Cheeseplates

Viridian

I should say first and foremost that I really like this restaurant. Viridian does some pleasantly creative things with seasonal ingredients, especially in the winter.  Since I like the place so much, I decided to give their cheese plate a second try.  The first time I had cheese at Viridian, it was just after they opened, and it turned out to be a disappointing single cheese on a plate (which I suppose adheres to the technical definition of cheese plate, but not really the spirit).  Happily,  this time a more appropriate range of three cheeses appeared: a drunken goat, a creamy blue (cow's milk), and a hard manchego (sheep's milk). 

To be honest, I wasn't particularly excited. The chopped apricots and cranberry chutney accompaniments were terrific and each cheese was fine on its own (our friend Katie insists I mention how much she liked the blue) but it was kind of a silly trio of cheeses.  The manchego was mild and pleasant, but you almost couldn't taste it if you had just finished a mouthful of the blue.  Drunken goat can be nice with manchego, but it's tanginess and the blue's tanginess are different enough that they kind of fight a bit.

Sometimes I suspect that people think they HAVE to put a blue cheese on a cheese plate.  How awful!! Blue is a great cheese, but it can completely overwhelm milder (or similar) cheeses.  Worse yet, it can make other cheeses taste funny, even if they are actually quite delicious. 

All of this said, Katie and my husband really enjoyed the plate, and it was nice for picking through leisurely with the remainder of the dinner wine. 

Lima

The cheese plate at Lima caused me to verge into the dangerous zone of wondering if it was acceptable to have cheese as a main course. We had gone for restaurant week, but the idea of making a meal on ceviche and a cheese plate was just too good to pass up.

The cheese plate itself was a collection of five Spanish cheeses.

• Mahon (cow)
• Drunken goat
• Manchego (sheep)
• Idiazabal (sheep)
• Cabrales (cow)a the blue

I loved the combination of the first four.  The cabrales was a really nice  deep tasting blue (and great on its own), but a bit of a dissonant flavor along side the mellow earthy, tangy personality of the others.

The hilight to me though -- the full range of things to eat with the cheese: figs, dates peeled almonds, walnut halves, and a nearly crystallized natural honey.  yum.   Too many restaurants give you  nothing but a plate of cheese and some bread or crackers. Maybe most folks only want their cheese to strike a single note -- me, I want to try a cheese by itself, with a piece of fruit, with something salty, etc etc.  Kudos to Lima for respecting all the different ways you can taste a cheese!  I would recommend this cheese plate to anyone.

Friday night with my cheese

Sometimes you just need a cheese plate at home – on a Friday for example. Luckily, we live near Whole Foods, where festive cheeses are only a visit away.  (As an aside, Whole foods will actually let you taste the cheeses if you are trying to decide between two of them. I was flabbergasted by this idea – unwrap the cheese and cut a piece off?! In the middle of the store?! Apparently, that’s fine) 

So our home constructed cheese plate included:

• Appenzeller: a hard cow's milk cheese (not a pony) from Switzerland.
• Dimon Morbier: reasonably obviously French semi-soft cow's milk (and potentially my favorite type of cheese, ever)
• A three cream blue from Iceland called “Stori Dimon” (incidentally this looks more like a fuzzy brie when you first unwrap it. It has a few veins of blue, but the flavor is closer to a brie on steroids than to what you typically think of when someone says “blue cheese”)

The Appenzeller I resurrected from the fridge – when I bought it a few nights ago we didn’t really like it – kind of barn-yardy but with the texture of Irish cheddar. Paired with the other two friends however, it was suddenly a really nice third party on the plate – further evidence that cheese plate-ery is in fact a fine balancing act!

These three went quite nicely together if you are a fan of strong cheeses. They each had enough character to remind you of their individual flavors every time you had a bite. So often there is a mild cheese there among the strong ones, but I always feel like that one gets lost among its more assertive buddies. At the same time, there was a consistent earthyness across these three that it wasn’t odd to switch from one to the next. Mmmmmmmm.