Culture club
Local cheesemakers shine
Amethyst grew protective, shielding her kids as visitors approached. She’d given birth about 25 minutes earlier to a boy and a girl, who may go by “Amaryllis.”
“The amaryllis in our house just finished blooming,” reasoned Catherine Renzi of Yellow Springs Farm in Chester Springs, where goats like Amethyst supply milk for award-winning cheeses.
“I really hope we can help people understand why local cheese is local,” she said. “I use the phrase ‘connecting landscape and foodscape.’ The food reflects the land, soil, air and water that’s here. The flavors are specific to this place.”
Area artisans are reinventing the (cheese) wheel. There’s even a Pennsylvania Cheese Guild.
“Most of us can’t seem to produce enough to meet the demand, and that’s so exciting to me,” said board member Stefanie Angstadt of Valley Milkhouse in Oley. “It’s an inspiring time. There’s good momentum around the industry in the state right now.”
Her best seller: Thistle, a second-place winner at this year’s Pennsylvania Farm Show and “definitely not your store-brought Brie.”
“It’s a cheese that is soft and has buttery flavors,” she described, “and because of the
white mold also has some earthy, mushroomy flavors that come out as it ages.”
At The Farm at Doe Run in Coatesville, additional aging produced a cheese that’s “gotten some really great recognition over the past few months,” said cheesemaker Samuel Kennedy.
St. Malachi Reserve, “named after a small church up the street,” won second place best of show at the American Cheese Society competition and gold at the World Cheese Awards.
“It’s our hybrid version of a Gouda,” he explained. “Every little nuance is foreseen in a wheel of cheese,” including the weather and “the attitude of the person milking that day.”
“We’re really happy with the result when we get about 20 months into the aging process,” added fellow cheesemaker Matt Hettlinger. “You get some nice toffee notes, hazelnuts, nuts, caramel. It’s a cheese everyone seems to like.”
Fans include Christine Kondra of Cornerstone BYOB & Artisanal Market in Wayne, who sells Doe Run cheeses and serves them in the restaurant.
“The level of production of what they’re doing is amazing,” she said. “I feel like their techniques are very European in style, but they’ve made them their own.”
Back at Yellow Springs Farm, offerings include Fieldstone and Black Diamond – both American Cheese Society and recent Farm Show winners.
“We’ll also make a cheese this year using native wildflowers,” Renzi revealed. And “we have a new cheese that’s an Alpine style, which we’re going to call Pickering Creek.’” Stay tuned, cheese lovers. Stay tuned.
Roasted Portobello Mushrooms INGREDIENTS
¼ cup balsamic vinegar ¼ cup olive oil 2 tablespoons honey 8 sprigs fresh thyme ½ teaspoon salt ½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
4 large portobello mushrooms, thinly sliced or whole
3 to 4 ounces Fieldstone goat cheese
INSTRUCTIONS
Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Mix all ingredients except mushrooms in a large bowl. Toss mushrooms, sliced or whole, in the mixture. Place dressed mushrooms in baking dish. Coarsely grate Fieldstone cheese over mushrooms. Bake 10 to 12 minutes until mushrooms are browned and cheese melts slightly.
RECIPE COURTESY OF YELLOW SPRINGS FARM Dried Mushroom Risotto INGREDIENTS
1 cup dried porcini or shiitake mushrooms 3 cups hot water 3½ cups low-sodium chicken broth 3 tablespoons olive oil 1 onion 5 cloves garlic 2 cups arborio rice 1¼ teaspoons salt 2 tablespoons butter ¼ teaspoon black pepper 2 ounces Fieldstone goat cheese INSTRUCTIONS
Put the dried mushrooms in a medium bowl and pour the hot water over them. Soak until softened, about 20 minutes. Remove the mushrooms, reserving the soaking liquid, and chop them. Strain the liquid through a paper-towel-lined sieve into a medium saucepan. Add the broth to the pan and bring to a simmer.
In a medium pot, heat the oil over moderately low heat. Add the onion and garlic and cook, stirring occasionally, until the onion is translucent, about 5 minutes. Add the chopped mushrooms, the rice and the salt and stir until the rice begins to turn opaque, about 2 minutes.
Add about ½ cup of the simmering broth to the rice and cook, stirring frequently, until the broth has been completely absorbed. The rice and broth should bubble gently; adjust the heat as needed. Continue cooking the rice, adding broth ½ cup at a time and allowing the rice to absorb it before adding the next ½ cup. Cook the rice in this way until tender, 25 to 30 minutes in all. The broth that hasn’t been absorbed should be thickened by the starch from the rice. You may not need to use all of the liquid, or you may need more broth or some water. Stir in the butter, pepper and goat cheese. Serve the risotto with grated Fieldstone cheese.