Slow is Beautiful (and delicious)
(Page 3 of 4)
November/December 2000
Tenaya Darlington Isthmus (www.isthmus.com)
New Glarus cherry ale flowed freely as revelers celebrated these foods at a special Slow Food dinner in Madison in June. The dinner featured local delicacies: warm white asparagus with shallot mousseline, pea vine risotto. During the cheese course, Lax explained, 'These are the last three farmstead cheeses remaining in Wisconsin. That means the cheese makers use milk produced on the farm. They don't use any outside suppliers. There used to be about 2,000 farmstead cheeses in Wisconsin at the turn of the century; now all but these three have died out.
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'People pooh-pooh American cheeses because they don't stand up to European varieties,' she adds, 'but there are good ones out there. We have around 60 artisanal cheese makers in Wisconsin. Many of them are so small that they don't have the funds to promote themselves, and grocery stores ignore them because buyers are used to buying huge quantities of yellow, shrink-wrapped cheese.'
For Mary Falk, who owns LoveTree Farmstead Cheese with her husband, Dave, induction into the Ark couldn't come at a better time. Her cheese, which is a raw milk (unpasteurized) cheese made from a breed of small sheep called Trade Lake Sheep, is in danger of being outlawed. 'Big industry is trying to put the kibosh on raw milk cheese by saying that it's dangerous,' says Falk. Despite its having been produced this way for centuries, the big producers are trying to claim that cheese made from unpasteurized milk is unsanitary. The specialty cheese industry--in particular, imported farmstead cheeses from Europe--is taking over the high-end cheese market in the United States, and the big companies don't like it, says Falk.
If the National Cheese Institute succeeds in its strategy to ban raw milk cheeses, Falk and her husband will no longer be able to sell the unique artisanal cheeses they have spent 14 years perfecting.
Trade Lake Cedar Cheese is aged on cedar boughs in a cave the couple built on their 200-acre farm near Grantsburg, Wisconsin. They breed hardy dairy sheep that thrive on native grasses and produce milk with a high butterfat content, and from this they have developed a cheese enhanced by their northern climate. 'The Trade Lake Cedar Cheese is distinct because the cave [where the cheese ripens] has fresh air vents that bring in the toolie fog,' says Mary Falk.
'In the late spring, the ground heats up but the evening air is cool, creating a fog,' Falk explains. 'Toolie just refers to a wet, marshy area.' The vents in the cave allow the fog to settle on the cheeses, distributing pollen and wild molds. This aids in forming the rind and lends a north woods flavor reminiscent of wild lilac, evergreen, mustard grass, and clover. The Trade Lake Cedar comes of age after just two and a half months, usually in mid-July. The unique flavor has impressed chefs at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Chicago and Picholine in New York, where it's been added to the menu.