Good cheese, cool drinks and a few tips from GloriousMe. Perfect.
Who wants to cook on a beautiful summer day. With cheese you can enjoy the sunset with pleasure and little effort.
When you think of cheese, do you think more of autumn and winter?
When it’s storming and snowing outside, cheese is always in demand as the last course before dessert. However, in the cold seasons you have usually already eaten rich and the cheese tastes, but is almost too much of a good thing.
Quite different in the summer. Here cheese and a cool drink can take center stage alone, for those blue hours before it gets dark. No one has to stand in the kitchen or at the grill. Time for good conversation.
The GloriousMe tips around the cheese plate:
Keep it simple
Cheese, butter, bread and drinks. Item.
You can do without garnishes such as nuts, honey, mustard fruit or fig mustard and let the cheese take center stage.
A good cheese brings so much of flavor that cheese connoisseurs, similar to wine, speak of the terroir of the cheese: The minerals of the soil where the cows have grazed, possibly the mountain herbs if it is a real alpine cheese, the salt of the meadows if the cows, grow up near the coast, the freshness of the greens if it rains a lot in the area, such as in Normandy.
In addition, there is the craft of the cheese dairy, the knowledge of the affineur, in whose cellars the cheeses mature to the perfect point. All this makes a cheese a delicacy that does not need additional garnishes.
The perfect cheese platter
Less is more. Better to have three cheeses, maybe just one cheese, perfectly ripened to the point.
The classic – the triple combination
A soft cheese, for example a Brie de Meaux from France or a Tomme Fleurette from Western Switzerland, plus a classic mountain cheese, for example a Comté from France combined with a blue cheese, ideally an English Stilton.
The GloriousMe favorite
A selection of goat cheeses with different levels of maturity, for example a fresh, slightly acidic goat cheese, plus a goat cheese pyramid (Pouligny St. Pierre) a slightly matured round Chabichou De Poitou and a goat camembert or a Pecorino Canestro from Sardinia as a hard cheese in addition, which contains goat and sheep milk.
Summer cheese
Cheeses also have a seasonality, of course, only if fresh milk is used for cheese production. If the cheese is made in the factory from frozen milk or milk powder, seasonality (and flavor nuances) no longer play a role.
Cheeses that have their best taste in summer are for example Beaufort d’Ete, Bleu des Causses, Camembert de Normandie, Crotin de Chavignol, Saint Nectaire, Maroilles.
Perfectionists will want to choose from these summer cheeses.
If there should be only two
A soft creamy cheese or a tart, fresh goat cheese, each combined with a mountain cheese For the latter, our recommendation would be Beaufort d’Ete, ideally a Beaufort Chalet d’Alpage, which comes from one of the mountain cheese dairies in the French part of the Alps in Savoy.
In the high alpine area, a wonderful cheese is made from unpasteurized milk and then aged on spruce boards for five months.
The cheese has a delicate flavor, slightly herbaceous and a little reminiscent of almonds, is balanced, not too sharp, not too mild.
Beaufort Chalet d’Alpage has an AOP (Appellation d’origins Protégée) seal of the European Union. It can be recognized by the cheese wheel. However, only for the cheesemonger. All the more reason to support your local cheesemonger and shop there.
The term mountain cheese is not protected. If you want to have on your plate the delicacy described in advance, created with a lot of effort and craftsmanship high up in the mountains, it takes a cheese dealer you trust.
Especially since many types of cheese are now available from industrial and artisanal production.
Which bread?
Here, too, a good artisan bread is enough. If you are expecting guests, a combination is nice, such as a baguette and a darker sourdough bread with a high rye content and/or nuts.
If your baker makes an English raisin/walnut/rosemary bread in his bakery, grab it. A delight with many cheeses made from goat’s milk.
Typical English would be crackers with the cheese. A small selection from plain water crackers to crackers with sea salt or thyme to Scottish oat cookies comforts all Anglophiles like us who are still shedding tears over the Brexit.
Crackers make a lot of sense with cheese because, with the exception of oatmeal crackers, they are relatively light and provide a tasty but not too rich base for the cheese.
France is king when it comes to cheese. England the prince
In England, a very interesting cheese culture has developed in the last twenty years. There are excellent cheese producers whose cheeses deserve at least a yard curtsy.
Cheese stores such as Paxton & Whitfield, Neal’s Yard Dairy or La Fromagerie in London offer excellent English cheeses.
We also like to visit our favorite store, Paxton & Whitfield on Jeremyn Street in London because of the very competent and courteous service. Before Brexit, we could also order cheese online there for parties at home. However, like so many things, this is not possible after Brexit, for the time being.
Combine with what drinks?
There are different options here, from beer to wine to sake. Champagne also goes well with some cheeses.
The traditional combination of cheese and red wine is possible, but only one option among many. A fruit-driven, rather light red wine harmonizes with many types of cheese. We would rather leave the noble Bordeaux or Barolo in the wine cellar on this occasion.
Rosé wines are a great match for cheese and summer temperatures, and can also be enjoyed with ice cubes on sultry summer evenings.
If the focus is on goat cheeses, a dry white wine, for example a dry Riesling, a Scheurebe or a Sancerre goes well with it.
A glass of champagne also pairs well with cheese, unless there is a very expressive red smear cheese on the plate. With goat cheese, the champagne goes very well.
If the cheese has a very high salt content, such as many blue cheeses, the white wine need not be dry as dust, but can rather go in the fruity direction.
Some classic combinations, such as blue cheese and port or Munster and Gewürztraminer are good choices.
A chilled sake also goes excellently with cheese.
Where to buy cheese?
Where people love cheese and it is not just an item.
If you are lucky enough to know a cheesemonger or a delicatessen with a love for cheese, please buy your cheese there, because unfortunately these stores are rather a dying breed.
Storing cheese on the supermarket shelf, sealed in plastic or packed in the box by a robot, is no art and the cheese tends to be tasteless.
Buying cheese wisely, offering it to the point and delighting customers with lots of cheese flavor is a craft that involves a lot of love and entrepreneurial risk.
A good cheesemonger will advise you which cheese, for example, is perfectly ripened at the moment and will also introduce you to unfamiliar varieties from time to time.
Sweden and the USA, by the way, are the interesting “newcomers” in the cheese counter, which have started to win important prizes at international cheese fairs to the astonishment of traditional countries.
Good, we can already hear you muttering “air miles” and if you are reading this article in Europe, you are lucky that France, Switzerland and Spain, as classic cheese countries, are not far and there are also many interesting cheese producers in Portugal, Austria and the Netherlands.
How to store cheese?
Ideally, not in the refrigerator, but in the cold room. Since most of us unfortunately do not have this and only dream of a “larder”, as they are seen more and more often on Instagram, remains the refrigerator, where it is actually too cool for the cheese.
Cheese, wrapped in wax paper, should be stored only briefly in the refrigerator.
Better to buy less cheese and more often, if time permits. The temperatures in the refrigerator, even in the designated compartment, are not good for the consistency and taste of the cheese.
Before serving, be sure to store the cheese at room temperature for a few hours. It is best under a glass cheese cover or covered with a slightly damp cotton or linen cloth.
Everything in butter
Apart from some rather pale varieties, cheese already has a relatively high salt content, but also a lot of umami.
Still, we love lightly salted butter with it. For guests who like it less salty, a nice cream butter can be added.
How to cut cheese?
The rule is always so that it retains its shape. But this is already a separate article and your time is precious. Coming soon here at GloriousMe.
Enjoy the beautiful summer evenings with cheese while dreaming about your next trip to one of the many countries that have excellent cheese.
Namedropping
It’s worth learning the names of the cheeses you particularly like: at the classic cheese cart in a restaurant or cheese store, it’s often a great way to start a good conversation about cheese. It will help your counterpart to assess your taste in cheese and suggest new cheeses that you will like.
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Photographs © GloriousMe
