Adventures in Cheese

After my fifth consecutive trip to the cheese table at a recent wine tasting, I was greeted with, "You really love cheese, don't you?" Guilty as charged. I love cheese. Sharp cheddar, fresh goat, washed rind. You name it, I love it. I am the girl sneaking more than one cheese cube at Whole Foods.

With that in mind, I've tried to come up with my dream cheese platter. According to the experts at my local specialty markets, the ideal cheese plate should consist of a mix of soft and hard cheeses ranging from the mild to the most pungent and intense. These selections will generally involve a fresh cheese, a semi-soft, a soft-ripened, a surface-ripened, a semi-hard, a hard, a blue, and a washed rind cheese. Most people serving a cheese platter tend toward the three cheese display -gouda, Brie and a blue varietal- dismissing the others as unnecessary; but to serve only three cheeses is to deny the delicious options that this basic dairy product offers.

Fresh cheeses are often known as curd cheeses. They require no aging and are made by introducing an enzyme to milk; the curds are saved and molded into cheese while the whey is drained off. My selection for this category is the French style Redwood Hill Farm Fresh Chevre. Made by Jennifer Bice in Sonoma California, this Certified Humane goat cheese is lightly citrusy, fluffy and delightfully spreadable. Another delicious option would be a crumbly Greek feta.

Semi-soft cheeses are often aged for a few days to a few months and generally have a creamy interior with little to no rind. They also melt well and are favored cooking cheeses. Bellwether Farms makes Crescenza, a delicious semi-soft cheese molded into traditional Italian square shapes. This cheese is rich and buttery with a light tart flavor and would be delicious melted on pizza. Another choice would be a three-month aged Dutch Gouda.

Soft-ripened cheeses are distinguished by their “bloomy” white rinds and soft creamy texture. This category of cheese includes the popular Brie and Camembert. My choice for a soft-ripened cheese is the Old Chatham Shepherding Company’s Hudson Valley Camembert, a consistent award winner. This cheese is made with a mix of their sheep’s milk and a neighbor’s hormone-free cow’s milk. It is the texture of a triple-crème and is appealingly buttery and smooth.

Surface-ripened cheeses can vary in texture, but they ripen from the outside in, resulting in intensely flavored cheeses with wrinkly rinds. One of my favorite cheese falls into this category. La Tur is an Italian surface-ripened cheese that’s made from a mix of pasteurized goat, sheep, and cow’s milk. This cheese manages to be both crème fraiche-like and earthy.

Semi-hard cheeses cover a broad range of flavors, but tend to be firmer and sometimes crumbly. They often balance earthy, salty and nutty flavors quite well. This category includes the delicious Pleasant Ridge Reserve made by Uplands Cheese Company. It is a raw cow’s milk farmhouse cheese made in Wisconsin with a lovely golden color.

Hard cheeses deliver exactly what the name implies. They’re hard, crumbly, good for grating and tend to be saltier than the other cheeses. I love pecorino that is aged for at least six months. Its flavors intensify becoming more caramel-like than salty. An aged pecorino is also amazing with a drizzle of Italian honey.

Blue cheeses are always identifiable by their blue/green veining and often-pungent scent. They range from smooth and creamy to crumbly and can be made with sheep, cow, or goat milk. They can by salty, buttery, yeasty, nutty, tangy, or at times sweet. One of my favorite blue cheeses is Rouge Creamery’s Rogue River Blue. This raw cow’s milk cheese is aged in Syrah-Merlot grape leaves that have been soaked in pear brandy. It is a salty, yet sweet wonder.

The last cheese category is perhaps the most pungent. These are the cheeses whose scents will permeate the kitchen long after opening the fridge door; however, the smell can be much stronger than the taste. Washed rind cheeses have tacky surfaces, pinky/orange colored rinds, and are characteristically creamy. It’s hard for me to decide between two cheeses for this category, so I’ll include them both. Cowgirl Creamery’s Red Hawk washed rind cheese is amazing! It is a triple-cream organic cow’s milk cheese that’s aged four weeks and then washed with a brine solution. I also love a French Langres cheese. Made with cow’s milk, Langres is matured for about two to three months in humid cellars and is regularly washed with brine and annatto. It has a strong scent and melts in the mouth. This cheese has an indentation on the top meant to be filled with a pour of champagne or marc, but it is just as easily enjoyed on its own.