Wisconsin: the land of cheese and beer. The land of a thousand lakes. Also the land of my birth. Wisconsin holds a special place in my heart, so I couldn’t have been more excited to spend five glorious days with the Haystack team on the shores of Lake Monona in Madison attending the 30th annual American Cheese Society (ACS) conference. Cheesemakers, mongers, shop owners, writers, educators, distributors, and other industry professionals gathered at the gorgeous Monona Terrace to learn, network, and of course- eat a lot of cheese.
I arrived in Madison a day ahead of the big crowd, since I was taking the Certified Cheese Professionals Exam (CCPE) and wanted extra time to settle in and do some last minute review. Almost immediately upon arrival, my friend and fellow cheesemonger Ali Morgan of Scardello Cheese in Dallas, and I set out for some pre-exam-cram nourishment. We headed to The Old Fashioned, a Madison institution known for their selection of Wisconsin craft beers and deep-fried cheese curds. Ali had never had a fried cheese curd before, a fact that I’m still wrapping my head around. Fried curds are a regional delicacy that you will find on essentially every menu in the state. What exactly is a curd? Imagine standing next to a vat of freshly coagulated milk, dipping your hand into it, and pulling out a watery mix of well–curds and whey. The curds are the all of the solids (protein, fat, and minerals) in milk that form the basis of cheese. What’s a deep-fried curd then? It’s sort of a like a mozzarella stick, but so much better. The curds at The Old Fashioned were brown and crispy on the outside, but tender and gooey in the middle. Washing it all down with a cold Spotted Cow from New Glarus Brewery, we decided to make it our mission to sample fried curds wherever we could find them and see which restaurant boasted the best.
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