Lambert Paula - The Cheese Lovers Cookbook and Guide: Over 150 Recipes with Instructions on How to Buy, Store, and Serve All Your Favorite Cheeses

To Mother and Jim

SIMON & SCHUSTER
Rockefeller Center
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
www.SimonandSchuster.com

Text copyright 2000 by Paula Lambert

Photographs copyright 2000 by Greg Milano

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

S IMON & S CHUSTER and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

Designed by Richard Oriolo

Manufactured in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Lambert, Paula, date.

The cheese lovers cookbook and guide : over 150 recipes, with instruction on how to buy, store, and serve all your favorite cheeses / Paula Lambert.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Cookery (Cheese) 2. Cheese. I. Title.

TX759.5.C48 L36 2000

641.673dc21 00-058797

ISBN-13: 978-0-684-86318-4

ISBN-10: 0-684-86318-9
eISBN: 978-0-743-21328-8

This book has an eclectic mix of recipes. Many are creative. I just love to experiment and come up with new and different things. Others you will recognize as classic recipes, changed slightly to modernize them. Overall, my goal was to try to reproduce the delicious flavors of meals I have served myself and have been served in restaurants or by friends, at home and abroad.

Many of the recipes are traditional ones, those you wouldnt think of making without cheese. Yet there are others where the addition of cheese may surprise you, making the dish even more flavorful than before. Overall, I hope that this cookbook will spur your own creativityadding cheese to favorite recipes of your own or teaching you about cheeses you have never tried before. While some cheeses will be more suited to one dish than others, there are no hard-and-fast rules, and the only thing that matters is what tastes good to you.

As a reflection of my life and my experiences, this book has a multitude of influences. It is Southern; it is Italian; it is Southwestern; it is Mexican; it is international; and it is homey with a touch of sophistication. When I was growing up in Fort Worth in the 1950s, it was part of the Old South. My parents were both born in Fort Worth, my father in 1899. We were as Southern as you could get, and all our meals were Southern: corn bread, biscuits, fried chicken, you name it.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, I spent five years in Perugia as a graduate student. Italian food had a tremendous effect on me; it was so fresh and pure. The flavors were clean and direct. I began to look at food in a completely new and different way. When I returned to Texas and soon thereafter founded the Mozzarella Company, I became friends with the young chefs nearby who were using indigenous Texas and Mexican ingredients to forge a new and modern regional cuisine. They influenced me profoundly, as have my other customers, creative chefs who practice their own particular cuisine all around the country.

A further influence has been my neighbors to the south. Mexican foods have always been very popular in Texas; after all, Mexico still owned Texas just a little more than a hundred and fifty years ago. But Mexico isnt the only other country that influences my palate. I love to travel. I love to go to new places and try new foods, and then I enjoy trying to recreate them at home.

Because, for all my love of travel, I most love cooking and entertaining at home. I want my guests to feel comfortable in my home, to relax and have a good time. My favorite thing of all is to spend all day Saturday shopping and cooking for a dinner party. Inevitably I bite off more than I can chew and am seldom ready when my guests arrive, but I have understanding and cooperative friends who pitch in to help. We all have a great time, and I hope you will too.

P. L.

I founded the Mozzarella Company because I couldnt find fresh mozzarella in Dallas. It was as innocent as that. My goal was quite clearI wanted to make mozzarella and tomato salad, a simple dish Id had while living in Italy.

My dream began at Christmastime in 1981, when my husband, Jim, and I went to Italy to visit friends. Knowing my love of cheese, our Italian friends Suzanne and Enrico Bartolucci served fresh mozzarella for lunch on the day we arrived. It was there, in the Bartoluccis kitchen, that a lightbulb went on. I knew the fresh mozzarella that I loved wasnt available in Dallas. I thought, Ill create a company and make mozzarella in Dallas. Just like Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland putting on a play in a barn.

That afternoon, we all went down to the local cheese factory, and I asked the owner, Mauro Brufani, if he would teach me to make mozzarella. Fortunately, he said yes. Once the Christmas holiday ended, Jim went back to Dallas, but I stayed on in Italy. I bought a pair of rubber boots and a little white cotton cheesemakers hat, and I went to the small cheese factory at 6 oclock sharp each morning to learn to make fresh mozzarella. I was fascinated by the ability to start with fresh milk in the morning and have mozzarella made and ready to sell the same afternoon. Before leaving Italy, I arranged for a young Italian cheese professor to travel to Dallas, to help me refine the art of mozzarella making and instruct me on how to meet U.S. requirements once I had built my cheese factory.

Back in Dallas, I began to assemble enough information to initiate the project in earnest. I called cheese-equipment manufacturers in Wisconsin, talked to the FDA in Washington, searched for a location, and scoured the countryside for a raw milk supply. Things got easier when I found a wonderful dairy-equipment salesman, Rodney Lockhart, in nearby Fort Worth. Approaching retirement, Rodney had been involved in the dairy industry all his life. He was enchanted with my plans and soon became my major cheerleader and invaluable consultant. Along the way, I persuaded two friends to become my partners, Suzanne Bartolucci and Carole Jordan.

Despite daunting challenges, I succeeded in renovating a small vacant corner drugstore in an old warehouse district near downtown Dallas into a tiny cheese factory, just in time for the arrival of Giovanni Marchesi, the Italian cheese professor. I bought raw milk and we made fresh mozzarella the day after he arrived. We practiced day after day to perfect our cheese. Once the difficulties were worked out and I had a consistent product, I began to call shops around Dallas to tell them of my great new productfresh mozzarella cheese.

At long last, I had delicious, moist fresh mozzarella for my favorite salad, and so would all of Dallas. My partners and I invited all our friends to see our cheese factory at an opening party. We served mozzarella and tomato salad and lasagne made with our cheese. Soon our new cheese was featured in newspaper and television stories. It was all very exciting and great fun.

As the years have passed, many new cheeses have been added to the Mozzarella Companys repertoire. I have traveled to various countries to learn their traditional cheesemaking techniques and returned home to create my own versions of these cheeses from cows milk and goat milk. Today, the Mozzarella Company produces more than twenty lands of cheese, many of which reflect the flavors of Texas and the Southwest. The cheeses are sold to restaurants and fine hotels across the country, as well as to gourmet and specialty food stores. Our cheeses are also available individually and in gift baskets by mail-order directly from the factory.