Cheese Straws

When Rickey was upset, he almost always made cheese straws. They were one of the few things he had ever learned to cook, and making them seemed to comfort him.

—from Liquor: A Novel, by Poppy Z. Brite¹

Of the many foods that I have made and served to my guests over the years, there is none that folks seem to love more than the old southern cocktail party standby, cheese straws. Since cheese has always been imported into the hot and humid South, cooking it in cracker form has long been a southern way of “preserving” the cheese, or at least the cheese flavor. There are some relatively new artisan and farmstead cheesemakers in the area today, but they are the exception, not the rule.