Ever since Tria opened in Philadelphia, with it's long cheese menu, and artful presentations, I've been looking for the book that would tell me what to serve cheese with. At Tria, cheese selections always come with the perfect pairing of honey, or figs, or walnuts, or something like that. But most of the books out there, in my very limited search, seem to concentrate on what wines to drink with cheese. I wanted to know about food pairings, and I hoped that the Cheese Course would tell me everything.
The introductory chapter of the book is chock-full of information about cheese: what to look for in the shop, how to serve it, how to store it (plastic wrap is a no-no), etc. Before getting into specific recipes, Fletcher offers some general advice about assembling cheese platters - how to intentionally feature one kind of cheese, and what assortments might work best.
Fletcher advocates for having the cheese course at the end of the meal rather than before it. She says that when you serve cheese as an appetizer, guests tend to eat too much, which ruins their dinner. But cheese as a last course offers a way to lengthen the meal, to re-open conversation, and allow people to linger a little bit longer over a communal food. (I'll say in support of this theory that the one time I had a cheese course at the end of the meal, it was extremely well-received!)
One piece of information in this chapter has stayed with me, and has partially answered the question of why I find wine pairings, but not food pairings for cheese: if you are planning a food accompaniment to your cheese, wine is often not the best beverage to serve, especially if you are featuring fruit. The flavors of fruit and wine may compete with rather than complement each other. Fletcher than offers other beverage suggestions, including dessert wines, or even beer, that may work well with your cheese and other food selections. The key take-away for me was wine or food, but maybe not both.
The recipe chapters were divided by milk source: cow, goat, sheep and mixed. Rather than a cheese with one food pairing, the recipes were mainly salads with a featured cheese, or a baked bread or pastry with cheese. Several cheeses were served with dried fruit reconstituted with brandy or other alcohol.
The image above shows sheep's cheese with oven-dried tomatoes and roasted almonds. I definitely want to try a particular kind of French sheep cheese with cherry preserves.
The answer, of course, to my question and search for the definitive set of rules about what foods go with which cheese is that there are no rules. Tastes differ, and the only way to figure out what works is to try everything and see what works for you.
If you are a cheese fan, check out Janet Fletcher's website, which contains information about all of her books, recipes, listings of cheese classes, and links to her reviews of cheeses in the San Francisco Chronicle.
What are your favorite kinds of cheese, and what do you eat them with?
Next week, one of the first tea books I ever owned, A Decent Cup of Tea by Malachi McCormick.
No comments:
Post a Comment