American Cheese Month Feature: Hooligan

Cheese: Hooligan

Maker: Cato Corner Farm, Colchester CT

Pairings: This cheese has hefty aroma and full palate coating savory flavors. I like it with a yeasty Belgian beer with citrus and coriander notes and fresh baked sour dough bread. It's also nice with a full bodied red with a spicy, dry finish. This rugged cheese can stand up to other bold flavors, so try it with a whole grain mustard and marinated peppers. It’s made with Jersey cow milk so expect piquant grassy flavors from summer batches and rich buttery texture in the winter.

The day I interviewed at Cato Corner Farm, I enjoyed a plate with Hooligan, pepper biscuits, marinated olives and peppers and garlicky hummus

On the day that I interviewed at Cato Corner Farm, they were making Hooligan. As a monger, I knew Hooligan well, as a beefy washed rind I’d offer it to lovers of French Munster cheese looking for something a little more local. I also imagined that I knew something about its make process: pump raw milk, add cultures, add rennet, cut the curd, hoop the cheese and then periodically brine it as it aged. I knew this process from books and from hearing cheese makers speak about their craft, but I had the sense I really couldn’t know how milk became cheese without making it myself.

When I got to the farm the first question someone asked me was where my cheese clothes were. Cheese clothes? What were cheese clothes? I hadn’t brought any. A lovely woman, visibly pregnant, offered me her spare outfit and as I changed in the tiny room between the walk-in cooler and cheese make room I imagined that her clothes would somehow be too small and I would have to go back home, interview over. In someone else’s T shirt and shorts, and a borrowed pair of dairy boots, I walked into the make room and my glasses steamed, and slid down my nose. In that moment I was hit with the strong yogurt-y smell of cheese making, the unrelenting heat of the room, and everything I still had to learn about cheese. After scrubbing my skin with a brush and sanitizer and putting on gloves as long as my entire arm I began to hand stir the curd, stooped over a vat taller than my waist and pulling my arms through more than 1500 pounds of curd and whey, I felt the literal weight of what I had only obliquely understood as backbreaking work.

A young Jersey peeking at me as I hike Cato's sprawling pasture

In the months since then, I have grown a deep appreciation for Hooligan. Since it ages only 60 days, I have been able to participate in each aspect of its creation from pumping the milk to washing them in the cave as they age. From the loving pats the people at the farm give to the cows as they forage, to the delicacy needed to flip them in the mold moments after they are made, to the light pressing that helps the affineurs know if the cheese is well-enough aged, Hooligan is truly a handmade cheese and emblematic of the spirit of American cheese today.

Nightfall after a long day of cheese making at Cato Corner Farm