For the Cheese Lover

There are so many times that we all want freshly grated cheese on some dish: for us, last night it was grilled eggplant slices. Tonight it’s haricots vert. Every other night it’s Zucchetti alla Colbrook - the summertime substitute for real pasta. And when we can go back to real pasta, oh yeah!  .... yum!

But how do you apply really fine, really focused freshly grated cheese, not too much, but on the plate, on the food? Flat graters work, but not always so neatly. So what do you do?

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Cheese is one of our favorite “food groups” … and we love cheese in all forms … except spoiled. But we invariably buy more than we consume, so the eternal corollary question is about storage: how do you best store the remaining pieces before they spoil? There are many considerations here. Since most of it comes from the store wrapped in plastic wrap, that should be an appropriate technique … but it isn’t! And we’ve tried every other variation: zip-lock bags, vacuum-sealed bags, parchment paper, wax paper, and more. But cheese needs to breathe to avoid spoilage and none of these approaches allow that to happen, as nature requires! We sell the Formaticum Cheese Wraps, in sheets and in bags, but even this two-layered paper can be difficult to use in some circumstances and not easy to organize neatly in your refrigerator. What to do?

Enter … The Cheese Vault, from our friends at Capabunga!

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Here's a fun gift for the cheese lovers on your list. It includes an assortment of wonderful Cool Tools to store and serve your cheese to perfection, and comes complete with a card that provides some guidance for creating a great cheese course.

Here's what's included in the bundle:

• Cheese Vault: Why It's Cool: Convenient effective way to store cheese that keeps it handy and protected
• Cheese Slicer: Why It's Cool: Blade (instead of wire) cuts cheese easily
• Cheese Grip: Why It's Cool: Keep your fingers off the cheese with this convenient handle
• Cheese Labels: Why It's Cool: Helps guests know what they're eating; reusable
• The Cheese Knife: Why It's Cool: Cuts cheese cleanly without sticking

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So, you ask, how can a Box Grater be a ‘Cool Tool’? Is anything more mundane? or basic? And the answer is ‘it’s a Cool Tool when it’s based on new, patent pending technology, that prepares a better component for your dishes!’ The problem with most box graters is that they are now-dull pieces of stamped below-average steel that ‘cut’ the food badly, on ragged edges: these are stamped metal that do not produce the sharp clean cuts we associate with using a honed knife or mandolin. Enter the Cuisipro 4-sided Box Grater with patent pending Surface Glide Technology™ ...the solution to the issue of less-than adequate box graters. Learn More

We’ve discussed the advantages of Cuisipro Graters, and then they went on to expand the line! The utilitarian box grater has its place in the kitchen: grating quantities to be added later. But there are times when you want a specific tool for the grated material … or maybe you want to offer each guest the ability to control the  amount of grated product (I like a lot of cheese on my Caesar Salad, but Piper likes a little less!) … or maybe you will want to add a performing touch of grating at the table, like most waiters in Italian restaurants. Or maybe you just want a grater that is so cool to look at or feels so good to hold or works so well or is so easy to use, that it puts all other graters to shame!

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When you’re serving appetizers, there is a special niche of tool - between a sharp paring knife and a blunt spatula - that makes the tasks of portioning and spreading ingredients easier and more controllable. Whether you perform these tasks yourself - think about spreading a cheesy mixture onto small baguette slices before broiling to make a ‘hot bruschetta’ - or offering a slice of rustic paté for guests to prepare their own portion onto crackers - some like more or less than others - you need an appropriate serving piece to perform these tasks with care and attention.

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As we have often said, we love cheese, but sometimes we love it too much: we buy some beautiful cheese, and then we’re conflicted about “saving it for a special occasion” or not eating too much. Unlike our friends in France and Italy, cheese is not an every-night course. So we eat a little, and we save the rest for the next time … which usually isn’t tomorrow night …. And then we discover that it’s gone bad because we showed too much restraint and we waited too long to enjoy it!  There are solutions to this wastefulness: eat what we buy, don’t buy so much, or make fromage fort and enjoy the cheese slightly differently … but the real solution is how to prolong the life of the cheese, so that you can enjoy it with multiple meals and have it taste as good each time you open it, as it did the day you brought it home. We’ve tried everything: zip-lock bags, vacuum-sealed bags, parchment paper, wax paper, the paper the cheese came in, but nothing worked, until now.

"If you're wrapping cheese in plastic, you're doing it wrong." Bon Appétit

"Wrappng cheese in plastic is lactic murder." Details

"Cheese lasts longer if stored in a breathable wrap instead of non-porous film." The San Francisco Chronicle

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Ahhh potatoes, that much maligned but often secretly enjoyed staff of life that adds so much to any meal. And while there are any number of ways to prepare a potato (or sweet potato for that matter), the richest and most decadent and probably most satisfying is in a silky smooth puree with the add-in of your choice (think cheese, sour cream, butter, garlic, celery root, creme fraiche, etc.), whether it’s just served on a plate, stuffed back in the shell to make a twice-baked potato, a seasonal favorite like Kennedy’s Drunken Sweet Potatoes, or our favorite French comfort food: Aligot Potatoes, that cheese-enhanced mashed-potato dish from central France that is somewhere between buttery mashed potatoes and pure melted cheese. And what is the hands-down best way to get that silky texture? In our opinion it’s ricing the potato.

Ricing forces the potatoes through small holes and produces a silkier, smoother, fluffier texture that makes your potato the perfect vehicle for your next step. But the main problem with ricing is that it usually requires some physical strength on the part of the cook: it helps to peel before cooking (otherwise you have to remove the peels after each press), but most Ricers require more strength than most of us possess: Even before we started this business, we were on a hunt for an effective “Ricer”, without success, until now! Finally, we’ve found it!

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Freshly grated cheese, freshly zested lemons and limes, freshly grated zucchini for Shredded Zucchini Sauteed with Corn and Chives, or mounds of fluffy freshly grated parmesan...there’s nothing better. But what’s the most effective way to get the best results?

We’ve tested a lot of different models, and there are two brands that we think have both great performance and ease of use when you’re doing large quantities of cheese or vegetables: the Cuisipro Box Grater and the KitchenIQ V-etched Container Grater. But sometimes you just want to grab a paddle grater and grate cheese, etc over your dish. In that case the paddle graters that we have come to love and rely upon are the ones from KitchenIQ.

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Do you have an inner cheesemaker? I didn’t know I did … until I found out how easy it could be to make my own queso fresco (Mexican), fromage frais (French), ricotta (Italian), and there are probably equivalent cheeses in many other cultures (sorry, no pun intended). There is something sort of cool about serving cheese (or using it as an ingredient) that you can proudly say you made yourself. And it’s even better if it’s quick and easy to do. And let’s not forget that when you make your own, you control the quality and kind of ingredients - as well as flavors - that go into it.

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One of the first pieces of entertaining “equipment” that I received as a gift from my mother when I had my first apartment was a cheese button: a Lucite disk (yes, I’m dating myself) with three sharp legs that you stick into a piece of hard cheese so that you can steady it as you’re slicing it without putting you (or your guests’) fingers on the cheese that someone will eventually eat.

Good idea then... good idea now! But whereas (OK, I used to practice law) the original design was merely a place to push down on the cheese, the newer model has significant improvements.

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We all love cheese, and some of us even love it more than others. In the kitchen, you can sprinkle it on to any dish, and you can bake it on top of any casserole. But how do you easily and neatly make it available to your diners to add cheese to their own plate, “to taste”? Whether you grate it yourself, or use pre-grated or shredded cheese, the problem is the same: you need to provide an attractive vehicle to bring the cheese to the table.

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Slicing cheese into even and uniform slices is always a problem: you want these slices for your cheeseburgers or grilled cheese sandwiches, or simply to grill for a side to your sauted chilis or almost any Greek dish. And when you’re serving cheese, you want to make it easy for your guests to cut themselves a nice slice.

But whatever the quality of the knife, it’s next to impossible to cut an even straight line. And those wire-based cutters … well, they just don’t cut it, if you’ll pardon the pun. So what do you do?

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If you love cheese, then you probably serve cheese to friends and family. And when someone exclaims, “What a wonderful cheese, what is it?”, you’d hate to sit there looking like a deer in the headlights or go rummaging through the trash looking for the label! Both have happened to us!  That’s where cheese labels come in--it’s the cheater that doesn’t give you away. Whether you use it to jog your memory or inform your friends is up to you.

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What’s wrong with this picture? It says it’s a knife, but it’s made of plastic. And real knives are made of steel (and ceramics), right?  Can this really be ‘THE’ Cheese Knife, to the exclusion of all others?  Maybe not.  Was I skeptical?  Yes.  But this IS a Cool Tool.  Seriously.

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The original Cheese Knife was a great surprise for us … a very Cool Tool: beautiful mid-20th Century American industrial design, with a clean functional purpose, that performs its tasks really well.

The original Cheese Knife was developed in the early 1940s to cut Velveeta - the designer/inventor’s favorite cheese product of that era - but it clearly belongs on any cheese plate. We use it a lot: to prepare a small dice (1/4”) or even a brunoise (1/8”) of mozzarella to sprinkle over fresh tomatoes or on top of pasta. It slices burrata into beautiful small creamy bites and it works really nicely for thin slices of Brie and other triple creme cheeses. But the original wasn’t quite large enough to make it through a good-sized block of cheese.

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One of the most pleasurable, decadent and delicious hors d'oeuvres you can serve is baked cheese. Simple to prepare - just bake it: right? - and capable of being dressed in an infinite variety of sweet or savory accompaniments … or both …. Great idea!

But baked cheese - Brie is the most common, but other semi-soft cheeses can add multiple dimensions of flavor - can be difficult to execute and serve beautifully: your average glass baking dish or that favorite crafts fair casserole dish just is neither the most convenient (too deep for easy access) nor the best looking backdrop for your baked cheese. And you want your guests to appreciate both the taste and the beauty of your presentation. Right?

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