Good reads

CHEESE WHIZ
Farmstead's master cheesemonger takes local chefs on a tasty cheesemaking excursion – and the rest of us get to savor the results.
© Lydia Walshin (Rhode Island Monthly, September 2005)

SOME MIGHT SAY that Matt Jennings goes the extra mile to find the very best cheese. Some might say that, but they’d be off. Way off. Up-in-northern-Vermont-250-miles-away off.

Cheesemonger extraordinaire at Farmstead in Wayland Square,  Jennings is Providence’s pied piper of cheese. Once you’ve visited his shop, inhaled the aromas and been seduced by taste after amazing taste, you’ll follow him anywhere. And that’s exactly what a dozen local restaurant chefs and food professionals are doing out of bed before 6:00 on a Sunday morning, setting off on Farmstead’s first Pasture-to-Plate Excursion, designed by Jennings to bring chefs up close and personal with artisan cheese makers and their curds.

Our group includes Providence restaurateurs Bruce Tillinghast and executive chef Beau Vestal, from New Rivers, and Matt and Kristin Gennuso, Chez Pascal; plus Nigel and Jen Vincent, Nat Porter’s in Warren; and Champe Spiedel, Persimmon in Bristol. We’ve been promised two days of farm work, cheese making, and camraderie. We’re dressed in our grungies. We’re sleepy, and coffee-deficient. And we’re off to Vermont.

NOT YET THIRTY, Jennings hails from Boston’s South End, a neighborhood that, before gentrification, was home to many ethnic communities, and twice as many corner stores. “I always wanted to open the traditional little grocery store,” he says, “because they don’t exist anymore.”

After graduating from New England Culinary Institute, where he actually did independent study projects on cheese and beer, Jennings cooked on Nantucket for a few years and was sous chef at 21 Federal, one of the island’s best-known fine-dining venues. He moved to California’s Napa Valley while his fiancé, Kate Barger, completed a pastry degree. When they returned to the East Coast, he found a job, and found his calling, at Formaggio Kitchen, Harvard Square’s temple to cheese. “It was like an apprenticeship,” Jennings explains. “Ihsan [Gurdal, Formaggio’s owner] sent me all over.  For a few weeks I worked at Neal’s Yard Dairy in London, and that’s really when I got the bug.”

Jennings had no connections here before opening Farmstead. He remembers hearing Providence was “a tough old-boy town,” but he found just the opposite. “The community was welcoming, and as soon as we opened, people started to come from all over. The chefs found us right away.” In fact, word spread long before the little shop on Wayland Avenue opened its doors. “We used to get cheese from Formaggio, but it was difficult because we couldn’t see the cheese ahead of time,” says Chez Pascal’s Kristin Gennuso. “My husband Matt is a real grass roots cook; he loves to talk to people and understand where the food comes from. When we opened our restaurant, Farmstead wasn’t here yet. But we heard Matt Jennings was coming. We heard where he was coming from. And we waited. And it was definitely worth the wait. Matt has enormous amounts of enthusiasm for his product, and equal amounts of knowledge. He is our cheese guru.”

Persimmmon’s Champe Speidel agrees. “Matt was a godsend for me. When I first started offering a cheese plate [at Gracie’s, where he was executive chef before opening his own restaurant], I had very limited knowledge of great cheese. I only knew the classics and the very popular. Matt introduced me not only to the New England producers, but to other American producers who were passionate about their products. He also knew the story behind the cheese makers. At the restaurant, we could tell those stories as well and really sell the cheese rather than simply present it. It was a symbiotic relationship; Matt sold the cheese to me, we served it and explained it, and told people where we purchased it. Customers were thrilled when they realized they could buy this same cheese, right in Providence.”

FARMSTEAD IS A TINY GEM of a shop with a large selection of artisan cheeses from the US and Europe, plus local and house-made charcuterie (patés, terrines, mousse) and limited-production foods created exclusively for them, including: jams and jellies from Nesting, in Attleboro; condiments from Cory’s Kitchen in Portsmouth; and 1000 Flower Honey from Mondelo Apiaries. Seven Stars and Olga’s Cup and Saucer supply breads that complement the cheese. On the third Thursday of each month, Jennings offers classes for retail customers on cheese selection and storage, and wine and beer pairings.

Whatever your mood, whatever your menu, Jennings will match you with your perfect mate in cheese heaven. Describe the tastes and textures you’re seeking, and explore the possibilities. Creamy? Stinky? Sharp? Smoky? Woodsy? Farmstead carries it all, and in many cases you’ll also learn the story behind the cheese and the cheese maker, because Jennings has gone that extra 250 miles.

Though his stories are wonderful, there’s no substitute for the personal experience of meeting the farmer who milks the cow or sheep or goat, and converts that milk into cheese. New Rivers, Chez Pascal, Nat Porter’s and Persimmon all offer a cheese plate on their menus, and Jennings created the Pasture-to-Plate Excursion to connect these chefs and the producers. “It’s exciting for me to visit these farmers,” he says, “and many of the chefs who buy from me are interested in making those connections, too.”

So, here we are, making connections and actually making cheese on Sunday morning at Jasper Hill Farm in the Northeast Kingdom, where brothers Mateo and Andy Kehler and their wives, and their 48 Ayrshire cows, produce a soft cheese called Constant Bliss, a smooth blue named Bayley Hazen, and Aspenhurst, a cloth-bound aged cheese. With Mateo’s guidance we turn and drain the curd, and form it into cylinders that will go into the cellar to age for up to three months into melt-in-your-mouth blue cheese. During that time, Andy’s wife Victoria, the farm’s affineur (in charge of aging and ripening the cheese), will rotate and pierce each 7-8 pound cylinder as the natural rind and blue veining develops.

In hairnets and booties, and up to our elbows in rubber gloves, we swab down the cheese room, scrubbing and rinsing the equipment, worktables and floor. Then it’s down to the cave, where several hundred pounds of blue cheese and dozens of cartons of soft cheese need to be brushed, weighed, and wrapped for shipping the following morning. How, we wonder, do these four young farmers manage all of this — and feed and milk the cows a few times a day — without our help? Chefs are accustomed to spending eight or more hours on their feet each day,  but “the physical and emotional strength needed to complete the cheese making process successfully definitely made all of us feel a bit lazy,” notes Kristin Gennuso.

We visit two farms on the way home: Grafton Village, a somewhat larger operation that produces a famous cheddar; and Major Farm in Putney, where Cindy and David Major make award-winning Vermont Shepherd, a seasonal sheep’s milk cheese. “The trip was inspirational and motivational,” Speidel reflects a few days later. “I came back committed to serve the best possible products in a respectful way. As a community, cooks will do whatever it takes to keep shops like Farmstead open. It is vital and important to us, and hopefully will give courage to other artisan shop owners to come forward. We need a great fishmonger. And more butchers, and bakers, and patisseurs.”

All of this bodes well for the Providence dining scene. The new generation of chefs really gets it – they care about food, where it comes from, and the people who devote time and creativity to producing it. They want to buy locally, and bring the best from pasture to plate. So does Matt Jennings, who’s living his dream and spreading the gospel one bite of cheese at a time. “I love, love, love doing this!” he tells me, and that’s good, good, good for us.

[For Jasper Hill Farm cheeses, visit Farmstead, 186 Wayland Avenue, Providence, 274-7177, www.farmsteadinc.com.  To contact Lydia Walshin directly, email lydia@ninecooks.com.]

Choose wisely: In France, the cheese course, although savory, traditionally follows the meal; here, restaurant diners seem to prefer cheese plates as an appetizer. Either way, follow Matt Jennings’ rule of five. Choose one cow’s milk, one sheep’s milk, and one goat’s milk cheese, and add a blue, and a washed-rind. Within each category there are variations, such as aged, fresh, smoked, etc. A good cheesemonger can help you select cheeses that will complement your menu.

Store properly: Farmstead wraps your cheese purchase in a special multi-layer paper with a paraffin coating on the outside and microscopic perforations on the inner layer, to allow the cheese to breathe. Ask for extra sheets, so you can rewrap leftovers. If you don’t have cheese paper, use wax paper or parchment. In an emergency, aluminum foil is preferable to plastic wrap, which will suffocate the cheese.

Adorn simply: Balance sweet with tart, smooth with crunchy. Olives complement sheep and goat’s milk cheeses. Chutneys work nicely with cheddars. Fruit pastes balance the flavor of both sheep’s milk and delicate cow’s milk cheeses (try quince or  blackberry paste). Classic pairings include pears with blue cheese, and proscuitto with aged cheese. Almonds, dates and figs provide interesting counterpoints to many cheeses. And you’ll never go wrong with slices of a crusty baguette.

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