When Kenny Mattingly was 19, his family moved from Indianapolis to Barren County, Kentucky, to start a 200-acre dairy farm. Later, Mattingly became an organizer for the Community Farm Alliance, and was sent to Europe in the late 1980s to report on farming practices. After seeing how Europeans made small family farms work, he decided to convert a portion of his own cow’s milk to cheese, and Kenny’s Farmhouse Cheese was born.
Mattingly produces a range of cheeses from the ever-popular tomato-basil cheddar to his own original blues, to some imitations of famous European styles. St. Jerome, a creamy, buttery cheese similar on the taste buds to havarti, is one of these — but it wasn’t always so mild.
“When I first got started making cheese, a chef in Louisville wanted me to make a monastery-style cheese for him,” said Mattingly. “He asked for Saint-Paulin, so I did a few wheels and they turned out great, and he loved it.”
Like most cheeses that originated in Europe’s monasteries, Saint-Paulin is a washed rind, bacteria ripened stinker.
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