My First Cheese Plate

Last weekend I built my first cheese plate.

Yes, I've been eating cheese for a long time. Indeed, I've been a legit member of the cheese industry for more than a year. True, sometimes I've had an impromptu cheese party or tasting with friends and loved ones at home. But until now, everything has been a casual affair, often involving randomly selected cheeses from the sale bin. At best, my cheese consumption has involved cramming a bunch of cheeses onto a round dinner plate next to a box of water crackers. At worst, it's feasting on chunks and slices over the sink. The beautiful black cheese slate I bought for plating cheeses has been seeing great use as an oversized coaster for my coffee mugs.

I've never had to put together an honest to god cheese plate for a bonafide social gathering -- for which the cheeses needed to be curated and selected with a purpose, paired with thoughtful accompaniments, and plated in an aesthetically pleasing manner. My roommate and buddy, Ambyr, gave me that chance when she hosted a baby shower for our friend at our apartment last Friday night. My attempt to be helpful involved putting together a pre-dinner cheese partay.

Curating cheeses involves several variables: size of party, format, venue, and taste sensibilities of your crowd.

First and foremost, being that the guest of honor was with child, I selected three pasteurized milk cheeses. Whether to eat raw milk cheese during pregnancy is a matter of personal choice and cultural influence -- and in some circles a controversial matter at that. Opinions vary on whether raw milk cheeses pose a risk to the fetus by harboring certain harmful bacteria. Even soft pasteurized cheeses like blue cheeses and feta may be discouraged because of the fear that said bacteria are more likely to thrive in a high moisture environment. Given that (in our health system) the medical advice commonly given to pregnant women is, at the very least, to stay away from raw milk cheeses, I suggest erring on the side of caution when selecting and/or labeling cheeses for such an occasion. If you do select raw milk cheeses and you know some people in the crowd may be pregnant, always clearly label or announce which cheeses are raw. I eliminated any uncertainty by avoiding raw milk cheeses altogether for the shower. Besides, there are PLENTY of delicious pasteurized cheeses to choose from.

Pregnancy can also cause sensitivity to smells. So I also didn't select any super strong or stinky cheeses for fear of assaulting the guest of honor's gag reflex. I love me a good mnemonic, and someone once gave me this great adage for picking cheese varieties for a party: "Something old, something new, something stinky, something blue."  If you're only going with three cheeses, you can pick between the stinky and the blue. For quantities, it's best to go with three or four cheeses. Any more would be sensory overload. And as an appetizer course, one ounce of each cheese per person is usually more than enough.

Knowing that I was dealing with ten to fifteen laid back, fun people, who wouldn't taunt me with cheese snobbery or comment on the pedestrian nature of this or that cheese, I picked three fairly well-known (at least in the artisanal cheese/foodie set), crowd-pleasing 3/4- to 1-pound pieces.

My something old (i.e. hard) was Cabot Clothbound Cheddar. My something new (i.e. soft) was Cypress Grove Humboldt Fog. And my tamer version of "stinky or blue" was Beecher's Marco Polo Reserve (actually an aged hard cheese with peppercorns).

I paired the cheeses with some dried fig bread, a fruit and nut crostini, caramelized pecans, and honey hazelnut crackers -- all phenomenal with the sweet, fruity, sharpness of the Cabot, and also good to tame the mild kick from the Marco Polo's peppercorns. If I had a little more room on the plate I would have added a dried tart fruit to give the Humboldt Fog's acidity a better friend. I did some fancy cubing, slicing and design work with the hard cheeses and SHAZAM! Cheese plate. Even my new cheese slate was given a chance to dress up and make an appearance.

Save for a few chunks of rind and leftover fig bread, the cheese plate was pretty much devoured by the end of the night. I heard phrases such as "this cheddar is amazing" or "this soft cheese is really something special" or "these candied pecans are like crack" bandied about. So I can only assume people were genuinely pleased with my first attempt at a bonafide classy cheese plate. And not a single person had to eat it over the sink. I count that as a success.

In my excitement, I forgot to take pictures.
I stole this from a friend, but I should have gotten an aerial shot. 

Cutting Crust from the Equation

Have you ever wondered if there was a way to wad up all the toppings on a pizza into a ball, pile it onto the tiniest of crackers, and shove that all in your mouth? No, that's disgusting and weird, you say. Mmmm delicious food ball, I say. Welcome, my friends, to my lifelong neurotic phobia of crusts. (And yes, if the Tracy Jordan Meat Machine was ever a real thing, I would be the first to buy ten.)

If I were to write a Crust Manifesto, my definition of crust would go something like this.
Crust /krust/
noun
1. The least delicious part of a food item
2. That portion of a food item which serves as a vehicle to transport more delicious parts into your mouth
3. Ingredients in any dish that take up belly space, which could be filled by more delicious parts of the dish
4. Appropriator of chewing effort
syn: culinary chicanery

As a rule, I will eat only as much crust as I need to transport and enhance the part of the food I find to be most delicious, leaving the rest as a disastrous canvas of mutilated crust carnage on my plate.

This isn't just a starch issue. This is an efficiency issue. I have a limited amount of space in my belly and I want to make sure I use as many hours as I have on this earth to fill it with what I love most. So piles of steamed rice with just a dollop of stir-fry on top is an assault on my face-stuffing sensibilities. Crust can also be counter-intuitive. The crunchy outside of the pancake, to me, is more delicious than the soggy inside. If I have limited time and space, I will eat the outer ring and leave the inside "crust" of pancake.

Imagine my delight when I rediscovered a cheese that, for me, serves the purpose of eliminating the bread from a grilled cheese sandwich.

Not only is it delicious, but it also
looks like bacon. 

If I were to name favorite cuisines, Greek/Mediterranean would definitely make the top three. In college, when my roommates and I would dine at our favorite Greek restaurant, everyone would order sensible meals. Salads. Gyros. Seafood. I, however, would feast on one thing and one thing only. A slab of cheese set ablaze by flambe before my eyes.

At the time Saganaki, as the dish is called, was awesome for two simple reasons. One, cheese. Two, fireball. Not until recently when I brought home a piece of Idaho Golden Greek Grillin Cheese by Ballard Family Farms -- a tribute to Greek Halloumi cheese -- did I realize the true beauty of this style of cheese. Halloumi and other Greek grilling cheeses are designed for pan-searing until a thin browned crispy film forms a shell around it. On the interior, the cheese is heated to a gooey, stretchy perfection. It's a perfect recreation of the flavor profile in a grilled cheese sandwich, but with all cheese.

I look down at my crust-less dairy dinner, which I have supplemented with broccoli and hummus (I've learned a lot since college: You need vegetables. Pop-Tarts are not a fruit), and I realize how much I've missed this cheese.

Setting aside my delight that the role of bread has been outsourced to the cheese itself, there is a lot for the general ("normal") population to like about grilling cheeses. You don't get the perfect outer layer of salty crunch from pan-searing just any cheese. Try that with a block of cheddar. You'll have a melty, charred grease fire on your hands. If you need a firm, salty cheese to add to a warm dish without causing a runny mess, here's Halloumi to the rescue. It's like the paneer of the Mediterranean. It stays true to its form, and can even bring a little crunch to the party.

Enjoy Halloumi in all the normal and socially acceptable culinary modes you desire. As for me, I have rediscovered that cheese is the new bread.