Three cheeses, not thirty
The Cheese Finale
The course that costs almost nothing to get right and is almost always got wrong: three cheeses at perfect ripeness, bread, one sweet element and a wine that suits them.
Preparation
What happens when
- Two days aheadOrder the cheese by ripeness date. This is the entire skill of the course.
- The dayOut of the fridge two hours before service, covered, in a cool room. Never served cold.
Service
How to serve it
Serve as a board to the table rather than plated, with one knife per cheese. After a heavy dinner, one cheese served alone with warm bread is better than three, and much better than a trolley.
At home
One cheese, done properly, for eight
Buy a single 800 g piece of something excellent instead of five small pieces of something ordinary.
- Choose one cheese and ask the seller when it will be at its best; buy it for that day.
- Take it out of the fridge two hours before serving and keep it covered at room temperature.
- Warm the bread, crack fresh walnuts, and put out honey or a quince paste and nothing else.
- Serve it with a small glass of something sweet, oxidative or fortified, and let it be the last thing on the table.
Editor’s tip: Cold cheese tastes of nothing. Two hours out of the fridge is the whole recipe.
Plan it
Quantities and timing
How much to buy
Quantity Calculator
Guest count, service style and menu shape turned into a shopping list in kilos, litres and pieces.
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Menu Composer
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Service Timeline
A backwards plan from the minute your first course leaves the kitchen: crew arrival, prep, table setting, briefing, doors, courses, speeches, coffee and strike..
OpenFormats
Where this menu belongs
Format
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Boat, vineyard, mountain, bonnet of a carThe Travelling Lunch
Lunch where there is no kitchen at all: a boat, a vineyard row, a mountain hut, a beach at the end of a track.
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Where it eats best
Market
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The Alps do not sell dinners, they sell weeks.
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