If I had to choose my favorite cheeses...

Let's make a holiday cheese board!

If I had to choose my favorite cheeses… this is what they would be.

I know it’s all the rage to make huge elaborate cheese boards with honey comb and perfectly curled salami slices. This is not that. Because on this cheese board, the focus is really on the cheese. Each of these represents something different and delicious that milk has to offer.

Sheep milk.

Cow milk.

Modica milk.

(I’m kidding. Modica milk is cow milk. Sort of. There’s more to it than that, which you’ll learn about in this video.)

I often joke about the “purse meat” that I carry around… that is, dried pieces of jerky that I never leave home without. That way, whenever I’m hungry, I’ve got a clean, delicious protein right at my fingertips. Well, I got a great email the other day from a woman who sent me a picture of her “purse cheese” - a gigantic piece of Pecorino Romano that she toted around with her while she was running errands, grabbing a chunk whenever she needed a bit of salty sustenance. This, this makes sense to me.

If I had to pair my culinary life down to just a handful of ingredients, cheese would be close to #1 on the list. There are as many cheeses as there are stars in the sky, each reflecting the animals that we milk to make it, the grounds on which they graze, the hands of the cheesemaker, the symbiotic relationship between cultures and bacterias in the air. It is, truly, the greatest of artistic culinary creations.

I hope you enjoy building this cheese board, maybe meeting some new cheeses, and getting to spend time in a Sicilian barnyard with me. You know I’m happy when I get to be around a cow.

What’s on your cheeseboard?

Salute!

Shaye