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American Aritisan Cheese with Jeffrey Roberts |
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Tuesday, 02 October 2007 |
September 25, 2007- Jeff Roberts helped establish the Vermont Institute for Artisan Cheese at the University of Vermont. He is a national director with Slow Food USA and co-chaired the “Artisan Cheese of America” at Cheese 2001 and 2003 in Bra, Italy. He lives in Montpelier, Vermont. He is the author of The Atlas of American Artisan Cheese. The book is organized by region and state, and highlights more than 350 of the best small-scale cheeses produced from cow, sheep, goat and water buffalo milk in the United States today. Each entry describes a cheesemaker, its products, availability, location, and even details on the cheesemaking processes.
Find out more about Jeff's book: http://www.chelseagreen.com/
or contact Jeff:
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www.atlasofamericnartisancheese.com
On September 27, 2007 I was joined by Jeff Roberts. In the book Jeff made certain qualifications for entry. All cheese had to be made from Grade A milk, it had to have a certain amount of hand crafted techniques used in the production with limited mechanization using traditional cheese making techniques.
When milk is determined to be Grade B milk it is allowed to have a higher count of bacteria in it. All Grade B milk is pasteurized. Grade A milk may be used for raw milk cheese. Raw milk cheese is aged for at least 60 days, but law in the U. S.
There is also another designation called "farmstead cheese" . Farmstead cheese is cheese that is made from milk from one farm only, whose animals eat only pasture and grains that are grown on that farm. Each farm has a particular taste to their own cheese.
There are two farms in the U. S. who grow water buffalo for the production of water buffalo cheese. There is a fairly long history of making mozzarella cheese from Water Buffalo milk in Italy. One of the U. S. farms is in the central valley in California, the other in Vermont.
Slow food is an organization that celebrates food and the preservation of regional foods. Carlo Petrini, the head of the international group has recently published a book entitled, "Good, Clean, Fair". The emphasis of Slow food is that the food should taste good and be good for us, be clean so that it benefits the planet, and be fair by creating a good living for the people who produce the food.
Jeff Roberts talks about Cheese being a "bell weather" of the changes that are happening in American Agriculture. There has been an enormous growth in the number of farmstead cheese producers, and the demand is beyond the supply. This bodes well for American Agriculture and the small individual family farm, which has been under siege for the last 50 years.
Georgia's own Sweet Grass Dairy is included in The Atlas of American Artisan Cheese. Check out the recipe using one of their cheeses
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Last Updated ( Tuesday, 02 October 2007 )
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