Janet Fletcher is a food writer for the San Francisco Chronicle. She's the author of several books about food and cooking, including The Cheese Course; she also writes a weekly column devoted exclusively to cheese for the Chronicle.
Tell me a little bit about how you came to write about food and especially about cheese. Yours is the only regular column devoted to cheese I've seen - was it difficult to sell a cheese-only column to your editors?
restaurants during my CIA internship. While I was cooking at Chez Panisse, I
began ghostwriting for a national restaurant critic who had a subscription
newsletter. I liked the writing life, left the restaurant world and have been
writing ever since. That was more than 20 years ago.
I did not grow up with good cheese. I
learned about good cheese and the pleasures of the cheese course during a
college semester abroad in southern France. I developed the habit of eating
cheese in the French style, at the end of the meal, and so I’ve had 25 years to
taste and read and learn.
I didn’t have to sell my column to my
editors. It was the idea of San Francisco Chronicle executive food and wine
editor Michael Bauer, and he asked me to do it. I think he hoped a cheese column would
help bring food readers to our new wine section. The column has been
unbelievably popular. It appears weekly in our Thursday wine section and is
syndicated as part of a package with other wine-section content.
What's your opinion of American/Canadian artisan cheese vs. the European "standards"? Do you think we measure up or are we getting there? (I'm thinking of that moment in the late 1970s when California wines "won" the blind tasting against French wines - are we there yet or close?)
No, I’m sorry to say, I don’t think we measure up yet. But we will, and the wine analogy is an apt one. In every category and style of cheese I can think of, my favorite cheese is European, but I expect that to change.
It seems like there's been an amazing growth in the number of artisan cheesemakers across the US in the past decade or so...why do you think cheese making (and cheese appreciation) has, to some extent, become popular?
I think people love the idea of crafting something with
their hands. They like the idea of making something wholesome that adds to our
pleasure at the table. And many people are drawn to cheesemaking through animal
husbandry; they love the cows, sheep and goats. In some cases, the motivations
aren’t so romantic. It’s just dairy people trying to survive and add value to
their milk.
What's your opinion of the Northwest cheese/cheesemakers
you've experienced? Is there much Northwest cheese available in the Bay Area?
We don’t see that much Northwest cheese here, and what we do
see is expensive. My impression is that Bay Area retailers aren’t stocking them
much because their customers would sooner pay $25 a pound for a European cheese
they’ve heard of than for an Oregon cheese they haven’t.
Could you name some of your favorite (or current
favorite) American or Canadian artisan cheeses and say a little bit about
why you like them?
Some current favorites:
Rogue River Blue: moist, creamy, approachable, original
Old Chatham Sheepherding Company Ewe’s Blue: just flat-out delicious
Cowgirl Creamery Red Hawk: an unusual washed-rind triple crème, superb when ripe (sometimes it isn’t)
Vermont Shepherd: probably our country’s best example of aged sheep’s milk cheese
Fiscalini Bandage-Wrapped Cheddar: America’s best Cheddar, in my opinion
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