It's not just macaroni and cheese, scones or chicken with cream that cry out for a lot of cheese and more, but it's also a staple of cold dishes and sandwiches. Better still, if the cheese is smoked.
Luscious, tasty, with holes
The first thing you reach for is the cheese when you're presented with a generous cold plate. A few slices of cheese with vegetables for dinner is satisfying on its own. There are many varieties, but many people's favourite is the real thing, large hole smoked cheese. Its strong fragrance, taste and texture are enticing, but when added to food it can often even replace salt, but either way it's a win-win. It makes scones smell fragrant if you've already put lots of grated smoked cheese in the batter, and who can resist a smoked cream cheese chicken with tomato salad? The answer: only vegans.
What makes smoked cheese so tasty?
A very old method is the smoking of food. Many people do it at home, even in a home smoker, just as they smoke sausages and ham after pig slaughter to make them last longer, and cheese. Along with salt, it is one of our oldest methods of natural preservation, and the result is that the food itself tastes better than ever. Smoking can be done with a variety of woods, and it doesn't matter which leaves you combine the wood with. Cheeses are particularly sensitive to the number of minutes or seconds they are held in the smoke, as they are soft and their salt content cannot be too high.
Try this!
If you haven't yet tried the many cheesy “mac&cheese”, the famous macaroni and cheese, or the smoked cheese fritters, or the crispy cheese balls fried in oil, do it now! Cheese is a weakness of our guests and simply can't get enough of any of us for the dish. Just think of the pastas on top of cheese scones. This is the ingredient of which there is hardly an excess. Smoked cheese is more popular in central Europe, so Slavic ethnic groups make the best ones. It's worth adventuring into the gastronomic culture of these countries and cooking with their ingredients if you can get your hands on them. The Polish speciality is pirog, a small filled pastry bag, often with smoked cheese or cheese sauce. Heavenly!
Wine and cheese
One of my favourite things to do is to end the evening with cheese and wine after dinner, or even as dinner, with a group of friends. Not a bad idea for dates either, as a cheese platter is just like a board game. We play “chess” with the sliced cheese. Who takes which, who likes which, and what's left at the end. We eat a little more leisurely, for fear of running out too soon and the game is over. But the cheeses are filling and they also give our taste buds a lot of flavour. In good cases, they have a fat content of over 45% - so they melt, the melty ones are light and fresh, the aged ones are a little bitterly exciting and the smoked ones are decidedly sweet. I think that without cheese, life and we would be a lot thinner.#
