Cheese-centric dishes melting hearts

Communal, cheese-centric dishes are ideal for gatherings

In our age of #foodporn saturation, the term has practically lost all meaning. But the seduction of Tia Keenan’s Melt, Stretch, & Sizzle: The Art of Cooking Cheese (Rizzoli New York, 2018) is real.

Glossy, sexy and beguiling, this cookbook, committed to hot cheese, is irresistible.

Keenan, a New York-based cook and writer of two other cheese-focused books, has been working in the field since the early 2000s. In the nearly two decades, she estimates that she’s had conversations with tens of thousands of people about cheese.

“There’s a consistency of language that people use when they talk about melted cheese. And it’s very explicit. I just thought it would be fun to approach melted cheese from that devotional point of view,” she says with a laugh.

Applying heat to cheese is almost always a win-win, Keenan adds. And in covering foundational techniques, she ensures success for cooks of all comfort levels.

From sauces such as rarebit and dips like baked pumpkin fondue to pão de queijo (Brazilian cheese bread) and khachapuri (Georgian cheese-filled bread), Keenan also sought to highlight dishes from cheese-loving countries outside of go-to Western Europe.

Simply warming up certain cheeses is enough to completely transform them, Keenan says. This fact is deliciously on display in two dishes perfectly suited to holiday dining: fondue and raclette.

Keenan appreciates the latter so much she dedicated an entire chapter to it.

Raclette is a semi-firm to firm Alpine cow’s milk cheese, which is traditionally heated and scraped onto bread, potatoes and other foods, “like a reverse fondue.”

“You can actually accommodate a lot of food preferences by serving that kind of meal,” says Keenan.

“You’re giving them the melted cheese, so they’re choosing what they’re going to dip into it or pour onto it.”

Beyond the flexibility of serving fondue or raclette at a holiday gathering, it’s also a supremely welcoming and convivial way to entertain.

“We don’t have a huge tradition of communal eating (here), and I think cheese is one of those things that actually pushes back against that. It’s almost always a communal experience, whether it’s a cheese board that people are taking pieces off of together while they talk to each other and drink wine or beer, or it’s hot cheese in fondue or raclette. I think people crave that.”