Comté, Six Ways for the Holidays

Comte with preserved walnuts

If you love big, fruity wines, chances are you’ll fall chin-over-stilettos for Comté. It’s a big fruity cheese, and it pairs well with everything this time of year – nuts, sherry, even fruitcake.

Imagine a buttery Gruyere with sweet, nutty notes and a smooth toffee finish. This is the kind of cheese that changes people – once you have tried Comté, you will never settle for a mediocre brick. It is, in a word, stargasmic.

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Disclosure: This post is part of a weekly series I write for Di Bruno Bros., one of my fave cheese haunts in Philly. I choose the topics, but I get paid to guest-blog on the store's site.

Feta+Watermelon

I love pairing cheese and fruit, but I’d never heard of combining feta and watermelon until I talked to Lori Sollenberger from Hidden Hills Dairy last week. She makes a raw-milk feta that I’ve been swooning over ever since it arrived in my CSA share last week.

Lori's feta reminds me of saltwater taffy: sweet on the front end, salty on the finish. It also calls to mind a woman my parents used to know, who sprinkled salt on her watermelon. Her name was Mrs. Davidson, and she lived in Leipzig, Ohio – I can still see her lipsticky grin and remember how she taught me to latchhook. We used to visit her whenever my father needed to get his violin fixed; her husband was a violinmaker.

Mrs. Davidson always fed us well. She was a ‘50s era cook – a fan of molded jello served with a blob of mayo, that kinda thing. I got the feeling salted watermelon was part of her bouffant-and-big-smile past.

If you try this sweet-salty combination, wrangle some mint if you have it in the yard. It's strangely refreshing. Epicurious suggests taking things a step further and adding both ground pepper and red pepper flakes. Somehow, that’s oddly appealing, too. Don’t ask me why, child, don’t ask me why.

Below, you’ll find a few other cheese-and-fruit combinations that I love. With fresh fruit in season, these pairings are especially luscious, and they make for an impressive dessert on the fly when comp’ny comes over.

Delice de Bourgogne + strawberries

A gorgeous triple crème. Serve with bubbly and candied pecans.

Blue cheese + figs

Picky a salty blue. Set out hunks of honeycomb and toasted walnuts.

Goat cheese rolled in ash + blackberries

Valencay is widely available. Humboldt Fog is the real meow.

Aged cheddar + apples

Dress up with caramelized onions, crisp baguette rounds, and fresh rosemary sprigs.

Chevre + Asian pears

Crisp meets crisp. Drizzle with buckwheat honey.

Nectarines + fresh ricotta

For breakfast, top with brown sugar. For dessert, almond biscotti.