Famous Cheese

Blue cheese is, essentially, moldy cheese. In America, the best blue mold happens to grow in Newton, Iowa, where Maytag Dairy Farms has been turning out Maytag Blue Cheese since Duke Ellington's "Daydream" was a hit on the radio.

In 1941, the first wheels of Maytag Blue aged in underground caves. Cheesemakers produced the cheese by hand, stirring big vats of curds and testing the curd firmness with their fingers.
Little has changed, except now the cheesemakers wear hairnets.

I got to wear a hairnet myself when I toured the cheese factory to write an article about it for my master's project. You gotta love a master's program where there's no thesis and instead you can write quaint stories about cheesemaking in small town Iowa. Ahhh, graduate school.

Surprisingly, to me at least, not many Iowans know about Maytag Blue Cheese. Come on people! It's been in Oprah's magazine. It's been on the Emeril show. Maybe Iowan's don't even know about O magazine and Emeril. Don't you people get cable? I've decided Iowan's don't watch enough TV. It's one of our few outlets to civilization--we need to up the tube-time!

Workers still cut and wrap all the cheese by hand. The work rooms looked like something out of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. All the workers in white coats and hairnets would move quickly, not saying a word. The cheesemakers stirred big stainless steel vats of goo. I kept watching for Oompa Loompas.

If you've had blue cheese salad dressing you have no idea what actual blue cheese tastes like. That's what I discovered when I tasted a hunk of the huge wheel I felt I had to buy to reciprocate for them being so nice and letting me see the curds and whey in the vats. For the first couple of chews it was delicious--cheesy and tangy and creamy. But after swallowing I was left with an aftertaste of cement basement floor. That's mold for you.