About Cheese / Serving

Cheese serving :

Always serve cheese at room temperature, not cold from the refrigerator. In order to ensure the emergence of its full flavor, always take the cheese out of the refrigerator early enough for it to come to room temperature. Depending on the hardness of the cheese, this could take about an hour in cool weather, or in hot weather, as little as 30 minutes. Hard cheeses take longer to come to room temperature than soft ones. When you take it out, leave the cheese wrapped so that the exposed surfaces don't dry out. Just before you're ready to serve the cheese, unwrap it and throw the wrapping away. Never use the same wrapping twice - it won't reseal properly.

For serving, I like to present each cheese on a small wooden cutting board, piece of marble, or plate, rather than forcing two, three, or four cheeses to share one big platter. If you put them all together, soft cheeses may run into each other; also, the aromas intermingle and it's hard to differentiate between them. What's more, big plates often aren't completely flat, and cheese must lie flat in order to be easily cut. That's why most people prefer flat, sturdy, individual cutting boards rather than plates, which tend to be tippy. If you don't have small cutting boards or marble slabs, then use a big cutting board and keep the cheeses as far away from each other as possible.

How to cut cheese? 

First of all, a fundamental rule: every portion of cheese should contain some of the rind. They will avoid theother tasters from being left out, and also because the taste of the cheese is ever always uniform: it gets stronger the closer it is to the rind due to the molding process on the surface. Discovering the subtleties is part of the pleasure in tasting. This is why you should take great care in always sharing out the rind with cheese portions. 


Appropriate Instruments 

The cheese knife : The cheese knife, easily recognizable for its two sharp points at the end of a slightly bent blade
The wire butter knife : It is used to carefully cut cheeses with a fragile texture (Roquefort, buche de chevre,...
The cheese cutter : The thin wire cuts through a cheese block with hand pressure.
The cheese cleaver : This utensil is used to cut the hardest cheeses.
The cheese slicer : Usually used to cut hard and semi-hard cheese. It produces thin cheese slices.
The girolle : It is a utensil for scraping Tete de Moine swiss cheese.
The grater knife : This utensil makes small pieces of cheese.
Raclette furnace: (We use traditionally this type of fumace to prepare a raclette).
Fondue pot: (This utensil is used to make the swiss fondue)