Cheese Pairing
Across America, you’ll find small and medium sized cheese producers (many of them also farming) interpreting traditional styles and creating some of their own. Have you ever had the chance to taste chèvre from multiple farmers? What about trying multiple offerings from a single producer? And then trying those cheeses with the same jam to unpack the flavor of each cheese?
Black Raspberry Sour Cherry Plum
Our friends Blue Ledge Farm produce two cheese styles that you’ll find at many cheese shops and farmers market. The soft cheese, Crottina, is aged for 3 weeks and has a white mold exterior (like Brie). This means a wedge packs multiple textures, velvety/pudgy exterior and an interior that boasts a gooey ring and a fudgy center. The Riley’s 2 x 4 is a goat/cow tomme-style aged for a minimum of 3 months. It’s exterior rind is colored a dusty grey-brown and the interior paste is a pale cream color. The texture of the cheese is dense and firm, dotted with small holes, or "eyes."
cave aged cheese.
Black Raz x Riley’s 2 x4 Cheese
While cheddar takes up most of the oxygen in the “hard cheese” room, year in and year out, it’s the 60+ day aged farmstead cheeses from various Vermont producers that I most crave. At home, I’ll cut 5 thin slices of this cheese and place them on a dinner plate. Spoon by spoon, I adorn each cross section with a different preserve. Each bite brings alive a different element of the same cheese. If you still say, “ I basically only want cheddar “ then grab a jar of black raspberry sour plum conserve. Our berry jams have the power to pull up the grassy flavors of the milk and bring out “the cheddar” in many a hard cheese. Something about the tart berries help you notice the heft, the rich nuttiness and filling quality of the aged wheel.
Heightened elements: grass aka the flavor of the milk, richness
Black Raz x Crottina
The conserve heightens the salt level in a soft cheese like Crottina and ups the acidity. In general, the extra textured quality of our preserves (whole berries, slabs of plum) have the effect of focusing the tongue on finding the difference between the mouthfeel of the cheese and the preserve. The preserve, almost by slight of hand, increases the sense of creamy mouthfeel in the cheese. Soft goat cheeses like Crottina (or just about any goat cheese less than 2 months old…brands like Cypress Grove and Vermont Creamery have built brands on these bright and fudgy soft-ripened types) are as much about texture as flavor. That velveteen tartness!
Heightened elements: salt, acidity, fudgy texture
You might have a local cheese producer in your area that sells a variety of styles and even different milks. While you are doing that research and planning a trip to the farmers market or farmstand (increasingly these folks are also selling online), start with a snack. Experiment and enjoy!!
The aromatics—sexy times with cheese!
Aromatics extend the tasting experience…if you love that milk fat, that salt, the aromatics keep you circling on that richness. Aromatics heighten our senses and unfold flavor and texture in the cheeses.
*My hot take on cheese pairing. Initially, skip the cracker or baguette as a building block for your bites. Use it instead as a palette cleanser and focus on just the cheese and jam solo and side by side. This is where you really get to taste what’s happening in a cheese.
Build a Savory Cheeseboard
Pile stacks of pickles, ham, mustard, and baguette on a cheese board with our Cherry Fennel Sherry Honey Jam. This savory jam (+ customer favorite) is complex and surprising.