Curious Cook

Curious Cook in the New York Times: A French Camembert Designed for the U.S.

In today's Curious Cook column I write about a pasteurized-milk Camembert cheese here in the U.S. that tastes surprisingly like  raw-milk Camemberts in France. It was designed by the French affineur Hervé Mons, an advocate of raw-milk cheese, to have the best flavor possible given the legalities and logistics of exporting cheeses to the U.S. market.

Camembert is the iconic French cheese, well into its third century, and yet even the most "traditional" cheeses being made today are very different from the Camembert of a hundred years ago. The fascinating story of Camembert's origins and evolution is told in Pierre Boisard's Camembert: A National Myth, published by the University of California Press in 2003. I gave a brief version of one important moment in my original draft of On Food & Cooking, but it was cut from the published book. Here it is, to give a taste of the story that Boisard tells in detail.

           

Curious Cook in the New York Times: Making yogurt and crème fraîche

In this month's column I write about cultured dairy products and how to make them at home. I've also put together a recipe for a hybrid between two Indian desserts, easy shrikhand (sweetened drained yogurt) and tricky mishti doi (milk cooked down by about half, then fermented into yogurt). It sweetens a drained yogurt with its own whey, cooked down with sugar to make a tart caramel.

For two dozen unusual recipes from the yogurt belt (Eastern Europe to India), including "proto-pasta" made from yogurt and wheat, see Anne Mendelson's recent and fine book Milk (Knopf, 2008).

 

Curious Cook in the New York Times: Stichelton, a "traditional new cheese"

In today's Curious Cook column I write about a new English cheese intended to be a re-creation of the great blue cheese Stilton at its greatest, when it was made largely by hand with unpasteurized milk.

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Stichelton Dairy

 

Curious Cook in The New York Times: Ice creams, flaky and chewy

In today's Curious Cook column I write about ice creams that offer textural alternatives to the standard smoothness. One, fromage aux épingles, or "cheese with pins," is a 240-year-old French oddity; the other, salepi dondurma, or salep-thickened ice cream, is a traditional Turkish favorite.

In the dark: olive oil, milk, butter, and beer

In my last post I mentioned that olive oil is best stored in the dark. The same is true for milk and butter and beer. It's turning out that all these foods are sensitive to light for similar reasons.