Cheese -- Explore a new Taste
Setting out to find a new cheese to add to your life is a great way to
spend a weekend afternoon. There are some great spots in just about
every city to explore new tastes. Once you find your new cheese, having
it loose its flavor or dry out before you can share it with others is a
sad moment. So let's talk about caring for the cheese.
As a rule, you shouldn't slice up your hunk of cheese before you are
ready to use it. Unpasteurized cheese will begin to loose subtlety and
aroma once it is sliced and more area is exposed to the oxygen in the
air. So keep them in hunks as long as you can.
Find out from your cheese vendor, or from searching the Internet, what
conditions were used to mature your new found cheese. Storing your
cheese in the same conditions is often the best way to keep it
flavorful. For hard, semi-hard and semi-soft cheeses the normal storing
temperature is about 8-13 C (about 46 degrees Fahrenheit) for example.
Cheese stored in the refrigerator should be removed about an hour and a
half before serving, letting the cheese warm up allows the flavor and
aroma to develop.
Keeping your cheese wrapped in waxed paper is much better than a plastic
wrap or plastic container. Waxed paper, inside a loose-fitting storing
bag will not lose humidity and will maintain air circulation. Plastic
will often condense air and trap moisture. One exception to this would
be blue cheese. Mould spores from blue cheese spread quickly and easily.
If they stayed on the cheese that would be fine, but they don't, and
quickly spread to anything close to them. Cheeses contain living
organisms that must not be cut off from air, yet it is important not to
let a cheese dry out.
Most cheese are like sponges for other strong smelling odors, so you
don't want to store cheese next to the garlic dip, or anything that
might damage the cheese's flavors.
So what cheese should we be looking for? Really it depends a great deal
on what we might be serving with the cheese. If wine is on the list,
then that may make it a bit easier to narrow down a good new cheese to
bring home.
The rule of thumb for finding cheese to serve with wine is: the whiter
and fresher the cheese the crisper and fruitier the wine. White wines
normally go better with more cheeses than reds wines do, but a dry fresh
red wine goes very well with soft cheeses, especially goat milk types.
Light fruity red wines are often the best matches for other cheeses, but
the heavier reds are a hard match with cheese. Sweet wines a great with
the cheeses that have a high acidity, the contrast in tastes is often
very enjoyable. Dry champagnes a great choice with bloomy white rinds.
The matching of cheese and wine is such an old culinary tradition that
when you are first starting out on the matching exploration of these
two, try combinations which include cheese and wine from the same
geographical regions. There are probably good reasons they make the
cheese and wine they do.
Personal enjoyment is the last and final line of judgment. So enjoy
yourself and have a great time exploring new tastes.
About the Author
Jerry Powell is the Owner of a Popular site Know as
Gourmet911.com. As you can see from our name,
we are here to help you learn more about different kinds of
Gourmet food and Wines, Coffees from all around the world.
http://www.gourmet911.com/