Cheese Plates 101

Cheese, while pretty universally loved, can be a tad daunting when you’re staring into the beautiful abyss of a well stocked store’s case. But a wealth of options should never be a reason to shy away from deliciousness. In order to help you make up your next cheese plate (for your holiday party or for sitting at home on the couch – cheese is appropriate for all occasions), we enlisted the help of the talented cheesemongers at Formaggio Kitchen to shed some light on how to go about creating the perfect plate. Education and Events Manager Erin Carlman Weber sends some curdy knowledge your whey below.

Four important things to keep in mind when putting together a cheese plate:
1. Three to five kinds of cheese is a good jumping off point. Within that framework, you can cover a fair amount of ground without overwhelming your palate.

2. Try to include all three milk types (cow, sheep and goat), as well as different textures. For example: a soft, ripe goat’s milk round, a semi-firm cow’s milk wedge, and a hunk of aged sheep’s milk cheese would do the trick.

3. Plan to serve about a quarter of a pound of cheese per person (approximately an ounce of each cheese for every eater in the group if you’re going with the three to five cheese guideline suggested above).

4. How adventurous is the collective palate of the group? I like to ask people to rate it on a scale of 1 to 10 and then choose cheeses accordingly. And remember, crowd-friendly cheeses don’t necessarily mean boring. We’ve got several easygoing but interesting, nuanced cheeses, like Brebis Pardou, Cabot Clothbound Cheddar, and a blue that’s more like ice cream than cheese – Bayrischer Blauschimmelkase.  

For a can’t-miss cheese plate for holiday festivities, go with:
Tronchetto di Capra al Miele - Raw goat’s milk from Piedmont, Italy. A spunky little log that’s brushed with honey as it ages for a long, complex finish.

Rush Creek Reserve - A stunner, visually as well as taste-wise. Spruce bark-wrapped raw cow’s milk from southwestern Wisconsin that’s modeled after the famous Swiss cheese Vacherin Mont d’Or. Unctuous and creamy, like a room-temperature fondue, with an underpinning of resinous spice from the bark wrapping. Best served whole with the top scooped off so folks can dip into it with cornichon, bread, fingers, etc.

Comté Grand Cru - Firm Alpine-style cow’s milk cheese from the Jura. Our Marcel Petite Comtés are one of our top lines of cheese (we usually have at least four ages of the cheese in house at all times), and this special extra-aged version is top of the top. They allot just a few wheels to us each year, and our cheese buyers travel to the Jura each year to taste various batches of cheese and hand-select the wheels that will become ours. This year’s batch is well textured (nice and crunchy with protein crystals) and awesomely savory—brothy, oniony, roasted fennel-y. A real beaut!

Charmoix - A washed-rind cow’s milk cheese from Belgium that makes a great pal for beer. Semi-soft, brightly acidic, fruity and full-flavored.

Bleu des Basques - Dense, creamy sheep’s milk blue from French Basque country. Earthy, nutty, pleasantly salty and just a touch funky, with a whisper of berries and red fruits.

Consider yourself now armed with cheesy knowledge. And as an added bonus, we managed to get some tips for what to drink with your plate. For wine, they recommend a rich, ripe white with good minerality since it needs to be able to stand up to the combination of salt, sweetness, and full-bodied cheeses being served together. Try the 2011 I Clivi Verduzzo.  If beer is your thing, they suggest a Pretty Things Babayaga or Element Brewing Co. Red Giant, both of which are lighter bodied ales with a bit of sourness that will as Carlman Weber puts it, “nicely echo the range of flavors found in the cheese plate.” You can learn even more by dropping by their blog. All that’s left is to stop by their Cambridge or South End shops to pick up all the necessary ingredients to have yourself a cheesy little Christmas.