07-CHEESE & YOGURT & DAIRY

The hard cheeses and non-fat yogurts are simply a staple in our cooking. These provide great mouth feel without a lot of calories. A good way to balance out an acid or astringent flavor on the plate is with a touch of dairy. One of the areas we focus is on purchasing locally produced farmstead cheeses. These are ones that are made by farms where the animals are raised. We also focus on purchasing cheeses from cows that are grass fed and pastured. This is one very important way to increase the artisan products healthful qualities as well as taste.

Yogurt and Kefir are both good fermented dairy foods that provide sources of probiotics, protein, and calcium. The recent awareness that such foods are healthful has led to higher production. In fact, there is such a strong emphasis on Greek yogurt today because it contains higher levels of protein that more and more farms are producing the Greek variety. Unfortunately it takes more milk to make Greek yogurt and therefore more cows, resulting in more greenhouse gases that we think makes producing more Greek yogurt counterproductive. We actually prefer the grass fed whole milk yogurt. If we wish for it to be thicker and more concentrated, we stain it in cheese cloth.