Cold Temps Hot Cheeses

Cheese is one of those foods that's enjoyed all year round.It's especially good in the winter, when it's heated up.The taste becomes more intense and almost buttery in flavor. It's texture is a perfect meld of creaminess and crustiness. The best part is that it requires minimum ingredients and preparations.

One of the easiest is a simple grilled cheese. Like French toast , every home chef has his or her own way of making it. One way is just placing a slice of any cheese on plain white bread and baking for five to ten minutes in a toaster oven. The best bread for this is Pepperidge Farm sandwich bread.It has a nice sweet, homebaked taste that works well with the cheese's sharpness. You can vary both. A grilled rye topped with Swiss is nice variation. Italian bread dripping with mozzarella makes for a nice lunch.Serve with a cup of heated pizza sauce for more flavor. The diner classic The Happy Waitress is the ultimate grilled cheese. This is an open faced sandwich first layered with two layers of  bacon slices and  a generous amount of fresh sliced tomatoes.The extra baking really crisps up the baking and the three flavors together are just perfect. You can also go the French route by making the bistro favorite croquet monsieur. Gruyere cheese and wafer thin ham is placed upon slices of white bread and fried in butter. You can add sauce but it also tastes great without it too.

Fondue is the ultimate winter cheese dish. This does require a fondue pot (now on sale during the January white sales) but you can also use a sauce pan as well.The  best cheeses for it are a mix of Swiss and Gruyere but you can cook all of one or the other.White wine is added along with a dash of cherry brandy or kirsch . The bread used is almost always a stale baguette  cut into cubes.Boiled potatoes and cubed apples are also dipped into the sauce. Another tasty dish is also Swiss, raclette .This is a cow's milk, sort of resembling mozzarella in look and texture(it can be bought in the US  at Trader Joe's). It has a mild flavor  and is very soft.It is cooked on a special raclette grill that sort is like a large waffle maker. The cheese is placed on it and diners can scrape the cheese off with bread,potatoes or gherkins. In fact raclette comes from the French word racler to scrape.This is a party dish and is great for a  small dinner party of four or six.

The temps are falling.It's the perfect times for a hot , cheesy dish. You can choose the all American grilled cheese or the fun and sophisticated raclette. Any hot cheese plate is perfect for these frosty, chill days and nights.