In the spirit of local food month, I’d like to recommend some great local foods produced within 100 miles of the San Francisco bay area. Well, almost. Yerba Santa dairy is 132 miles away from my house–I Google mapped it (why yes, I am a geek!). But I think that’s close enough.
Yerba Santa Goat Dairy: Chevre and Bodega Goat Cheeses
I tasted Yerba Santa’s goat cheeses recently at the San Francisco Ferry Building farmer’s market. Both are fresh cheeses made of raw goat’s milk. The chevre is slightly crumbly, with a texture similar to that of farmer’s cheese. The Bodega is more of a spread.
Initially, both cheeses are sweet and mild, like cow’s milk. They finish with a soft tanginess, the kind you usually taste in goat’s milk cheeses, but much more subtle. This surprised me, as goat cheeses are usually so dominant. I do enjoy strong, tangy goat cheeses, but Yerba Santa’s cheeses stand out with their unusually delicate goat milk flavor. The chevre is delicious by itself, on a slice of bread, or crumbled over some pasta, polenta, or grilled vegetables. The Bodega is flavored with cilantro and green chile, a combination which dairyman Daniel Salmon says came to him in a dream. The combination of flavors is startlingly harmonious. The heat of the chile, the slightly bitter, slightly grassy cilantro, and the soft goat cheese all blend together wonderfully on the tongue. Try spreading it on a slice of thick country bread topped with cucumber slices. Dreamy indeed.
Spring Hill Dairy: Cultured Jersey Butter
Spring Hill Dairy produces possibly the yellowest butter I’ve ever seen that isn’t artificially hued. (Aside from making very pretty butter, the bright yellow color might indicate a very well grazed herd of Jersey cows.) If you buy from Spring Hill’s stall at the farmer’s market, there’s a good chance the butter is less than two days old. This is perhaps the freshest butter you can find, unless you live on a farm. The butter has a very high butterfat content, giving it a creamy, smooth texture that spreads better and melts faster. The salted butter is very lightly salted, such that you can use it for savory or sweet dishes. Its flavor is sweet with a very slight, pleasant tang from the cultures added to the cream. Spring Hill sells the butter by the pound and half pound. You’d think a pound might be too much (as I did), but it really isn’t. The dairy employee who sold me the butter assured me that its low moisture content allows it to freeze very well. If you somehow manage not to eat this butter on a daily basis, you can chop it into large, plastic-wrapped chunks and freeze it.
