Our wonderful, hilarious, and award-winning cheesemonger Leslie sat down and penned answers to your cheesiest questions!
I tend to stick with a standard of triple cream Brie and a sharp cheddar for cheese plates when entertaining, what would you recommend to round out the mix?
"Brie and cheddar are pretty crowd-pleasing options. If you often serve a picky bunch, round out your go-to's with a simple sheep or goat's milk cheese like Manchego or a goat's milk gouda like Brabander. However, if you want to give the adventurous folks something to nibble on, throw a buffalo-milk blue cheese in there to shake things up, or try a mixed-milk funky lil' guy like La Tur Alta Langa. In general, keep a good mix of sheep, cow, and goat, and try to hit a few different textures. Cheers!"
What's the best way to store cheese? (Looks for cute cheese emoji, which does not exist!)
"If you bought the cheese from us (WHICH YOU OBVIOUSLY DID, RIIIIIGHT?) then you can keep it in the paper we gave you! It's lined in wax, which allows the cheese to breathe. If you already threw our paper away, we forgive you, and grab some standard wax paper to wrap around your cheese. Stay away from plastic wrap because it suffocates the cheese, and use aluminum foil in a pinch (foil's great for blue cheeses!). Once the cheese itself is wrapped, you can put it in a bag or Tupperware or a sock or a burlap sack or whatever! Extend the life of your cheese by throwing it in the vegetable crisper - don't EVER throw it in the freezer, we'll find you... (Also check out our blog post about how to store cheeses!)"
If you were on a dessert island and only had one cheese, what would it be?
You asked us, and we love this question SO MUCH, we're going to answer it both ways. "Technically, if I was on a Dessert Island, I would bring sheep's milk ricotta and make ice cream sundaes smothered in aged balsamic and strawberries and swim in them with my mouth open until I died of happiness. But if you meant a desert island, I would take a cheese called Rush Creek Reserve, which used to be made at Uplands Cheese Company in Wisconsin by a super cool dude named Andy. Unfortunately, it was a delicious, bacon-y, young, raw milk cheese that the FDA decided to hunt down and destroy (metaphorically), and they can't make it anymore. However, they make another awesome cheese called Pleasant Ridge Reserve, and it's so good I'd probably build a house out of it and live there on my desert island in my cheese house quite happily."
