Season's Eatings Cheese Plate Gift Box

What’s the shelf life on cheese?

• Hard, aged cheeses stay good for a long time. Many days for sure. Sometimes weeks. Bigger hunks of cheese last longer. If it looks and smelled as expected, it’s likely still great.

• What if it’s got a little mold on it? A little mold is no problem. It’s a good sign, it means the cheese is alive. Scrape it off with a knife. But if there’s a lot of mold and it’s turning dark and funky it’s time to say goodbye.

• Soft cheeses and cheese spreads (like pimento and liptauer) are best eaten within a week or two of receiving them.

How do we ship artisan cheese year-round across the country?

In warmer months (early April to mid September), we ship cheese with two business day service plus warm weather care. We employ an ice pack and insulation defensive strategy to protect against warm delivery trucks and warm warehouses and ensure your shipment arrives in great shape.

The rest of the year (late September to the end of March), the shipping method will either be flat rate service (1-4 business days) for our durable hard, aged cheeses or two business day service for our more perishable soft cheeses and cheese spreads.

Hard cheeses have been carefully selected to withstand a longer transit time. Don’t worry if it arrives a bit warm or a bit cold – cheese is durable.

How should the cheese be stored once it arrives?

• Store cheese in the fridge, ideally in the spot closest to 50 degrees. That will likely be the door of your refrigerator or in a drawer where the temperature is consistent but not too cold.

• We wrap hand-cut wedges of cheese in a cheese bag before shipment, and you can continue to keep the cheese in that cheese bag. The next best option would be parchment or wax paper.

• After you open the cheese for a nibble, any remainders can be put back into the bag and closed with a simple roll or fold. 

• Do not freeze your cheese! Cheese is a living thing. Freezing will stop the natural processes that keep cheese so tasty. 

How should the cheese be served?

Regardless of the kind of cheese, it’s best to take it out of the fridge about 20 to 30 minutes before serving it. Cheese tastes better at room temperature. It makes a world of difference: the aromas expand, becoming more complex; more of the fat spreads on your tongue, which makes the flavor more intense. When cheese is warm you’ll eat less of it and enjoy it more.

Short answer: they’re cured, so they’ll last a while!

Long answer: Curing is an ancient process that makes meat safe by keeping it inhospitable to the microbes that would otherwise cause rot. Curing is what differentiates a sausage (uncured) from a salami (cured).

Curing works its magic by eliminating bad bacteria from meat in two ways. First, by drying. Bacteria need moisture to grow and curing deprives them of it, usually with a combination of salt and some environmental measures, like dehumidified aging rooms. Second, by fermentation. Fermentation makes a salami acidic, which kills the bacteria. Not every cured meat is fermented – cured hams aren’t, for example – but they’re all dried. Once the process is complete, cured meat is safe from the bacteria that would spoil it. That means it can be stored at room temperature for a long time, until we’re ready to eat it.

Cured meats like salami, prosciutto, and ‘nduja will last for weeks or even months if stored correctly and unsliced. Slice salami as you eat it – keeping it whole will help prevent it from drying out.

What if it arrives warm?

We don’t necessarily ship cured meats with ice packs. Since it’s cured, it’s healthy and happy at warm temperatures. To prolong its life at home keep it refrigerated. But hours or even days at warmer temperatures won’t harm it a bit.

What’s up with mold on salami?

Downy white mold is as essential to salami flavor as blue mold is for blue cheese. Every good salami has mold on it at some point in its life. It’s a sign the salami is aging well; the mold protects the fat from going rancid. If you’re buying one without mold it was probably washed off at some point. It’s edible, but you can also wash it off with a bit of vinegar and water if you’d like. If a little mold returns in time it’s a good sign.

Some foods are so much a part of a place that you never think of one without the other. Belgium’s got their waffles. Champagne has their bubbly. Buffalo has its chicken wings; Nashville has its hot fried chicken. In the Spanish village of Almoharín, they’re all about their figs.

Welcome to Fig Town.

Population: 2,000. Three hours west of Madrid and an hour east of the Portuguese border, Almoharín is in the heart of Spain’s remote Extremadura region. More figs are grown in and around Almoharín than anywhere else in Spain. Maybe more than anywhere in the world. You’ll find dried figs, fig jams, fig breads, fig pies, figs in syrup, fig cakes. At dinner, your meat or stew will be garnished with figs. Visit during the harvest in September, you’ll be part of the annual Almoharín fig fair. (Yes, there will be DJs. And they will be eating figs.)

The figs grown in Almoharín are famous not just for their plentitude, but for their flavor. They grow a variety called Calabacita. Calabacitas are relatively small for figs, remarkably sweet, and have a thin, greenish-yellow skin. That thin skin is key: before harvesting, ripe Calabacitas are often left on the tree to dry for a few days to amp up their flavor. A dried fig with a thicker skin can end up tough and leathery. With their thin skins, dried Calabacitas have a chewy, toothsome texture, and massive amounts of figgy flavor.

What’s the most popular way to eat figs in Almoharín?

No contest: fig bonbons.

Everybody in town makes fig bonbons. Most use a similar technique, so the bonbons generally look alike. About an inch tall, each teardrop-shaped fig is coated in chocolate and stuffed until plump with a rich filling, like salted caramel ganache, or hazelnut cream, or chocolate ganache.

While they may look alike, flavor is another matter. For my money, the rabitos fig bonbons made by second-generation, family run La Higuera are the best I’ve ever tried. Using the original family recipe, they puncture the bottom of each tree-dried fig and fill it to bursting with a boozy chocolate ganache spiked with a heady dose of brandy. Then they enrobe the figs in a silky-smooth layer of chocolate.

As soon as you rip open the packaging, you’re immersed in the rich, punchy aroma of brandy.

One rabito is the size of a large chocolate truffle. You could eat it in two or three nibbles or devour it all in one bite. When you do, the chocolate cracks and snaps between your teeth before giving way to soft ganache. Rich, sweet chocolate coats your tongue first, followed by a sharp hit of the brandy, then the tangy, fruity acidity of the fig. The flavors marry, then linger for a long time after you’ve finished.

They lend themselves naturally to pair with all manner of drinks. With a good strong cup of black coffee or some milky tea. A dessert wine: a Sauternes or a port. (It’s counterintuitive but true that sweet wine and sweet figs are a great match.) A cognac or a brandy. Even a good cup of milk. If you’re feeling adventurous, try it with cheese. Rabitos are great with a tart cheese like a good fresh goat’s milk cheese, or a hard cheese that’s salty and fruity like Lincolnshire Poacher, or a creamy blue cheese like fudgy Bayley Hazen Blue.