The Great Big Cheese Cookbook
The Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board offers a massive cookbook dedicated to all manner of cheese recipes that cannot fail to convince even the most resolutely antidairy partisan that every kitchen must sport a refrigerator full of one of the world's oldest edibles. Cheeses from the Badger State's farms consist virtually of cows' milk alone. Goat and cheese varieties still languish in obscurity. These recipes testify to growing American taste for more assertively flavored cheeses such as blue and for less-common Italian varieties such as the liquid mascarpone. Inclusion of a number of Mexican-inspired dishes illustrates the mainstreaming of south-of-the-border cooking even in the upper Midwest. Although this book breaks no new ground and appeals to the most general audience of supermarket shoppers and cooks, it glimpses budding sophistication among both cheese producers and consumers. Color photographs throughout help sell the recipes' promised delights. --Mark Knoblauch