The Oldways Table Excerpts: Stories, Lessons, and Recipes from Each Chapter

Chapter 6: Cheese and Yogurt
Steve Jenkins on Selecting Cheese

Steve Jenkins, master cheese-monger and partner at Fairway Markets in New York City, weighs in on his philosophy of selecting cheese.

My philosophy of selecting cheese is a simple matter, whether the cheese this philosophy is to be applied to is for my own personal enjoyment or that of my customers. The simplicity of this matter is borne out by the few questions I ask.

Is the cheese made more by a person or more by a machine? Tools are one thing. Even the most hands-on cheese recipe requires vats, hoses, rakes, colanders, and thermometers. But if the cheese is a product of mass production, a Henry Ford-like assembly line where very soon the few humans involved will be replaced by incorporeal robotic arms, then the cheese has been made by a machine, in which case I say, "No thanks." Mass-produced factory cheese is anathema to a memorable cheese experience. There is no character, no rusticity, no individuality to a factory cheese.

Has the cheese been made from raw milk? To use pasteurized milk in the creation of a cheese is unthinkable, illogical, if in fact the goal is to make a cheese that is as good as it can possibly be. And there can be no other goal for me, for all of us. Does the cheese taste good, look good, and does it give itself up nobly to the knife?

I will forever be in awe of the fact that cheese is one of the few things in this life that runs roughshod over the old saw, "You can't judge a book by its cover," because with cheese, you can. I don't need to taste a cheese to know whether it tastes good or not. If I behold a cheese that looks like it just stepped out of a limousine rather than a truck, a cheese wearing a three-piece suit rather than flannel and corduroy, a cheese sporting a label that is in some garish primary color within a logo crafted by committee, a cheese whose exterior is as flawless and glossy as the promise that its interior will be flabby and slabby, I say I will not select this cheese. It is not worthy of me.

If, on the other hand, the exterior of the cheese I behold is in some shade of an earth tone, from bone-white, to beige, to khaki, to straw-colored, through the russet-reds, rawhides and chocolatey browns, and sports a toadskin of a pebbly surface, or a deer antler's velvet, a surface that wants to be stroked, or is cloaked in gray gingham, or is stippled and tattooed over every square inch with its name and provenance, or is dusted or rouged or cobwebbed with some beneficent mold, or whose exterior, like that of fermier St.-Nectaire, like some expressionist painting or Hubble telescopic photo of a distant galaxy, reflects the colors white, yellow, red, green, and black, of five distinct and identifiable strains of bacteria, each a healthy, flavor-provoking substance, I then know the cheese is going to taste good. Heaven knows it looks good. As for that business about the knife, don't worry about it. It'll cut just fine.

With regard to my favorite cheese, I remain noncommittal. I've always found myself baffled by the question, exactly as I am when asked my favorite color or which of my children I love most. I'd have to say my favorite cheese is often the one presently before me.

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