You can't go into a fancy grocery store these days without being surrounded by "artisanal" cheeses. What are they? Who and what are the "artisans"? In the most recent issue of Gastronomica, Heather Paxson, an anthropologist at MIT who studies the culture of food, weighs in with "Cheese Cultures," a short history of American artisanal cheese.
American interest in artisanal cheese, Paxton explains, began in the 1980s, as "an offshoot of the back-to-the-land movement." Thirty years later artisanal cheese is, in its way, a booming industry: the number of U.S. artisanal cheese makers has doubled since 2000. When today's cheese makers identify themselves as "artisans," Paxson writes, they often mean that their cheeses are made by hand, in an 'Old World,' European style. Many of today's cheese artisans are former professionals with college degrees who quit their jobs and went to Europe, where they learned how to make cheese on farms in France and Switzerland. The whole point is to distinguish your cheese from the Kraft single.
To read the rest of the storoy, please go to: The Boston Globe.
