In June I had the pleasure of meeting Amy Jeschawitz, cheesemaker for Cricket Creek Farm,  and her husband, Jason DeMay, the dairyman at the farm. Unlike the many dairy farms that are forced to sell milk below cost, Cricket Creek is using their milk to create excellent “valued-added”products. You and I just call them “cheese.”

I was fortunate to visit on a day when Amy and her team were making both Maggie’s Round and Queso Blanco.  Queso Blanco is primarily for restaurant use (it can easily be made at home). Maggie’s Round is more a labor of love, inspired by Italian Toma recipes. Lesley Graham of Cricket Creek told me, “In Italy ‘Toma’ is a general term. Many regions have their own Toma and they’re very different from one another due to terroir (local soil and weather). We decided to break a bit from the profile of what most folks would recognize as a Toma.” Hence, Maggie’s Round—but only after a year or so of experimenting to get just the kind of cheese they were looking for.

Thanking the Brown Swiss and Jerseys for Their Service

Milk from the grass-fed Brown Swiss and Jersey herd is the foundation for the cheese. Maggie’s Round is considered a raw milk cheese. Since milk is heated to produce cheese, I wondered if that pasteurizes the milk too. Lesley reminded me of lessons never learned in 6th grade science: “to pasteurize milk you have to hold it at a particular temperature for a particular amount of time (hotter temperature = shorter time). But when you’re making raw milk cheese you don’t heat nearly as high.” Some nutritionists say that far more of the nutritional value of the milk is preserved in this manner. Foodies say the same about flavor.

Mold that forms on the cheese in the aging room adds flavor. In Italy the form the cheese is poured into would likely be made of straw, contributing additional flavor depth.  In the U.S., cheese makers are required to use plastic.
 When the cheese is first poured into the forms, the weight of the round is between four to five pounds. As it ages the cheese loses moisture, so the final product come in at two to three pounds. The longer you wait, the drier the cheese. Minimum time before the cheese is ready for sale is 3 ½ to 4 months but Lesley notes that “it’s yummy aged to a year.”

A Round Dog and Cheese

The name comes from the dear old Lab of the Sabot’s, the farm’s founders. Maggie is “round and loves cheese. Any cheese.”  A double meaning, since in Italian “Toma” means ’round’ and the cheese is made in a round form.

I’m not familiar with an Italian Toma, but this offspring has a lovely creamy texture that would work well on Pasta Norma or grated over zucchini.

Maggie’s Round is available at Cricket Creek Farm, at restaurants in the area, at Rubiner’s Cheesemongers and at Guido’s in Great Barrington, MA. If you want to help the farmers directly, make the trip to the farm: you’ll pay considerably less, and they’ll still make considerably more. Cricket Creek Farm, situated in a beautiful valley, is located just four miles south of Williamstown, MA.