The Cutting Wedge: Tips

Here are a few of Colette Hatch’s tips on entertaining with cheese and wine:

• Choose a good cheese shop and a passionate cheese person who can tell you which cheese in the shop are best.
• Try not to start a dinner party with cheese. “It’s full of protein, you eat too much and you don’t appreciate the flavor.” If you’d like to serve a cheese before dinner, stick with a soft cheese like a triple crème. “It has more whey, so it’s lighter.”
• Serve the cheese on an attractive piece of marble or large plate and leave room around each cheese. Mark the cheeses with a sticker or place card that is visible as you taste the cheese.
• Serve the cheese in unique courses or stations, rather than spread out all together at a buffet table. “If you have cheese on eth buffet, you’re not sharing that you taste.”
• Try to include cheeses made from all three most popular milks: cow, goat and sheep. And try to include color variety, such as a Shropshire blue from Neal’s Yard dairy.
• Taste cheeses from mild to sharp, saving the deepest flavors until last. A good progression wold be triple crème, an aged goat cheese like a Crottin, then a Gruyere de Comte, Abbaye de Belloc or Appenzeller. Finish with a blue. “You want to move from delicate to more powerful and on the the ‘plat de résistance.’”
• When you taste, take a sip of wine, try the cheese, then take another sip of wine. “In a true pairing of cheese and wine, it is the finish that counts,” she says. “It’s a ricochet effect.”
• In choosing wines, try a theme: all Italian, all local or all French wine. Or you could do a comparative tasting of one varietal, such as Pinot Noirs from France, Oregon and California.
• Try a comparative tasting of cheeses, such as Goudas from Denmark, Holland and Wisconsin. If you guests include family from out of state, focus on all local wines. And cheeses.
• As accompaniments, serve a sweet baguette, thin crackers, dried fruits, flavored honeys and quince paste. Hatch suggests Falwasser crackers and a Spanish crispbread called Torta de Aceite, both available at gourmet markets. Raincoast Crisps, boasting flavors like cranberry and hazelnut, fig and olive, are perfect served with soft cheeses. (www.raincoastcrips.com).

Comments

[DEE]

I am looking for those wonderful raincoast crips that I received as a gift. Where can I buy them?
I live in the interior of BC

[Bruno Niereisel]

Please advice if products are available in the Cambridge ---Kitchener --Waterloo Areas. Thanks for your time Bruno Niereisel..