Each month, your Neighboring Food Co-ops feature our region’s artisan cheesemakers by offering a specially selected cheese at great price. Look for the “Cave to Co-op” sign in the cheese section at your local food co-op. To find one near you, visit www.nfca.coop/members.
This month’s Cave to Co-op cheese is Willoughby from Jasper Hill Farm, Greensboro, VT
July marks the pinnacle of summer in Vermont, and what better season to feature Willoughby for our Cave to Co-op selection? Washed Willoughby is a semi-soft, washed rind cow’s milk cheese with notes of sweet earth, peach, and herbs. Its thin, tender, rosy-orange rind adds texture to the pudding-like interior.
Eight ounces of perfection need little attention other than peak summer fruits and vegetables to complement the cheese. Blackberries, strawberries, cherries, and blueberries, along with selected nuts like Marcona almonds, walnuts, or pistachios, couldn’t be better. A crusty French baguette, artisanal crostini, breadsticks, and/or a simple but elegant cracker will let Willoughby shine.
The Cellars at Jasper Hill is an innovative 22,000 square foot underground facility located in Greensboro, VT. The Cellars were constructed for the purpose of providing affinage, or aging expertise, as well as distribution and marketing services for local cheesemakers so that they may access the burgeoning market for artisan cheese nationwide.
Andy and Mateo Kehler are the cheesemakers at Jasper Hill Farm. The Kehlers began farming and making cheese with a goal of creating a model to be replicated by other farmers in Vermont who wished to diversify their quickly disappearing farms into more workable options. They wanted to demonstrate that it is still possible to prosper on a rocky hillside farm, creating a vehicle for the renewal of the local dairy economy in the form of a business model that can be replicated by other dairy farms.
“Willoughby” is an original creation of Marisa Mauro’s Ploughgate Creamery, a Cellars collaborator that ceased production of the cheese after a creamery fire in 2010. With Marisa’s blessing Jasper Hill resurrect this pudgy little washed-rind and have continued to develop the recipe.
Should you want a red, white, and blue Fourth of July theme, you’re in luck! Cherry tomatoes, watermelon, red grapes, radishes, dried cranberries, and beet chips give you an array of red fruits and vegetables. Tortilla chips, popcorn, baguette slices, large coconut flakes, white peaches, and yogurt-covered pretzels will complement your blueberries, while blue corn tortilla chips and dark purple grapes say “Happy Fourth of July!”
Keep it simple, keep it fun! Willoughby will do all the work for you. Enjoy a lovely cocktail party with Willoughby, or serve it as a cheese course after a special summer dinner. Willoughby is your winner for the month of July!
For a recipe suggestion, see the Willoughby entry in December 2016.
Cave to Co-op is a partnership between Provision International and the Neighboring Food Co-op Association (NFCA) to support local, artisanal cheese producers in our region and make their products more easily available to co-op shoppers. The NFCA is a network of more than 40 food co-ops in our region — including yours — that are working together to advance their vision of a thriving regional economy, rooted in a healthy, just and sustainable food system and a vibrant community of co-operative enterprise. For more information, please visit www.nfca.coop.