Cheese Primer

Brimming with knowledge, enthusiasm, and decided opinions, Steven Jenkins's CHEESE PRIMER is everything you need to know to judge, savor, choose, store, and serve the terrific variety of cheeses now available. He presents a region-by-region guide through France, Italy, and Switzerland, as well as the British Isles, Spain, the U.S., and other cheese-producing countries. Here are all the well- and little-known cheese worth exploring-and some surprising heavyweights you may want to avoid ) imported Brie, for example.

A complete primer, its features include pairing wine with cheese, orchestrating a cheese course, and local gems to seek when traveling abroad.

Steven Jenkins is the first American to be awarded France's prestigious Chevalier du Taste-Fromage. He has created and/or revamped the cheese counters at Dean & Deluca, the Fairway Market, Balducci's, and other celebrated fine food shops in New York and across the country. "A Broadway impresario hos' hit is food" (New York Times), Mr. Jenkins lives with his family in New York City.

A WORLD BEYOND BRIE

Brimming with knowledge, enthusiasm, and decided opinions, Steven Jenkins's CHEESE PRIMER is everything you need to know to judge, savor, choose, store, and serve the terrific variety of cheeses now available. He presents a region-by-region guide through France, Italy, and Switzerland, as well as the British Isles, Spain, the U.S., and other cheese-producing countries. Here are all the well- and little-known cheese worth exploring-and some surprising heavyweights you may want to avoid ) imported Brie, for example.

A complete primer, its features include pairing wine with cheese, orchestrating a cheese course, and local gems to seek when traveling abroad.

Steven Jenkins is the first American to be awarded France's prestigious Chevalier du Taste-Fromage. He has created and/or revamped the cheese counters at Dean & Deluca, the Fairway Market, Balducci's, and other celebrated fine food shops in New York and across the country. "A Broadway impresario hos' hit is food" (New York Times), Mr. Jenkins lives with his family in New York City.

Publishers Weekly

"Once ripened... the inner cheese becomes liquescent, bone-colored, and extraordinarily flavorful... nutty, beefier, and woody, with hints of peat, like a single malt Scotch from Islay. The cheese is tumescent, glistening." It may be cheese to you, but to Jenkins it's a perfect Teleme California cheese originally made by Greek immigrants. In 1973, Jenkins moved to New York City from Missouri to pursue dreams of acting-which explains how he came to run the cheese department at two of New York's gourmet meccas, Dean & DeLuca and Fairway. The first American invited into the the Guilde de St. Uguzon and a Chevalier du Taste-Fromage, Jenkins is really a missionary. After a lesson in cheesemaking from which readers can truly understand why washing the rind or cheddaring makes the end product taste different, Jenkins examines, country by country, the great cheeses of France, Italy, Switzerland, Spain, Britain, the U.S. and, in one fell swoop, Canada and the rest of the European cheese-making countries. He describes how they are found, served and what makes them great-or not. "Bel Paese," he notes, "is immensely popular because it is very mild (read bland)... I don't recommend it to my customers under any circumstances for any purpose." He takes a similarly unrelenting posture towards young Goudas or Provolones, but most of his ire is aimed at the mass produced cheeses and the misguided government regulations, like the USFDA's refusal to allow the importation of raw milk cheeses aged less than 60 days, that keep Americans ignorant of some of the world's great cheeses. Hence, this volume becomes partly a travel book as Jenkins urges Americans abroad to sample the forbidden. With unflagging enthusiasm and a seemingly endless reserve of information (much offered in boxes and sidebars), The author combines the romance and legend of an ancient craft with addresses, names, recipes and other hard facts. Jenkins employs prose as gloriously redolent, seductive and irresistible as his favorite cheeses to demonstrate how sight, smell and touch can be marshaled in the service of taste. Illustrations not seen by PW. BOMC featured alternate; 15-city author tour. (Nov.)

Steve Jenkins grew up in Columbia, Missouri. Upon graduation from high school he moved to New York City to pursue a career in acting. That was in 1973. While waiting for his big break into show-biz, he took a job in a cheese store. After a year he became manager, but he found retail rote; two years and a couple of minor soap opera roles later, he was fired for telling the owner he was in the store when he was actually in his apartment. Jenkins then met Joel Dean and Giorgio DeLuca, and became their first employee. He created a new sensory experience by liberating cheese from the confines of a refrigerator case at the now legendary Dean & DeLuca specialty food shop. He built pyramids of cheese atop the counter using hundreds of pounds of orange, rock-hard, aged Goudas. He used slabs of Carrara marble and wooden cutting boards to display Bries and heaped Pillivuyt porcelain souffle dishes with fresh goat cheese sprinkled with herbs and drizzled with olive oil. The more Steven learned about cheese, the more he realized that this country was sorely lacking in its selection of truly great cheeses. So he went to France in search of "real" cheese. On his return, his shipments from Rungis began to arrive--cheese the likes of which had never been tasted before in New York. Real Brie from Brie, and real Camembert from Normandy. The next six years he traveled frequently throughout the cheese-producing regions of France, Switzerland and Italy. Jenkins has created and/or revamped the cheese counters at Dean & DeLuca, the Fairway Market, Balducci's, and other celebrated fine food shops in New York and across the country. He has rejoined the Fairway Market. Jenkins was the first American to beawarded France's prestigious Chevalier du Taste Fromage and is frequent contibutor to Food Arts, Food & Wine, and the Gourmet Retailer. Since the publication of Cheese Primer in November 1996, Steve Jenkins has become a regular commentator on the National Public Radio Program The Splendid Table, and he was the recipient of the prestigious James Beard Award in the reference category for this book.