Adapted from Saveur Magazine 11.07
by J. Michael Wheeler
Another indication that we in the States are beginning to appreciate our own regional food products is noted in the article Midwestern Beauties in Saveur, November 2007. Jean Joho, Alsace-born chef of Chicago’s Everest restaurant, serves raw-milk Camembert, aged Gruyere, and other old-world-styled cheeses that are all locally produced. “The Midwestern varieties taste similar,” he says, “but they have their own personalities.”
At Everest, Joho’s cheese plate is dedicated to locally produced varieties such as an ash-ripened goat cheese called Wabash Cannonball produced by Capriole, in Greenville, Indiana. Or Pleasant Ridge Reserve, from Uplands Cheese in Dodgeville, Wisconsin, which is a Swiss-style cows’ milk cheese.
Regional variety and quality is steadily increasing in the Midwest. Farmstead cheese makers (those who produce cheese from their own animals) are creating award-winning artisanal cheeses. In the American Cheese Society’s (www.cheesesociety.org) annual competition, two of the top three awards went to Midwesterners.
Judy Schad of Capriole, who was instrumental in helping create the artisanal-cheese making movement in the 1980’s, began selling her cheeses directly to chef Joho in 1984. “He was buying Midwestern cheese before most people were buying American.”
Read the article Midwestern Beauties
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