Herb-Marinated Cheeses

Traditionally, to marinate a cheese you place it in a jar, add herbs and spices, cover it with oil, and give it a bit of a gentle shake. You can let it sit at room temperature for 1 hour, or pop it in the refrigerator and let it marinate like that for up to 1 week. I decided to go halfway between the two and left mine in the fridge for 3 days, which ended up being the perfect amount of time to infuse a strong but not overpowering amount of the herbal flavor into the cheeses.

When you break it down, there’s three essentially flavor components to this cheese recipe: 1. Cheese 2. Oil and 3. Spices-Herbs. For the cheese, I decided to do 1 log of goat cheese, 1 brick of feta, and 1 chunk of manchego. For the oil, I paired the goat cheese and feta with olive oil since they go so well with its fruity and slightly acidic flavor profile. But for the manchego, I used Mountain Rose Herbs‘ macadamia oil, since manchego is a firmer, more supple cheese with a much milder flavor and the macadamia oil has a buttery and almost sweet flavor to it. That way, the macadamia oil wouldn’t be overpowered by the manchego the way it would with a strong cheese like feta, and the manchego wouldn’t be overpowered by the macadamia oil the way it would with olive oil.

For the herbs & spices, I used Mountain Rose Herbs again because they sell in bulk so everything is much more affordable, and the vast majority of their products are organic, too, so that no chemical flavors are imparted onto the marinating cheese. For the goat cheese, I used their thyme, rubbed sage, celery salt, and peppercorns to give a lightly spiced but fresh and herbal flavor to the cheese. For the feta, I used their shiitake mushroom powder, dill, and their kiawe smoked sea salt, which gave the feta a realllly delicious smokey, earthy, warm flavor. Something about the almost meaty taste of mushrooms paired with feta cheese and a smokey salt creates a pretty magical flavor combination, one that I plan on recreating with some feta & mushroom filo pockets on another summer day.

For the manchego cheese, I kept it simple and just used dried bay leaves as the herb since again, manchego is pretty mild, and I didn’t want to mask the flavor of it too much. That and the fact that the slightly sweet bay leaves paired wonderfully with the subtle sweet butteriness of the macadamia oil. Although truth be told, I’d be hard-pressed to find something that didn’t taste good with the macadamia oil, since it’s pretty much macadamia nuts in liquid form. I am sensing a delicious salad dressing in my near future…

Also, just a reminder that registration for my Summer 2014 Online Food Styling & Photography Course will be open until May 31st. I’d love to have you join me as we go through DSLR photography, food styling, and post-processing in Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom. If you have any questions, feel free to shoot me an email at the address in the right sidebar. In the meantime, you should definitely get started on making these little cheeses! They require very minimal hands-on time to make and the presentation and flavor is amazing…Sneakily elegant appetizers are kind of the best.