The All American Cheese and Wine Book: Pairings, Profiles & Recipes

By Laura Werlin

American cheese. It doesn't exactly excite a gourmet's taste buds. That's because it hasn't been able to shed its bland, shoddy, plasticky reputation. If you haven't discovered the bounty of American-made artisanal cheeses it's high time you do. And if you're cheese pairing is confined to the ubiquitous Roquefort and pear marriage, think again.

Laura Werlin's follow-up to her IACP award-winning The New American Cheese offers an exhaustive guide from chapters on "The Seven Styles of Cheese" and "Navigating the Cheese Counter" to cheese and wine matching, profiles of 50 American cheesemakers and winemakers and 55 recipes with cheese and more.

What caught our particular attention were small articles such as "A Raw Deal?" weighing in the issue of banning raw and unpasteurized milk cheeses. The pictures and recipes are absolutely delectable: Camembert with honey-rhubarb compote on French rolls, Gruyere, wild mushroom and arugula pizza... A lot of recipes feature sweet connections, melon, cranberry, nectarine, honey, apple-pear butter mango chutney, Port-poached figs, sautéed apples, balsamic strawberries, and various compotes such as cherry, dried fruit or kumquat.

It's a fun book to browse and encounter such old friends as goat cheese and honey paired with a late-harvest Semillon, a classic cheese pair. Mostly, all pervasive is such a sense of enthusiasm for good cheese and carefully matching… it is contagious! We're going to the store…

Buy the book.

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