Valley Bounty: Goat Cheese

Somehow, unbelievably, I am writing this while sheltering from yet another deluge of snow, despite the calendar quite clearly telling me it is mid-March. I know it is not really that unusual for us to have snow at this point in the year, but my more petulant side is feeling pretty impatient with shoveling out my car, sick of having to cancel plans, and of course, dreaming longingly of spring and summer fruits and veggies. I do have to admit though, our local farms have by no means abandoned us to endure the winter alone. In fact, I’m getting ready to have some friends over shortly, and I’m glad I’ll have some great local goat cheese to share with them.

Goat cheese, or chèvre if you’re fancier than me, has roughly the same fat content as cow’s milk cheese, but with a different mix of fatty acids that yields its often tangier flavor (some of those fatty acids, like capric and caproic acids, take their name from capra, the Latin word for goat). Goat cheese comes in the same range of styles and hardnesses as cow cheese, though in America the most widely encountered is the young, white, cream-to-crumbly style, plain or mixed with herbs or fruit. Some consider it an acquired taste, but I love it on sliced apples or pears, in an omelet, and on pizza.

Valley Bounty is written by Brian Snell of CISA (Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture)