddar (Utah)

Cheese tray assembled by Cathy Strange of Whole Foods

• Roth Käse Gruyère Grand Cru (Wisconsin)

• Rogue Creamery Oregon Blue (Oregon)

• Crave Brothers Farmstead Fresh Mozzarella (Wisconsin)

• Cypress Grove Humboldt Fog (California)

• Pure Luck Red Chile Chèvre (Dripping Springs)

Austin's year to be cheesy

Call it the Big Cheese, the Super Bowl of Cheese, the premiere cheese event in the United States. By whatever name, it's happening in Austin this week.

Cheddars, Bries, chèvres, triple creams, blues - more than 1,100 artisanal and specialty cheeses, dozens of them newly crowned award winners - will be available for public tasting by the hundreds of amateur and professional cheese-lovers expected at the Hilton Austin hotel Saturday night for the Festival of Cheese's public tasting event (details, D1).

The festival will be the highlight of this week's annual conference of the American Cheese Society, a 1,200-member organization, that in addition to seminars on everything from aging cheese to food safety, holds an annual cheese-judging competition. This year, it has attracted a record 1,326 cheeses from 32 states, Canada and Mexico.

The fact that this conference is being held in Texas is a first. After all, Texas is better known for beef than cheese. But the conference moves around the country annually, and Austin - the birthplace of Whole Foods Market Inc. and Central Market, each with exceedingly strong cheese departments - was chosen because of its vibrant reputation.

Cathy Strange, global cheese buyer for Whole Foods Market and co-chair of the conference, says the festival is an opportunity for people to sample world-class cheeses, some of which are made in such small amounts that they are rarely seen outside their geographical areas.

Janet Fletcher, author of "The Cheese Course," lives in California and says she is looking forward to sampling some of the Texas cheeses that never make it to the West Coast and talking to the cheesemakers. "They are so full of passion and devotion to their craft. It's fun to be a part of this world."

The trick to tasting more than 1,000 cheeses at the festival is to come hungry, Fletcher says. "Pace yourself. You can't taste it all. I go straight to the blue-ribbon winners first."

If you have time, migrate from the mildest to the strongest cheeses; for example, from fresh ricotta to aged or blue cheeses. Don't eat much. (If you taste 30 cheeses, limiting each sample to a quarter-ounce, that's still about half a pound of cheese.) Savor. Cleanse your palate. Try another. And form your own opinion. "Just because a cheese wins a blue ribbon, it might not be the one you like best," says Fletcher.

When hundreds of unwrapped cheeses, expect the room to be aromatic at first. But after five minutes, the smell isn't noticeable, veterans say.

- Kitty Crider

Texas cheesemakers are winning fans and awards

Texas is not a big cheese state. There are 29 licensed food manufacturers that have cheese or cheese products as their primary product, says the Texas Department of State Health Services.

Why so few?

Texas is hot, and cheesemaking is very hard, says Paula Lambert, founder of the 27-year-old Mozzarella Co. of Dallas. "We do not have this big culture of people living on farms and making cheese for generations here. Most of the milk from dairies here has been used for drinkable milk or ice cream."

In her 27 years as a cheesemaker, Lambert has seen people go in and out of the business. They get interested in the romance of the notion or the "simple" farm life. But when they see how hard it is to make and market cheese, to have a successful business, they quit. Others stay because they love their animals and it's a way of utilizing the milk.

She has never had animals. "When I learned to make cheese in Italy, it was in a village and farmers brought milk to the village and sold it to the cheesemaker. That has been my business model."

Lambert makes 25 cheeses, which she markets all over the country. Last year she made 20 entries in the American Cheese Society's competition and won seven awards: first place with Mexican Marigold Mint Goat Caciotta; second with queso blanco with chiles and epazote; third with ricotta, queso Oaxaca, herbed goat cheese, smoked scamorza and caciocavallo,

Amelia Sweethardt of Dripping Springs is one of the state's few second-generation cheesemakers. Her mother got into cheesemaking because of her love for goats. As she perfected her cheeses, they won national awards. Now Sweethardt carries on the tradition. Last year, Pure Luck Grade A Goat Dairy took second place for Hopelessly Bleu cheese.

Other Texans won ribbons for their cheeses in 2008, too. Among them:

• Latte Da Dairy of Flower Mound, second place with fresh feta with Kalamata olives

• Haute Goat Creamery of Lubbock, second place with Black Olive Petite Bouchée and Pomme de Chèvre ; third with Haute Cheddar and Jilli.

• Lucky Layla Farms of Garland, third place with Boyaca .

- Kitty Crider

Cheese abuse: Some do's and don'ts

Do you store cheese in the fridge in the plastic wrapper from the store?

Do you serve jalapeño- or herb-flavored breads and seeded crackers with cheese trays?

Do you stock up on cheese once a month?

Do you serve cheese trays straight from the refrigerator?

Do you purchase cheese without tasting it?

If you have answered 'yes' to at least one of the above questions, you could be a cheese abuser. We confess we have been one, too.

But no more. We've been talking to some of the hundreds of cheese heads - the cheese makers, retailers, dairy scientists, book authors - who are in town this weekend for the annual American Cheese Society conference, strutting their wares and expertise.

Cheese is a living thing, they stress. It generally needs to breathe. So don't smother it or leave it tightly wrapped in the plastic from the store. A big mistake people make, says Janet Fletcher, author of "The Cheese Course," is "they spend money on cheese and lose it because of poor storage. Get it out of plastic right away and rewrap it in wax paper or parchment. That allows it to breathe but protects it from drying out in the refrigerator."

If it is a smelly cheese or a blue, place the paper-wrapped wedges in a plastic container so the aromas do not get into the ice cream or other food in the fridge. And don't store the cheese in the fridge's deli bin. Place it in the produce bin, which has a higher humidity, Fletcher says.

Because cheese is alive, Fletcher says she rarely buys cheese without tasting it first. Even if it is a familiar cheese, she asks for a small taste because wheels can vary and one could be off or overripe. So she tends to shop markets that will give a taste.

Another common mistake people make is buying too much cheese at one time and keeping it too long. Buy only what you will consume in one week, says Cathy Strange, global cheese buyer for Whole Foods Market Inc. and co-chair for the cheese conference. Respect cheese like fish. Treat it carefully and eat it quickly.

People serve cheese too cold, says Central Market cheese monger Kelly Sheehan. "You want to serve cheese at room temperature," she says. For most cheeses, pulling them out of the refrigerator about an hour before the party would be sufficient. An exception would be a fresh cheese. Five to 15 minutes is fine. Times can vary, of course, according to the size of wedges, rounds and pieces. Large pieces could take a couple of hours.

Most people serve cheese with crackers or breads, fruits and wine. But the crackers and bread should be plain, not flavored, or they can overshadow the flavor of the cheeses. Although fruits - fresh, cooked and dried - are nice accompaniments to cheese, they can interfere with some wines, Fletcher says, and might not be a good choice if you are showcasing a special wine. Don't forget how well beer and cider go with cheese, Sheehan says. And anything sparkling - even water - might be better than wine with a cheese because the effervescence lifts the butterfat from the cream off the tongue, Strange says.

Overcome these five mistakes and you might be the next cheese whiz.

- Kitty Crider

Cheesespeak: 5 words to know

Farmstead: The cheesemaker has her own animals that provide the milk for her cheeses.

Clothbound: The wheel of cheese is wrapped in cheesecloth during aging for protection. Generally used on Cheddars. The cloth produces a drier cheese more quickly with the potential for more interesting aroma because of the effect of molds.

Artisanal: A much-abused word, but it tends to indicate products made largely by hand processes and thus in smaller batches. Usually more labor-intensive and expensive. It's rare to find such cheeses for less than $20 a pound, but most consumers don't purchase a whole pound.

Chèvre: This is the French word for 'goat,' although some people use it to refer to fresh, young cheese. But technically, any cheese made with goat's milk is chèvre.

Raw milk: Made from milk that has not been pasteurized. In the U.S., raw milk cheeses are required to be aged for 60 days as a safety precaution.

Source: Janet Fletcher, author of 'The Cheese Course' and 'Cheese & Wine: A Guide to Selecting, Pairing and Enjoying'

Festival of Cheese in Austin

The Festival of Cheese will be 5:30 to 9 p.m. Saturday at the Governor's Ballroom at the Hilton Austin, 500 E. Fourth St. Cost is $75 (less than a one-day pass to the Austin City Limits Music Festival). Beer, wine and accompaniments will be included. Tickets are available online at www.cheesesociety.org, at 502-574- 9950 or at the door, as long as they last. (And if you fall in love with a new cheese, you might want to return to the Hilton on Sunday from

10 a.m. to 1 p.m. for the end-of-conference cheese sale in Salon B. Proceeds from the sale of these artisanal products, promised to be at good prices, will benefit the American Cheese Society's scholarship fund.)