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C H E E S E+
"This year we
decided to
have deep fried
pickles with
our fondue.
Crunchy, tangy,
and salty. Dip
it in melted cheese and, an
explosion of amazing goodness!
Caro dark Spanish chocolate
with MitiCrema fresh sheep
cheese and Amarena cherries. It's
a crazy delicious dessert! Try it
sometime."
—Vincent Maniaci
The Cheese Iron | Scarborough, Maine
"A couple memorable pairings come to mind for me. One is a go-to: Jasper Hill Harbison
with French fries. One of my favorite memories with this one was going to a drive-in
diner by myself with a wheel of Harbison as my passenger, ordering French fries, and
devouring the wheel with the fries in my car. It was at the height of the pandemic fear
in 2020 right when restaurants were starting to open back up and I was going through
my first real bad heartbreak at the time, so it felt like such an indulgent treat.
The other really memorable pairing for me was my perfect bite for the 2020
Cheesemonger Invitational (CMI) in San Francisco. I was assigned Jasper Hill's Eligo, their cow/goat
pudgy washed rind. Because of its super savory flavor, I went with a real mind-bender by creating sushi
rolls with the cheese. I cubed the cheese, rolled the cubes in a crushed-up mixture of nori, Japanese
rice stick snacks, and prawn crisps. I then rolled each coated cube in strips of nori (this was the part
where I was really losing my mind wrapping 100 of these in an hour-and-a-half) and topped with a
halved wasabi pea. The presentation was really fun, and the flavor was surprisingly delicious.Maybe
it was the memory of being able to flex my creativity at CMI, maybe it really was the magic of the
pairing itself, but that's a pairing that definitely sticks out in my memory as well."
—Michelle Vieira
Carfagna's Market | Columbus, Ohio
