RESPECT YOUR CHEESE

Once you've bought a good cheese, American or otherwise, what's the best way to store and serve it? Here are Raymond Hook's suggestions.

• Never freeze cheese. Freezing changes the texture of cheese, especially the soft-ripening and bloomy-rind kinds, which collapse when thawed.

• Buy only what you can eat between now and when you next visit the cheese shop.

• Don't wrap cheese in plastic film. Cheese is alive. If you were wrapped from head to toe in plastic film, you would die.

• Gray and blue molds that may develop on cheese are fine. Black and red molds should be trimmed off, however.

• Keep your cheese in a large lidded plastic container in the warmest part of your refrigerator (usually the vegetable bin). If it came in air-permeable cheese paper, it's all right as is; if it came in plastic, rewrap it in waxed paper or parchment paper, then in foil, and put it in the container. Store blue, washed-rind, and white-mold cheeses separately. Natural-rind cheeses may be kept together.

• Before serving cheese, let it sit for at least an hour at room temperature. Its flavor-carrying oils will flow more freely when the cheese is warm, spreading flavor over your taste buds.

• Always taste mild cheeses first, then the more pungent ones. A good rule is to begin with cow, then go on to goat, sheep, and blue — but there are always exceptions. — R.H.