Setting out to find a new cheese to add to your life is a great
way to spend a weekend afternoon. There are some great spots in
just about every city to explore new tastes. Once you find your
new cheese, having it loose its flavor or dry out before you can
share it with others is a sad moment. So let's talk about caring
for the cheese.
As a rule, you shouldn't slice up your hunk of cheese before you
are ready to use it. Unpasteurized cheese will begin to loose
subtlety and aroma once it is sliced and more area is exposed to
the oxygen in the air. So keep them in hunks as long as you can.
Find out from your cheese vendor, or from searching the
Internet, what conditions were used to mature your new found
cheese. Storing your cheese in the same conditions is often the
best way to keep it flavorful. For hard, semi-hard and semi-soft
cheeses the normal storing temperature is about 8-13 C (about 46
degrees Fahrenheit) for example. Cheese stored in the
refrigerator should be removed about an hour and a half before
serving, letting the cheese warm up allows the flavor and aroma
to develop.
Keeping your cheese wrapped in waxed paper is much better than a
plastic wrap or plastic container. Waxed paper, inside a
loose-fitting storing bag will not lose humidity and will
maintain air circulation. Plastic will often condense air and
trap moisture. One exception to this would be blue cheese. Mould
spores from blue cheese spread quickly and easily. If they
stayed on the cheese that would be fine, but they don't, and
quickly spread to anything close to them. Cheeses contain living
organisms that must not be cut off from air, yet it is important
not to let a cheese dry out.
Most cheese are like sponges for other strong smelling odors, so
you don't want to store cheese next to the garlic dip, or
anything that might damage the cheese's flavors.
So what cheese should we be looking for? Really it depends a
great deal on what we might be serving with the cheese. If wine
is on the list, then that may make it a bit easier to narrow
down a good new cheese to bring home.
The rule of thumb for finding cheese to serve with wine is: the
whiter and fresher the cheese the crisper and fruitier the wine.
White wines normally go better with more cheeses than reds wines
do, but a dry fresh red wine goes very well with soft cheeses,
especially goat milk types. Light fruity red wines are often the
best matches for other cheeses, but the heavier reds are a hard
match with cheese. Sweet wines a great with the cheeses that
have a high acidity, the contrast in tastes is often very
enjoyable. Dry champagnes a great choice with bloomy white rinds.
The matching of cheese and wine is such an old culinary
tradition that when you are first starting out on the matching
exploration of these two, try combinations which include cheese
and wine from the same geographical regions. There are probably
good reasons they make the cheese and wine they do.
Personal enjoyment is the last and final line of judgment. So
enjoy yourself and have a great time exploring new tastes.
About the author:
Jerry Powell is the Owner of a Popular site Know as
Gourmet911.com. As you can see from our name, we are here to
help you learn more about different kinds of Gourmet food and
Wines, Coffees from all around the world.
http://www.gourmet911.com/
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