Notes from a Food Diva: Fall is the Time for Being Cheesy

Dorie Greenspan spoke at this month’s session of Beard on Books, a series of readings and discussions by the top cookbook authors at the James Beard Foundation.

Dorie’s seven-pound coffee table book,”Around My French Table,” is based on more than a decade of part-time living in Paris. When her son was attending college in France, she convinced her husband to make that dream come true.

A chunk of the lively session with Dorie was spent on her adventures with cheese in Paris. The bottom line was to start with the delicate and go to the strong. And when a cheese plate is passed, cut from the center of the wedge to the outside crust - never take just the tip from a slice. But as Dorie said, the French shrug a miss cut-off with, “Americans!”

I’ve always been thrilled on trips to Paris at the beautiful way cheese is displayed in shops on straw. I also thought it awesome that there was a restaurant featuring a three-course cheese meal.

The world of cheese in the U.S. has changed since the cream on top of a bottle of milk left beside the kitchen door in winter rose up in an icy column and my grandmother hung the curds of curdled milk in cheesecloth from the faucet in our kitchen sink to make farmer cheese.

During my years at The Daily News, wine became a norm with Americans. And although New Yorkers could not say, like Charles de Gaulle, “it is impossible to rule a country with 274 different cheeses,” I felt that cheese could become as popular with Americans as wine. 

After tasting a heavenly triple crème St. Andre at the Four Seasons, it seemed like the time to start a cheese column. Each week, I wrote up a different cheese, including paneer, an Indian cheese made like grandmother’s farmer cheese.

Down the road from my place in the Catskills, pasteurized goat’s milk cheese - including chevre, feta, Caerphilly, semi-soft basket cheese and aged cheese - is being made from milk from 40 Alpine goats at Sherman Hill Homestead. Linda Smith has been making goat cheese since 1993.

Her cheese is delivered to three hotels. Last fall, Linda started making cow’s milk cheese. One of her customers told me she serves aged cow’s milk known as Hither Hill with the best green olives and raves about the combination. She also stuffs portobello with fresh cow’s milk - Young Thom - and garlic before broiling them. 

It’s a small world. When Les Dames had a tour and lunch overlooking Paumanok Vineyards in Aquebogue, L.I., we went to Catapano to see - even milk - a goat and purchase cheese from the shop. I asked the cheese maker if she knew of Sherman Hill.

“I took classes there with my husband, from Linda Smith, eight years ago,” she replied.

The Spatolas have a second home on Oak Hill Road. They live in Astoria, where they have a restaurant - Italiano, Da Franco – and, in Ridgewood, they make fresh mozzarella at Spatola Latticini, which is delivered in Queens to Douglaston’s Giardino as well as restaurants in Manhattan.

The Marners, living at the end of dead-end Oak Hill Road, started the Franklin Stage Company 15 years ago. At the anniversary fundraiser on Labor Day weekend, a huge brie in a Dutch oven was set on a hot plate with sliced baguettes on a buffet under a canopy ringed with lights.

Cheese is in the air.

There are cheese classes. There are cheese tastings. In farmers markets, a cubelet of cheese on the end of a pick makes the sale. In supermarkets, the array is amazing. In cheese stores, the products are displayed with the same panache that makes a trip to the cheese shop in Paris a visual as well as a gustatory delight.

Pizza was once primarily associated with mozzarella. Last weekend, rectangles of thin crust pizza topped with steamed cauliflower bits, breadcrumbs and Gruyere were displayed at the Amsterdam Farmers Market, which is located at the old site of the Fulton market.

Today, at vineyard wine tastings, you may clear your palate with an order of cheese and a chacuterie plate, rather than a slice of bread.

Just the other day, I chanced upon a main course on the menu posted outside Bergdorf’s seventh floor haute restaurant: Croque monsieur, the classic French sandwich of ham and cheese (typically Emmental or Gruyère) browned in butter, “served with an egg over-easy and seasonable greens”.

And the wedding gift I gave of a long, rather narrow, marble tray with grape leaves decorating the handles was designed for serving wine. The bride decided it was perfect for cheese.

Cheese is everywhere. And fall is the peak season.