| Issue date: November 12, 2000
In this article:
The
Last Course
Cheese,
please Today, trendy diners
end the meal with cheese instead of a sweet. Here's how you can,
too.
By Janet Fletcher
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One
cheese plate to try:
A wheel of Manchego and a slice of Cabrales are paired
with oven-dried tomatoes and toasted, salted, blanched almonds.
If you serve this after the main course, you might pour a
rich Spanish oloroso sherry. If serving before dinner, a fino
sherry. Ask your cheese merchant about such sheep's-milk cheeses
as pecorino toscano, Manchego, Vermont Shepherd's Cheese,
Old Chatham Pepper Pyramid and Brin d'Amour.
How
to oven-dry tomatoes:
Cut 6 meaty plum tomatoes in half lengthwise, toss with 1
Tb. olive oil and season with salt and 1 tsp. dried herbes
de Provence. Bake in a non-aluminum baking dish at 250 degrees
for 8 hours, or until the tomatoes are very soft, wrinkled
and shrunken, but very moist. Set aside to cool.
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 ove
over, chocolate. The up-and-coming dinner finale in trend-setting
restaurants is that Old World tradition: the cheese course.
At Galileo in Washington, D.C., diners can select from up to two
dozen cheeses served with nut breads and marmalades. At Jardinière
in San Francisco, chef Traci des Jardins matures cheeses in a glass-fronted
cave (a temperature-controlled cupboard). From New York's
Picholine to L.A.'s Campanile, cheese is the dessert du jour.
For home cooks contemplating holiday entertaining, cheese-as-dessert is a trend worth embracing. It takes far less time and skill to produce an impressive cheese board than it does to make a show-stopping pastry. Follow these guidelines to guarantee a guest-pleasing assortment:
- Aim for variety in texture, taste and appearance. Contrast creamy (triple-crème Explorateur) with firm (Spanish Manchego). Pair mild Humboldt Fog goat cheese from California with a pungent Italian Gorgonzola. Please the eye with different colors and shapes: a wedge of golden Vella Dry Jack, a round of bloomy-rind Camembert and a pyramid or log of goat cheese. Limit your selection to three or four cheeses. Palates tire after that.
- Ditch the crackers in favor of good bread, preferably a plain sliced baguette, a country loaf or chewy dinner rolls.
- Offer cheeses from a variety of milk sources -- a cow's-milk, a goat's-milk
and a sheep's-milk cheese, for example. But it also can be enlightening
to compare similar cheeses from different countries (English and
American Cheddars, for instance), or cheeses of varying age (a
fresh goat cheese with an aged goat's-milk crottin).
- Consider offering guests one perfect cheese with a complementary accompaniment -- perhaps a slice of Vermont Cheddar with homemade cranberry-pear chutney or a round of goat cheese with toasted walnuts and honey.
- Garnish your platter with seasonal fruit, or pass fruit separately. Grapes, pears and apples are natural cheese companions in autumn and winter; switch to apricots and cherries in late spring, figs in summer.
As for wine, you can rarely go wrong pouring a Pinot Noir, Cabernet Sauvignon, Zinfandel or Syrah with a cheese board. With a single cheese, your match can be more precise. Try Sauvignon Blanc or Chenin Blanc with young, fresh cheeses; mature reds with aged cheeses; sweet dessert wines with blue cheeses. A bottle of wine, crusty bread, a tray of cheese. Dessert is served! W
Janet Fletcher is the author of The Cheese Course: Enjoying
the World's Best Cheeses at Your Table (Chronicle
Books, $19.95).
Photo Credit: VICTORIA PEARSON
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