Day Thirty - A Month Down!

Can you believe it's been a month of my faithful writings to you cheese lovers? I can't! The most exciting thing is that I am just getting into my musings and am so psyched to be able to share at least another eleven months with you all!

I thought we might take a break from recipes today and focus on a question widely asked by the newly cheese curious and experimental, HOW do I store my cheese so that I preserve its freshness for as long as possible -- basically what to do with a cheese once it enters the confines of your home if you are not ingesting it.

Contrary to popular belief, DO NOT wrap cheese tightly in plastic wrap. By doing so, you suffocate the cheese and deplete it of its flavor. Cheese, like humans, needs some room to breathe! Granted, also by wrapping the cheese very tightly in plastic wrap, it can also begin to taste plastic-y and who wants plastic tasting cheese? I know I certainly do not!

So what is the right way to store cheese then? Cheese paper! Cheese paper is basically waxy paper exterior allowing the cheese to breathe with a porous plastic interior. It's what you get your cheese wrapped in if you go to Murray's cheese for example and pretty much an good cheese purveyor. Now, I know you don't want to have to go buy specific paper for your cheese. You are probably thinking, this girl thinks I have all the money in the universe to spend on cheese, don't worry, that's not the goal! If you don't have cheese paper which I imagine most of you don't, then I recommend wrapping the cheese somewhat loosely in wax or parchment paper and then placing it in a loose plastic bag. This way, the cheese is protected from the air in your refrigerator but can still breathe. I like to take softer goat cheese's like bucheron and the sort, and place them on paper towels in small plastic containers so they really have the opportunity to breathe. Also, if you were to place them in wax paper, the cheese tends to stay on the wax paper so that you loose quite a bit of your beloved and expensive yummy cheeses, definitely not the name of the game!

Two quick other tips :
1. Keep the cheese in the warmest part of the fridge, if cheese gets too cold, its active cultures freeze and it quickly looses flavor.
2. If you have a cheese in your fridge for a while and it is stored in the manner in which I recommend and it still gets mold, that does not mean you have to throw it out, you can just cut it off and eat the remainder of the cheese. Mold on cheese is not at all like mold on fruits or veggies or other foods...it is good for the cheese and shows that it is still alive!

Now you will be able to store the delish cheeses I discuss here and reuse them with their flavor in tact!