How to Create the Perfect Cheese Board
Cheese is my favorite comfort food in the world. Anyone who has been on a French market cooking class in Paris and done a market tour with me or during the Week in Uzรจs Culinary Holiday Program I run with my wife knows that I could go on for hours about cheese. ๐
I sometimes, make a cheese-focused dinner, a cheese lunch, or a cheese snack; cheese is a part of my meal at least once a day.
When should you enjoy your cheese board?
When you love cheese as much as I am sure you do, the temptation to kick off the evening with a perfect cheese board is great. I feel your pain, believe me. If cheese is all you will have, go for it! But as a course, as part of your meal, have the cheese before, or instead, as dessert, but definitely not before the meal (sorry but this is not a great idea for so many reasons). Make enjoying cheese the last pleasure of the meal to get real satisfaction before your nap.
How best to enjoy your cheese:
Of course, not only cheese is important for the ultimate cheese enjoyment. The bread, the butter, and eventually some little things to enhance your cheese experiences like nuts, fruits, or fruit pastes all rank up there as being at least 1/2 as important as the cheese itself.
The Bread:
If possible go for good old-fashioned country bread, you know, the one made with a starter, not yeast giving it a little acidity that bites you back in the mouth. NOT toasted as it brings bitterness, bitterness is not a friend of cheese except maybe with blue cheese… You had to know that the Frenchman would give you exceptions to the rules. If you want to go all out on your cheese board with FRESH, HOMEMADE French bread then check out our French Bread Baking Classes in Paris.
Avoid crackers, no offense to that British tradition again and I know that it is big in some other countries but… too salty, too dry… it fills you up and inflates your stomach and then you accuse the cheese of making you bloated… or worse, for making you FAT… nonsense…
The Butter:
We choose unsalted butter, as cheese is already pretty salty, there is no need to add some more – your cardiologist will be happier. Good quality butter is also important as you want all that experience to be unforgettable, the butter needs to be as good as your cheese, so don’t skimp.
Note: Butter is not always necessary, but a slice of bread, a little chunk of butter, and a chunk of Brie or Camembert, will take you on a new Journey – trust me, I’m a chef who loves cheese, and butter, and more cheese. The butter helps the flavor of the cheese to spread in your mouth. Don’t be afraid of butter, it is only 90% fat… we need fat to fight winter.
The Cheese, or better yet, the cheeses:
One cheese only is a classic ending for a French meal, lunch, or dinner. Having a piece of Gruyรจre or Camembert before dessert or to end a meal, is part of what the UNESCO heritage will name the French Meal tradition. In that case, often enough only one cheese is probably enough. But if you want to bring the experience to a different level, you will need 5 kinds of cheese, as we have 5 large groups of cheeses. I mean if you are going to go for a perfect cheese board, you might as well go all the way, right?
Goat, sheep, cow, creamy (like Camembert) and Pressed (like Cheddar, ) and Persillรฉ (blue cheese) to make it simple.
So to make the perfect cheeseboard, you need:
- Goat cheese: (Fresh) like one of these, Saint Maure, Valencay Chabichou du Poitou, Crottin… or a similar one.
- Sheep: (Pressed) Ossau Irati, Manchego, Tomme de Brebis or a similar one. But a Cheddar (cow) can definitely take that space too.
- Soft cow’s milk cheese: Brie or Camembert
- Soft and strong cow’s milk cheese: Roblochon, Saint Nectaire, Epoisse, or similar
- Blue cheese: it can be Roquefort (sheep’s milk and strong)ย or a bleu de chevre (goat’s milk, lighter, creamier) or bleu de vache (cow’s milk dry and light)
The order to eat the cheese should be obvious, we start with the lightest in flavor so as not to kill your palate and work our way up in intensity.
To accompany your perfect cheeseboard:
Cheese needs no accessories. If you have bread and butter, you are good to go. But it can be a nice touch to embellish a bit of your cheeseboard (and of course, impress your guests) with a few extra touches.
This is by no means a hard and fast rule but I try to do this: What grows near it, goes with it. What exactly does that mean? Essentially you want to keep to the same geographic area in your food pairings as that tends to be a safe bed.
- Fresh goat cheese goes well with honey, not strong honey but not the little bear either… just a touch is very nice.
- Sheep or Cow pressed cheeses (Manchego, Cantal, Cheddar) try walnuts, not pecans, and or bitter orange marmalade, not too much but a little is good with this. If you find Ossau Irati, a pressed sheep’s milk cheese from the Basque Country in Southwest France, try it with a black cherry marmalade.
- With creamy cow’s milk cheese like Brie or Camembert, I like apple or pear (with the skin on and not too sweet, just a little under-ripe).
- Strong creamy cheese like Epoisse, reblochon… Rien, nada, nothing. Bread and butter will help ease the strength of these cheeses.
- Blue cheese: walnut again, or dry apricot, or if you want to try the new trend a piece of dark chocolate.
Voila, you know it all.
I did not want to speak about wine pairing, as it could be a never-ending post if I start in that direction but…
Remember this: what grows near it, goes with it.
Don’t forget beer goes very well with cheese (especially the strong cheeses).
Don’t forget, white wines are better with cheese than red wines. Most of the time ๐.
Champagne and Camembert are a GOOD pairing and Port wine and blue cheese are GOOD too.
For more cheese & wine tips and tastings, I highly recommend joining us in Paris for our Cheese & Wine Tasting Classes in Paris,ย currently offered on Thursdays at 5 PM.
