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SFPFS Visit Cowgirl Creamery By Linda Yoshino March 23, 2007 Cowgirl Creamery at Tomales Bay Foods  Happy cows grazed in bright hillside pastures as fourteen SFPFS members set off for a tasty historical and educational tour of Cowgirl Creamery in Pt. Reyes Station. As hosts Nan Haynes and Michael Zilber explained, Sue Conley and Peggy Smith, previously chefs at the Bay Area at Bette’s Oceanview Diner and Chez Panisse, founded Tomales Bay Foods in 1993. This evolved from a retail operation to include Cowgirl Creamery, their local cheesemaking venture. Working with Ellen Straus of Straus Family Creamery, they wanted to leverage the local terroir, maintain the area’s diversity, and support organic practices and quality small batch production. Today Cowgirl has four cheesemakers with eight assistants, making two batches per day, seven days a week. Milk from Straus Family Creamery is transformed into four fresh and four aged cheeses—and we tasted all eight of them. Cowgirl has two “limited edition” aged cheeses coated in seasonal herbs, St. Pat in stinging nettles (unstung), available from March 17 through Summer, and Pierce Point, the Fall / Winter cheese coated in chamomile and fennel.  We learned that serendipity plays a powerful role when it comes to cheesemaking. The highly renowned Red Hawk was a mistake. One day a red mold was found on a batch of Mt. Tam. It turned out to be a bacterium naturally occurring in Pt. Reyes ─ b. linens. Red Hawk, now one of their most popular cheeses, is completely different from Mt. Tam, far more pungent and tangy. Haynes and Zilber taught us much about making and storing cheese: wrap it in wax or parchment paper, place it in a Tupperware container with a slice of apple, and put it in the crisper. And don’t ever, ever freeze it! Following our guided tasting, we ordered lunch at the café and bought some wonderful cheeses from all over the world for our own cheese tastings back home. http://www.cowgirlcreamery.com/ |
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