There is nothing like fresh cheese

This simple kit will give you all the tools you need (except the milk, of course) to make your own cheese. It includes instructions on how to make ricotta and mozzarella. Tyou can easily veer from these examples and make your own chevre or other types of cheeses. Apparently it only takes about a half an hour from start to fresh cheese.

Imagine the awesome pizzas you could make. The rigatonis. Mmmm.

Contains enough for 30 batches and includes cheesecloth (it’s called “butter muslin” but I’m not sure what the difference is), dairy thermometer, vegetable-based rennet tablets and cheese salt.

$25

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How to host tasting parties

I remember back in the day when I was learning video and web by day and bartending by night. I had friends who were chefs and friends who were sommeliers. And we did a lot of tastings. Cheese tastings, wine tastings, charcuterie tastings. Everything – we were so hungry to learn about all these foods and wines that we were discovering and we wanted to compare.

Flash forward now: most of my friends can’t tell between 2-buck Chuck and a premium vintage bottle of DRC. But there are a few that want to learn, a few that put up with my blabbering about triple creme, the black foot Iberico hams fed only acorns and hazelnuts, and the mysterious superiority of wines de biodynamique.

Enter this interesting book from Dina Cheney, who lays out for us tasting grids and recommendations for how to throw such parties. She offers guides for 10 different kinds of tasting parties, and includes some suggested pairings and recipes, as well as information on the types of foods in the tastings (such as origins and grades of olive oils).

Fun.

$15

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Cheese on an old oak barrel stave

Of course you probably don’t want to use recycled cheese.

What’s nice about these is that they are long, so you have space for a nice spread of cheese. And yes, they are made from recycled and local (at least to us: California) oak wine barrels that have been used for a few years.

Some cheese ideas to fill out that spread:

• Epoisses de Bourgogne – soft rind cheese washed with marc (brandy) so it has a red rind and the meltiest, creamiest center ever imaginable
• Robiola – an Italian soft rind cheese that’s very mild and very delicious, even those who don’t usually like soft rind cheese like this
• Cotswold – a double Gloucester cheese with chives mixed in. Really good. (if you have any left, it melts great – best cheese for a tuna melt ever)
• Cocoa Cardona – you read right: this is an aged goat cheese (from Wisconsin) that’s coated with cocoa powder, it’s subtle and takes that bite off the goat cheese flavor
• Cantal – a french hard cheese classic dating back to the 13th century, milky and nutty with a slight tang.

A good start…and the holidays are a great time for cheese!

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mmm....cheese...

It’s winter time and nothing says winter like hot cheese. I’m not talking fondue – that’s so 70′s and 90′s – I’m talking Raclette.

Raclette is a Swiss cheese (not to be confused with “Swiss cheese”, which is actually Emmenthaler). It’s a somewhat salty and somewhat hard cow’s milk cheese that comes in medium size rounds. It’s name comes from racler, the French word which means “to scrape”. That’s because traditionally, it was set in front of a flame while people would take turns scraping the melted top portion onto their plates and spread the gooey cheese on bread and peppers and tomatoes and meat and pickles or whatever else.

Mmm. Cheese.

Of course these days, we’ve gotten more high tech. Take the Swissmar Raclette Party Grill. It is all coated in teflon non-stick. There are 8 little trays, into which you can plop slices of raclette for melting. The top tray is a warmer you can use to heat up your bread, roast some taters, grill some red pepper chunks, whatever. You can even make crepes on the thing. When you’re ready, you pull a hunk of the top, or pull out your (or your friend’s if you want to be a jerk) little cheese melter and have at it. Dip it, pour it over, mix it with pickles. Just get all cheesy with it.

We think this looks like a good thing to do on a cold winter night.

Just add beer. (or wine)

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If you don’t know where to get raclette in your neighborhood, you can get raclette online (this one is made with RAW milk).

The best way to cut the best cheeses

Laguiole makes great cutlery (and wine openers, fyi), the key is in the handles. This set is made from olive wood for a really classic yet rugged look. Comes with three different types of knives to allow you to parse through the different cheese types with ease: a spreader for softer goats and those thick delicious cheeses that go right to your ass, a slicer for cheddars and the medium hard cheese and a cleaver for those really hard ones.

It comes with a sweet olive wood case you can store it in until Thanksgiving (and until the weekend after and so on through the holidays and beyond).

Here’s a cheese recommendation: Epoisses de Bourgogne. If you’ve never had it, you are missing out, that’s all I’ll say. Make sure to serve at room temperature for maximum creamy goodness (and use the spreader).

Sur La Table has another set with plainer handles…but it’s still sweet (and a lot cheaper).

BUY OLIVE WOOD CHEESE KNIFE SET

BUY RESING HANDLE CHEESE KNIVE SET