Consider Bardwell Farm's deeply savory Vermont Cheese Crisps, made with flour from North CountryFarms, may be the tastiest accidental byproduct of Hurricane Irene.
Six months after the storm, head cheesemaker Chris Gray began to notice subtle cosmetic differences in much of his product. He found his cheeses were unusually "gassy," or filled with the "eyes" that distinguish swiss cheese. It turns out that
propionic bacteria, the same bacteria that give emmantal and swiss cheeses their characteristic eyes and flavor, had been carried onto the pastures of Southern Vermont in the wake of the Hurricane.
Committed to the carefully honed texture of Consider's award-winning cheeses, Chris decided to use the strange-looking - yet still delicious - chance creation to his advantage: mix it with flour and bake it into cheese crisps!
When the idea came to him, Chris knew one thing for sure: "If we do this, we want to use local grain." Consider Bardwell uses flour from North Country Farms of Watertown, NY, in their crisps, making it a 100% locally sourced product.
Once Chris settled on a recipe, he brought it to Sissy Hicks, head chef and proprietor of a nearby restaurant, who helped perfect the recipe and scale up production. Consider Bardwell now sends all of its less-than-beautiful cheese (a mere 1% of the cheese they produce) to Sissy to be made into crisps.
Eating one is an eye-opening experience, delivering a richly cheesy taste and aroma, a crisp texture, and a salty finish that will have you reaching for more. They're made with a mix of Consider's Pawlet, Manchester, and Rupert cheeses -- each of which has won multiple awards at top cheese competitions. To give you an idea of the flavor intensity, consider that between 12 and 15 pounds of cheese is used to make just 40 bags of crisps. The remaining ingredients are flour, butter and fresh herbs. "The flour really acts as binder [for the other ingredients]," Chris told GRGP.
Consider Bardwell's Vermont Cheese Crisps are only available at Greenmarket, so snag a bag at one of the following markets:
