Does the world need another truffled cheese? Well, maybe this one. It’s Spanish, from goat’s milk, and new on the scene—just in time to add some love to your Valentine’s cheese board. Try it shaved—it feels like a silk handkerchief. Grate it for fondue, happy hour panini or asparagus risotto. A truffled cheese omelet speaks to me, needless to say. Truffles, bubbles and cheese—that’s my love language.
Read morePeaches, Pistachios and Cheese, Oh My!
It’s peach week in Napa Valley. My husband and I were struggling to keep up with the fruit from our own tree when a friend gave me some of hers. I was feeling a bit desperate about all our softening peaches when I saw this glistening conserve in my Facebook feed. The woman who posted it, an acquaintance who has attended my cheese classes, said she made it to go with cheese. Bingo. She sent the recipe, I made it immediately and now I’m eating the conserve straight from the jar. What a super companion for fresh chèvre or aged goat cheese (that’s Stepladder Creamery Ventana in the image), Cheddar, Gouda or blue cheese. In fact, if there’s a cheese this divine conserve won’t complement, I can’t think of it.
Read moreAll Aboard for Cheeselandia
If you want a break from current events, imagine a peaceful nation whose citizens just want to get along, make friends and eat cheese. Such a place exists, if you can believe it, and it’s called Cheeselandia. I just learned about it and I have a passport already. If you like Wisconsin cheese, or at least want to know more about it, the border patrol will let you in.
Read moreHappy Ending
What are you putting on your New Year’s Eve cheese board? My panforte, I hope. Thick with toasted nuts, dried fruit, cocoa and baking spices, it’s awesome with blue cheese. Or any cheese. Open a dessert wine, maybe an Italian vin santo or tawny port. Leftover panforte keeps forever, or so I’m told. If you’re a guest, take panforte with you. It’s easy to make, easy to wrap, and it doesn’t crumble. (The name means “strong bread,” after all.) Part fruitcake, part confection, panforte will make your holiday cheese board the star of the meal.
Read moreYour Rosé Cheese Tray
Rosé sales are soaring, and I certainly have something to do with that. On warm summer nights, when the sun doesn’t set until we’re well into dinner, it’s the wine I want. U.S. sales volume for rosé climbed 1433% (you read that right) between 2010 and 2020, according to data from bw166, a market research firm. Some attribute this phenomenal spike to the rise of Instagram. What’s prettier than pink wine? Well, pink wine with a cheese board, if you ask me.
Read moreHomemade Panforte for Holiday Cheese
It’s not the holidays around here without homemade panforte. Although I’ve never met a panforte I didn’t like, I like mine best. It’s moderate on the spicing and heavy on the toasted nuts. Plus dried figs, honey, cocoa, aniseed. Oh, yum. Back in the day when we had dinner guests, I would put thin slices on the cheese board with a mellow, creamy blue (here: Fourme d’Ambert) and open a sweet wine. This year at my house, it’s panforte for two, but that won’t be a problem.
Read moreWhat Goes with Cheese?
Autumn duo: Jasper Hill Farm Whitney with apple chutney
Americans didn’t pioneer the practice of pairing cheese with condiments, but we have certainly embraced it. When I teach cheese-appreciation classes, I can count on being asked, “What should I pair with this cheese?” I’m Old School and believe that good cheese is perfectly complete by itself, yet the condiments keep coming and I have to admit that they make a cheese platter more beautiful and, to some, more enticing. While sampling some new American-made mostarda, I flashed back to some of my earliest experiences with the cheese course, as a 22-year-old in France, where I encountered some firm “do’s and don’ts” about the plâteau de fromages.
Read moreBlack Magic
I was hanging out in the Cakebread Cellars kitchen in Napa Valley not long ago, watching chef Tom Sixsmith assemble cheese plates for visitors. What caught my eye was the accompaniment he was putting on each plate, slices of a dried fruit and pistachio paste that looked delicious. And it was. I hadn’t seen the paste in stores because Tom makes it himself. He calls it dried fruit “salami,” for obvious reasons, and it takes all of five minutes to make. It’s a good keeper, so you can make a lot and use it to dress up your cheese boards all winter long.
Read moreWhat Goes with Cheese?
Cabot Clothbound Cheddar with Nectarine and Serrano Jam
When I was first introduced to fine cheese—in France, many years ago—it came with nothing. At least that’s my recollection. Just beautiful cheeses, as many as you wanted from the restaurant trolley, with more fresh-sliced baguette in the breadbasket. Now, in the Instagram age, a cheese board with cheese alone looks naked and pitiful. Where are the nuts, the honeycomb, the preserves, the pickles, the locally made artisan crackers?
Read moreBoard Games
No, it’s not art. It’s a cheese board, and it’s meant to be consumed down to the last pistachio. Cheese artiste Lilith Spencer creates these edible dreamscapes for Cheesemongers of Santa Fe, the year-old store where she works. Wowza. Looks like we’re all going to have to up our game.
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