Everyday Italian: Perfectly Period Party Platters – Finale

 

Now it's a party

Previously on Everyday Italian: Perfectly Period Party Platters, Part I, Part II and Part III

Composing a well-formed cheese plate

So, since this is part of my Everyday Italian series, there needs to be news you can use. In this case, it's how to put together a well-balanced cheese plate using 16th century Italian cheeses can you still find today. 

Structure

In the world of cheese plates, there are typically five main categories of cheese: Fresh, Bloomy and soft, cooked and pressed, washed rind, and blue.

Or these categories: sharp, creamy, funky, nutty, and fresh.

Or these: creamy, soft, semi-hard, goat, and blue.

It really doesn’t make that much difference — when you’re putting a well-balanced cheese plate together you really just want a varied selection to provide a variety of tastes and textures, and to keep things interesting. You’ll also want to mix up cow, sheep, and goat cheese, both for variety’s sake, but also in case some of your friends have issues specifically with cow dairy.

Here’s the previous list of cheeses ordered by category, according to the first version in my previous post. The point isn’t necessarily to be proscriptive about it – it’s important to eat cheese that you like – but this is a place to begin. There are what seems to be an infinite number of cheeses available in Italy, these days, but all of the ones listed here can be dated to the 16th century or earlier. Even marscapone.

Choose your own adventure

Italian Cheese Plates: a primer

I’ll now take you through what I believe to be the easiest representative cheeses to find in modern shops. I think you’ll be surprised and delighted to discover how easy it will be to compose your Perfectly Period Party Platter(tm).

Fresh

Appropriate fresh cheeses are easy to find - ricotta or Caprino (a fresh goat milk cheese, called chèvre in French) are readily available. For ricotta, try to find a higher-end type with internal draining and a light texture. For Caprino, look for something without a rind. These often come in flavoured varieties, like added herbs or garlic (or both!).

Bloomy and soft

Arguably, bloomy means a bit of a suede-like rind, which you can find with a taleggio or fontina, but honestly - an Italian cheese plate would be naked without a nice, soft buffalo mozzarella. Italians had been making cheese from local water buffalo for centuries, so try to find proper Mozzarella di Bufala, if you can. Scappi mentions it and it’s smoked counterpart, provatura, so you have some options. Burrata, sadly, is a 20th century creation. It is to weep.

Cooked and pressed

Parmesan is the king of cheeses, with some truly deep history and lore. It’s been used as currency, and cheesemakers keep their product under lock and key. It’s gloriously salty. If you’re looking for an alternative, pecorino is its sheep milk cousin and no less glorious. Fontina, Italy’s popular entry into the Alpine style cheeses also falls into this category - smoother, a bit less salty, but so, so good.

Washed rind

I’m not gonna lie – taleggio has stolen a bit of my heart. It’s gooey and smooshy and a bit stinky – very Brie-like in its presentation, but very much its own thing. I can find it at the grocery store, here in the UK, but you might need to chase up specialty cheese shops in the States to find it, which will absolutely be worth your time. Same goes for Castelmagno - gloriously squishy, a bit funky, and so delicious.

Blue

Hands down, the most famous Italian blue is gorgonzola. It comes in two types, based on its age – dolce, which is younger and milder, and Piccante, which is older and sharper. It doesn’t have the face-slapping funk of, say, a Stilton, but it’s still really interesting and complex and delicious.

With-its

There’s more to a good cheese plate than just cheese - fresh and dried fruit, nuts, charcuterie and crackers are all mentioned by Scappi in his shopping list of snacks, and all add texture and interest to your cheese plate landscape. You could probably also include preserved or pickled vegetables and mushrooms, as these were definitely found in a well-appointed 16th century larder. Broadly speaking, though, keeping it seasonal is a good bet and an appropriate choice. 

Final thoughts

As is right and proper, the list of books I referenced for this bit of research. 

Resources!

If you’re interested in cheese history of other areas in Europe during the middle ages and renaissance, I highly recommend Cheese and Culture by Paul Kindstedt - he’s seriously done his homework, and it’s an incredibly good read.

Arguably, Ned Palmer’s Cheesemonger’s History of the British Isles is what really got me to think about all of this in the first place - it’s another well-written history, written by someone who truly loves the product and the process, so a good one for your library.

Buon appetito di formaggi!!

Downloadable PDF list, bibliography and contact information