Crimes Against Cheese: Cheesediggers

I am not saying YOU do this.  But it is done.  And it must stop.

In part this crime against cheese goes on not because people are bad, but rather they are uninformed.  Nobody has ever told them there is a proper way to cut cheese.  Everyone else has been too mannerly to call them out on their poor cheese manners.  Well, that stops today.

There is a proper way to cut cheese.
One needs good manners when eating food from a shared plate.

These crimes are at their peak when a wedge of brie has been offered on a cheese plate.

You have seen this before.  Perhaps you even participated in the carnage.

But a simple wedge of brie has a knack for getting picked to death.  There are some people who do not care for the bloomy rind of the cheese.  So instead of cutting a proper slice, they scoop some of the cheese out from between the rinds.  And once one person indulges, the floodgates open wide.

The poor cheese never had a chance.

The right way is to take a full wedge of the cheese.  A radian, if you will, so that your slice has a little bit of the tip as well as the outside edge.

There is a reason for this.  Cheese tastes different at its heart (in the middle) than it does by its outer edges.  When taking a slice from a shared platter, it would be impolite to deprive other guests the full experience of the cheese.  So, it would be equally wrong to simply cut off the tip of the brie wedge and steal the heart all to yourself.

“But I don’t care for the bloomy rind!” you may argue.

Well, that’s fine.  You take it on your plate anyhow, and then you can remove it as you wish.  Cheese people are squarely in two camps on the matter of rind anyhow.  So eat it, or don’t eat it, someone will say that you are doing it wrong.  In this case I say, do what you like.

The same principles hold true for non-brie cheeses.  Take the rind with you.  Think about the cheese in radians.  Try to cut a wedge that has every part of the cheese.

If there is more than one cheese, there should be more than one knife.

Be mindful of keeping the knives separate: that blue cheese may be delicious, but even a hint of its veining will surely overwhelm most other cheeses on the platter.  Too often I have seen cheese platters with dedicated knives, only to find they have all been sullied.

If you have made these lapses in the past, it’s water under the bridge.
Today is a new day.  And look, you’ve already learned something new.