Americans Say Cheese

When you think of the USA you may not immediately think cheese. You may not even think food - after all the infamous twinkies are predicted to live beyond doomsday. 

It is a strange thing to consider that many US citizens were raised on “cheese products”, where the usual line up of ingredients for cheese is more colourful, imaginative and a little more exploratory of your scientific culinary cupboard. I am a little biased and prefer homemade terroir to Frankenstein terror. As with most topics in the U.S, there is an increasing pull going both ways.

US companies have put cheese in a can (Gee Whiz it’s Cheese Whiz), made it sprayable (Easy Cheese, do you believe it is cheese?), they’ve wrapped up the cheese equivalent to a hot dog in plastic packs (cheese slices with an ‘attractive’ light orange hue, Kraft ’singles’, single for ever more). The shape is, in theory, convenient for sandwiches, in practice, for folding it into cheese chimney stacks. Most essentially, the 1928 miracle of Velveeta, a nutritional cheese product that does the opposite to cheese when heated: it does not melt.  It, like a good face-lift, stays soft and supple under a variety of tested conditions.  How convenient. Oh convenience.

I do not like my complexity to come from a can. The US had some promising farmhouse cheese at the

turn of the twentieth century. Anne Pickett of Wisconsin would pool neighbours milk together to make cheese and then share it back out. Women making cheese and homestead industries were common. It was farmhouse, it was community, there was taste, it was real… and then came industrial innovation, railroad and war with unperishable needs. Won over to this new exciting technology and promises of science, fashion and convenience, farmhouse cheese failed to prosper amongst the general american public.

Thankfully convenience is not as attractive as it used to be, subtle taste buds are returning with travel and, one suspects, the rise of other better quality products raising palates and tolerance. With a greater vision, style arrives.

U.S. artisanal cheese is once more on the up.  Cheese with perishable nuances is now a good thing. There are limitations but there is much progress, massive like. If ideas are contagious, this is one that has caught on from coast to coast.

Everona creamery, on the East side, in Virginia, produces some subtle, delicately rich, Ewe’s milk cheese. It began when a doctor got a sheep dog at a fair and needed some sheep to keep it busy. Now they produce over five types of cheese, the soil is flourishing, the practices, medicinal and food health, continue, the sheep have multiplied and the original dog has retired.

Cypress Grove of west coast California import and make cheese. Mary Keehn began with a few goats gathered from a neighbour’s farm for milk and a decision to turn her excess milk into cheese - little did she know. One Humboldt Fog later she persisted through palates unaccustomed to goat cheese and produced, until she sold the business in 2010, one of America’s most well known farmhouse goats cheese. 

There is an element of invention that I admire in the US. Americans often have a, (in Irish) “give it a go” attitude. Americans like experiments. Everona Creamery once had an interesting cheese that was made by grating the older cheese into the young curd, thus having two ages in one. Or there are experiments like Rogue River Blue, a cave aged blue wrapped in grape leaves, which have been soaked in a local pear “eau de vie". As the saying goes and sometimes applies, It will knock your sock off. American are inventing micro traditions.

On Brie, US does not allow raw milk cheese under sixty days but pathways to soft cheese taste have been forged. Cowgirl Creamery of California have some delightful ones. The washed rind Red Hawk and the bloom rind Mt. Tam., both triple cream, have flavours that settles like a pioneer on young tongue. Complexity? Perhaps. Character? Plenty.

 The end justifies the means or the means explains lead to a particular finish..

More temptations:

http://www.seriouseats.com/2014/03/serious-cheese-whats-the-deal-with-raw-milk-cheese-safety-plus-five-recommendations.html

Let us be fair to the history and the use of American Cheese, there is a comfort factor that is behind comfort food.  Martha Stewart, the blonde Mary Poppins of the kitchen, may never buy Velveeta, but she is not above sneaking a slice of it.  The best comfort food in the US reminds me of its vast landscapes. They incorporate a few major elements – Big Sky of Texas, Prairies of endless grassland,

Suburbs or pavement. lawns and houses, New growth Forests, New York (it is also a state though sometimes we forget); a few strong elements but rarely many at once. Macaroni and cheese, grilled cheese sandwiches, Pimento cheese, sure as hell sharp cheddar, and the cheese burger.

It is a lot of comfort food – there are the easy tastes in generous amounts but there are also the smaller producers coming forward with cheese that speaks of the land and the invention and resilience of the people living on it.

When visiting the US,

Say cheese…Real cheese
Please.