Martin Johnson/December Cheese Column<p></p>

 

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            Like a lot of cheese lovers I brought some cheese to Thanksgiving dinner.  When my mother saw the two packages neatly wrapped in white butcher paper, she began to rush them into the refrigerator.  <p></p>

            I stopped her, reminding her that they were snacks for while the bird roasted and best consumed at room temperature.  She gave me one of those skeptical mother looks. I started to remind her that the cheeses (oh, by the way, they were Pleasant Ridge Reserve and Lincolnshire Poacher, two choices I recommend for any holiday gathering as they pair well with a wide variety of beverages, foods, and eccentric relatives) had happily endured close to eight hours out of refrigeration since I left my New York apartment to fly to Chicago, but I chose a more succinct approach.  <p></p>

            “They’ll be fine,” I said with my best, you’ll-just-have-trust-me-for-once tone.  And they were fine.  Within 10 minutes of being opened, they were gone.  I thought about breaking into my lecture about cheese and refrigeration, but the bird was nearly ready; it was time to set the table.<p></p>

            Many of my mother’s fears are well founded, but ones about cheese and refrigeration are not, though they are widespread.  Here’s the simplest way to look at it:  Cheese has been a delicacy since Zeus, Athena, and other Greek deities were the reigning religion.  Commercial refrigeration’s invention roughly coincides with reform-minded ministers taking up the cause of abolitionism in the 19^th century.  Putting a finer point on it, hard cheeses were developed as a means of storing the nutrients in milk during the colder months, when cows yielded less of it.  <p></p>

            So there should be little doubt that a few firm cheeses, and even some soft ones, can withstand overnight transit as part of a gift package.  Hand-crafted cheese makes the ideal gift for the foodie on your list.  It’s exotic, complex in flavor, and may open whole new vistas.  <p></p>

There are four great types of cheese gifts: baskets, subscriptions, accoutrements, and reading material.  Each of the top retailers for hand-crafted cheese in America -- Zingerman’s Artisanal Cheese Center, Murray’s, the Bedford Cheese Shop, Cowgirl Creamery, the Cheese Store of Silver Lake, and the Beverly Hills Cheese Shop -- have excellent selections of gift baskets that can be shipped within 24 business hours of order.  Due to the holiday crush, most shops require that all gift-basket orders be placed by December 18.<p></p>

The cold weather months are prime time for firm cheeses like cheddars, aged <city><place>goudas</place></city>, and aged pecorinos.  These cheeses have very little moisture in their composition (it evaporates during the ageing process) and thus are less volatile.  I work weekends at the Bedford Cheese Shop, and we don’t keep those cheeses in our refrigerated cases; instead they sit on a bookshelf behind the counter.  When we ship them this time of year, they are often sent via the less expensive second day delivery options.  <p></p>

Ssofter cheeses are best in the warmer months as they require richer milk, which is typically taken from animals eating springtime growth.  So if you want your gift to be inclusive of all types of cheese, then you may want to give a subscription.  Most of the retailers listed above have a Cheese of the Month club, wherein they send boxes typically with three of the top cheeses that month.  That way your recipient can receive top-notch cheese on a regular basis for periods of three months, six months, or if you’re particularly generous, even a year.  <p></p>

            One aspect of any great cheese plate is presentation.  Many of the above retailers have a nice selection of beautiful boards in several different varieties of wood, and in many shapes and sizes.  The Vermont Butcher Block Company makes a stellar selection of boards that will elevate any cheese serving.  <p></p>

            The other key accoutrements are knives.  Cheese knives are so distinctive that you might mistake them for some sort of avant garde design contest winner.  Knives for cutting hard cheeses often look more like spades or scrapers, while knives for softer cheeses have fluted blades.  There’s good reason for this variation beyond visual splendor: Hard cheeses are often best served in small, chipped-off segments, so an instrument that you can maximize the downward force on is preferable to a conventional knife, which would require two hands to generate comparable momentum.  Softer cheeses tend to stick to the blade of the knife, so one with fluting enables you to cut beautiful, thin slices of softer cheeses.  Vermont Butcher Block and Artisanal have excellent selections of cheese knives.<p></p>

            Lastly, books on cheese make a nice addition to a gift containing cheese or a cheese board.  The Cheese Primer by Steve Jenkins is the best book “101” book of its type. The next best thing is Cheese: A Connoisseur’s Guide to the World’s Best by Max McCalman, which is an excellent shopping advisor to the amazing variety of great cheeses available to Americans today <p></p>

            So when do those cheeses need to find their way into the refrigerator? Firm cheeses don’t as long as you have a secure, somewhat cool part of your home for them.  If not, keep all cheeses wrapped in paper either in a Tupperware container or a Ziploc bag in the vegetable-crisper portion of your refrigerator.  The greatest danger for cheese is that the cold swirl of air in a typical refrigerator will dry it out.  Very few cheeses will actually go bad; rather they’ll dry out.  Some will mold, but you just scrape the blue mold off and keep eating the cheese.  <p></p>

            If anyone doubts the utility of this, you could explain that most cheese is months-old milk and bacteria. Or just give them your most reassuring look and tell them it’s fine.  <p></p>

 

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