You almost need to be trilingual to navigate the cheese counter these days. Camembert, s’il vous plait. Asiago, per favore.
Whatever happened to good old American, Swiss, Cheddar and brick? They’re huddled in a tiny corner of the store, crowded out by exotic goat cheeses, triple-cream Explorateur, blue-veined Stilton and nutty Gruyere.
This has become the decade of chic cheese. If you’re confused, you’re not alone.
The cheese glut started in the 1980s but didn’t reach major proportions until about five years ago, when cheeses from far-flung places started creeping into ordinary supermarkets.
As American palates became more sophisticated in the ’80s, European cheeses found a market here, and American cheesemakers rushed to catch up.
Now Americans not only can buy Asiago imported from the tiny village of Asiago in northern Italy, but excellent Asiago made in Wisconsin. Lush Camembert is rushed from France and Vermont.
The choices have become staggering. Next to the familiar, plastic-wrapped hunks of Cheddar are strange cheese pyramids dusted with ash, wheels of runny cheese covered with soft, white rinds, and slabs of blue cheese that look spoiled before you’ve even bought them.
What is this stuff, and what do you do with it? Our advice is to just plunge in. Buy a new cheese every week and keep track of your favorites. Cook with it and see how it melts. Sprinkle it on salads and see how it tastes. Bite off a chunk and eat it plain.
Buying tips
For starters, buy cheese that has a natural rather than a plastic rind. Fresh-cut cheese will taste better than a plastic-wrapped wedge, but good luck finding it. Ditto raw-milk cheese, which is available but must be aged at least 60 days to be sold in the U.S.
Look for cheese than seems fresh, with no mold or seeping liquid. Don’t buy cheese in a puffed-up package that looks ready to explode. And never buy those trays of cubed cheese that end up tasting exactly like plastic wrap.
When you get the cheese home, unwrap it from its sausagelike plastic casing and rewrap it loosely in plastic wrap, wax paper or foil. This allows the cheese to breathe while preventing it from drying out.
Store cheese in the lowest part of your refrigerator–ideally, the vegetable crisper. The softer the cheese, the shorter the shelf life. Very soft cheese such as chevre should be used within a few days. Hard cheeses such as Asiago will keep a month or so.
No cheese benefits from freezing, so buy cheese in small quantities and use it while it’s fresh.
Serving suggestions
Whatever you do with cheese, at least bring it to room temperature before eating. This will take 30 to 60 minutes, depending on the air temperature.
Our first choice is to eat these great cheeses plain, with a knife and fork. With the huge variety available now, the classic cheese course is ripe for a comeback. It’s usually served just before dessert, or in place of dessert.
Three to four wedges or wheels of cheese on a board or tray are accompanied by a couple of sharp knives (one for the blue cheese, one for the other cheeses).
Choose different styles of cheese. A nice selection would be a blue cheese such as Stilton or Gorgonzola, a soft cheese such as chevre (look for Montrachet), a hard cheese such as Parmesan or Asiago, and a soft-ripened cheese such as Camembert or brie.
Crusty baguettes are served alongside. Grapes or slices of crisp pear are optional.
After you taste cheeses plain, you will have a better understanding of how to cook with them. Aged Asiago has a mild flavor but a texture similar to Parmesan. It can be eaten plain, shredded over salads or grated over pasta.
Soft, mild chevres (goat cheeses) are wonderful spread on toast and topped with chopped tomatoes. They also make a great cheese sauce.
Guide to cheese
Here’s a list of some of the unusual cheeses available in supermarkets, with information on what they taste like and how to use them. The information is from the “Cheese Primer,” by Steven Jenkins (Workman).
– Asiago: A mild-tasting, light beige Italian cheese made from cow’s milk. Regular Asiago is good for shredding. Aged Asiago (it will feel hard) can be used like Parmesan in salads and pastas. It’s great for eating plain too.
– Brie: A double-cream French cheese with a soft texture and a white edible rind. The cheese is made in wheels, and the ivory interior has a nutty flavor and a mushroomlike aroma. The cheese is usually eaten plain, although it also is often warmed briefly (350 degrees for 10 minutes) and spread on baguettes. When brie over-ripens, it develops an ammonia aroma; throw it out.
– Camembert: The most famous double-cream, a soft cheese with an edible white rind and a mushroomlike flavor. All over France, carryout shops sell sandwiches made with Camembert. In America, it’s usually eaten by wedge, with a hunk of crusty bread and a glass of red wine.
– Gorgonzola: Italy’s famous blue cheese, a softer version of France’s Roquefort and England’s Stilton. This creamy, pungent cheese melts beautifully, and is a great addition to pasta sauces. A wedge of Gorgonzola and a glass of cabernet are one of the world’s great food and wine pairings.
– Roquefort: Made in Roquefort, France, and aged in caves, this cheese is drier and more crumbly than Gorgonzola. All blue cheeses are made by injecting mold spores into the cheese, but only Roquefort’s spores come from rye bread made especially for the purpose. Roquefort is excellent in salads or eaten plain.
– Stilton: England’s mighty blue, with a texture somewhere between soft Gorgonzola and crumbly Roquefort. A well-aged Stilton at its prime has a thunderous flavor. Classic pairings are port wine and walnuts.
– Chevre: Generically, the French name for goat cheese. Montrachet is a mild French variety, although many American companies are making good French-style goat cheese. The cheese is chalk-white and very soft, with a mild flavor. Spread it on toasted sturdy bread and top with sun-dried tomatoes for an appetizer, fold it into omelets, or stir into hot pasta for an instant sauce.
– Explorateur: a triple-cream cheese with a buttery flavor developed in France in the 1950s. The cheese is rich and unctuous, with a spreadable texture. Serve it as part of a cheese course or for dessert, with berries.
– Gruyere: A firm cheese made from cow’s milk in Switzerland and France. Gruyere comes in wheels or wedges with a paper-thin rind over a butter-colored interior. The cheese melts well and is used often in cooking. It tastes great plain, too, with a glass of Rhone Vally wine.
– Parmesan: A hard, golden cheese made in Italy and the U.S. Parmigiano-Reggiano made in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy is considered the best. The rind will be stamped with its place of origin. Fresh Parmesan always will taste better than the grated granules than come in cans. If you’ve never eaten Parmesan on its own, try it. The dry, slightly pungent flavor goes well with red wine.
