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GOURMET NEWS OCTOBER 2015 www.gourmetnews.com SUPPLIER BUSINESS 1 7 Mountain Jim's Tennessee Teacakes BY LORRIE BAUMANN Crunchy like a cookie, but not a cookie. Gooey like a brownie, but not a brownie. Shaped like a cupcake, but not a cupcake either. It's a Tennessee Teacake. Tennessee Teacakes are a southern tradi- tion that, legend has it, originated during the Civil War as a result of severe food shortages in the Old South. According to the legend, a young Southern belle, known for her multi-layered party cakes, wanted to bake one of those when her brother, a Confederate officer, brought home a friend of his to visit. The young woman wanted to make him a cake for his birthday, which happened during the visit, but because food was in short supply during the war, Making Cheese at the Ski Slope right here on the ski slopes," she adds. "There's a nice sunny terrace with a lot of flowers in the summer and great food and everything made from scratch." She's now making cheese all year round, supplying the resort's restaurant kitchen as well as a local grocery chain that's selling her cheeses in 16 stores around Utah. Coniglio makes European-style cheeses from local raw milk. "We go pick up the cow milk at Heber Valley Farm just 15 minutes away. The goat milk, from Sweet Deseret Farm, is directly deliv- ered by Daniel the farmer, who always has nice stories to tell about his high-quality regis- tered dairy goats. I pas- teurize both milks myself at the lowest temperature allowed by the USDA," she says. "I make a double cream brie that is really nice. There's a triple cream brie with black truffles that Clark uses over a bison steak with foie gras on top at the Mariposa restaurant. I make a goat cheese with vegetable ash.... A mari- nated goat cheese with grapeseed oil, cipollini onion, lemon peel and a little sweet red pepper that looks like a little chocolate kiss. It looks really cute. Blue cheese with cow milk, which is not pas- teurized and ages a minimum of 60 days. I have a French friend who told me that it re- minded her of a Bleu des Causses." The road to Deer Valley had its beginning when Coniglio, who was born in Belgium, started making cheese 12 years ago. "I had my own little farm in Colorado, where I had goats and took cheese to the farmers market," she says. "We had a little piece of land and there were a lot of wineries there, but nobody was making cheese. I was miss- ing my cheese from Europe, where it's pos- sible to get cheese from Spain and everywhere. I bought some goat milk from a local farmer and took the cheese to little wineries, where they loved it. We bought a goat, then another goat, and soon there were 50 goats." Coniglio found places to learn more about cheese. She's a native French- speaker, and she found an online forum which allowed her to connect with French farmers, and they invited her to come and tour their farm and cheese facility. A few years later, she contacted a French manu- facturer while she was looking for cheese- making equipment, and the company became interested in what she was doing in the United States. "After a few months, they actually hired me as a director of sales for the U.S.," she says. As part of her training for the new posi- tion, the company brought her to France and then to Germany to visit cheesemakers and learn about the equipment. "They sent me back to the U.S. with that knowledge," she says. She had the chance to visit cheesemakers all over the U.S. until the company decided to close down its U.S. sales. "That's when I started my own company, Fromage With- out Borders," she says. "Colorado was a lot of fun with raising the goats and doing the local farmers market at the end. We were doing some pasteurized cheeses for the market because the law did not allow us to sell raw milk cheeses. We had the good stuff under the table, and good customers knew about it. It was kind of a black mar- ket. That part of her life ended when the farm was sold, and Coniglio moved to Utah along with her goats, which had been sold to a Utah farmer interested in starting a cheese business. "Deer Valley was buying my cheese," she says. When the farmer de- cided that raising goats wasn't for him and sold the flock, Deer Valley offered her the chance to come to the resort. "This is a per- manent situation. I told them they need to bring some cows with some bells to put on the ski slopes and have their own cows and goats," she says. "Right now I'm working on a little project with some ewe milk. We want to do a bloomy rind with a little bit of a blue touch inside. The difference in the milk is so interesting." As she continues, she'd like to try her hand at a raclette cheese. "That's the thought for the future. If we start that, we're going to have to have a bigger cheese room and a bigger aging room to store all those big wheels," she says. "But I would love to do that. I would love to make raclette. That would be the next step." GN BY LORRIE BAUMANN Cheese has taken Corinne Coniglio into a life that many downhill skiers would trade their souls for. She's the full-time cheese- maker at the Deer Valley resort in Park City, Utah, and she makes her cheeses in a room a step away from the ski slope. "It's really awesome. It's right on the ski slopes, so it couldn't be better. It's so beautiful to see the mountain when I go to work," she says. "It's so beautiful and inspiring as I create the cheese." But, as is true of many ultimate destinations, the road to Deer Valley Cheese was long and the journey was arduous. Her dedicated cheese-making space was created for her after a pilot season two years ago in which she made her cheeses in the resort's restaurant kitchen, working at night between 9 p.m. to 5 a.m., when the kitchen was unused and empty. "You need peace to make cheese; it takes time to allow the milk to curdle. You can't have chefs running around with knives," she says. Once it became clear that house-made cheeses were an attraction valued by the re- sort's clientele, Executive Chef Clark Norris convinced the management to invest in the construction of a new cheese room for Coniglio. "The customers really like the idea. One day we had a cheese tasting right there in Royal Street restaurant. We made a big cheese board to bring in, and cus- tomers coming in in their ski gear were asking if they could have that," she says. "It's a pretty high-end food place, so we have direct customers for the fine cheeses we're making here on the resort. It's nice for the people who are coming skiing." "It's really unique to have access between ski times to a cheese board and charcuterie made from scratch. Everything is made she could only make several small teacakes. They were such a hit with the young man that he returned after the war to marry her. Jeff Stewart, Director of Marketing – and most everything else – for Mountain Jim's Tennessee Teacakes, won't swear to the ve- racity of the legend, but he says that's how he heard it when he was growing up, and the tale is popular among Tennesseans who enjoy the treats. Mountain Jim's Tennessee Teacakes came to be after Mountain Jim's, which had been buying its teacakes from another baker to mix into ice cream, had to find a new source. "We were using her teacakes with ice cream that we made, Mountain Jim's Ice Cream's Whistling Dixie, which was vanilla ice cream with inclusions of teacakes and praline pecans," Stewart said. "It was crunchy; it was chewy; it was creamy. It was very popular." After the baker's death in 2011, Stewart couldn't find anyone else making the tea- cakes he needed for the popular ice cream flavor. "I had to go into a kitchen and learn how to make tea cakes – and it wasn't easy. Baking is chemistry, and I failed chemistry in high school," he said. Stewart's three sons, now 14 and a pair of 11-year-olds, were the product testers – and the disposers of the rejects – during the two years that it took him to perfect the recipe. "They would come home from school and ask if I'd made any failures," he said. By 2013, his recipe was ready to go. "Everybody says these are delicious. They love the flavor and the mouth feel," he said. "We've been steadily growing since then." The teacakes have proved so popular that these days, Mountain Jim's makes ice cream only for special occasions so the company can concentrate on the teacake business. Mountain Jim's Tennessee Teacakes are sold in a tin of a dozen that retails for $20 for all vanilla flavor and $22 for assorted flavors and in a glossy white decorated gift box. The box with a dozen vanilla teacakes retails for $12 and the assortment is $14. For further information, visit www .tnteacakes.com or send orders to sales@mountainjim.com. GN Fresh Express Launches New Chopped and Gourmet Fresh Express has updated its line of salad kits to meet continued growing demand for delicious healthier eating options. The brand's newest products include two new Chopped Kits, Bacon and Bleu with Greek Yogurt Dressing and Sweet Kale, and two new Gourmet Café Kits, Santa Fe Greek with Greek Yogurt Jalapeño Ranch Dressing and Mediterranean Greek with Greek Yo- gurt Kalamata Feta Dressing. "Today's consumers demand great tasting and nutritious meals, often ones that can be made quickly on a busy weeknight. Cap- italizing on the trend in which one in three people are eating Greek yogurt, three of the new Fresh Express products have dressings made with Greek yogurt. "By pairing a great-tasting lettuce base with Greek yogurt salad dressings, Fresh Express is able to provide consumers what they want – deli- cious and healthy eating options," said Robert Stallman, Vice President, Marketing & Innovation at Fresh Express. Chopped Kits and Gourmet Café bowls are great for a quick and smart lunch or dinner: Choose from the new Sweet Kale or Southwest Chopped with Greek Yogurt Kits paired with baked chicken for an effortless weeknight meal. Everything you need for a flavorful and crunchy salad is in the bag. Just add your favorite lean protein for a well-rounded dish. Or, choose the new Mediterranean or Santa Fe Gourmet Café single serving kits with the all essentials for a workday lunch. GN

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