Cheese as a meal – the “apéro dînatoire”
Ann divides her time between Washington DC and Paris, and one of her favorite ways to spend a convivial evening with friends is the "apéro dînatoire," which is a casual meal of wine and small bites that can stretch for hours – and there's no cooking! In this cheese board, Ann has paired nutty Comté – a hard mountain cheese – with three soft cheeses made by Strongman Gourmet Farmer, a local cheesemaker in the Shenandoah valley. There's a runny, bloomy-rind triple-cream made with goat and cow's milk; Grayson, a fragrant, semi-soft cheese, and an aged goat crottin. Accompanying the cheese are saucisson sec, and truffled chicken liver mousse; as well as grapes, plums, pears, olives, a...
Colorado mountain cheeseboard
As someone who spends four months a year in the mountains of Colorado, Laura is naturally driven to locally-made cheeses and mountain-grown products. And so she invited a few Colorado friends over for a delectable dessert cheese course featuring Comté.She started earlier in the day by heading to the local farmer’s market to forage for accompaniments that would highlight the beautiful cheese. Her first stop was at LivingGreensColorado, which specializes in “wildcrafting” – making jams, jellies, and other truly delectable products from the berries, herbs, fruits, and plants that grow in their area. She tasted several of their jellies, but it was the unlikely sage jelly that...