I’d like to introduce to you a new monthly post where I will be displaying a decadent spread that consists primarily of meat and cheese but will also include anything cured, aged, dried, smoked, pickled, potted, etc.  (You get the gist.)  The idea is every month I will present some type of beautifully displayed meat/cheese/veggie plate, store-bought or homemade, to entice your appetite.  I came up with this idea when I started noticing a trend in other blogs.  I follow many bloggers who dedicate their writing to food, rock & roll music, New York City, simple living, antiques & vintage inspiration, etc…(just to name a few of my favorites).  I started noticing a trend where each blogger presents a themed post on a monthly basis.  For example, my good friend Rachell Lee Roth (remember her from Episode 1 of Season 2 in Brooklyn, EAT your heart out!’s video?), features a cake of the month on her blog, and one of my favorite foodie/author, Ruth Reichl, highlights a particular food item on the front page of her blog, calling it “the perfect food for (insert month here).”  These monthly highlights is the impetus of my desire to create a monthly post of my own.

Jim and I loving eating at home as often as we can.  Occasionally, we’ll have people over and I’ll cook a meal for four, with an extra serving of one or two, just in case (you gotta have some leftovers…and sometimes cooking larger portions facilitates the use of plentiful ingredients).  Then there are days where we really don’t want to do so much as lift a finger or twist the knob that turns the oven on.  On such days we serve what we call our “mediterranean dinner.”  Usually it’s a wooden board topped off with cured meats, aged cheeses, olives, nuts, artisanal bread, olive oil, honey, and pretty much any food item imaginable that originates from the leading countries surrounding the mediterranean (though not limited to that geographic region).  As I follow the lead of my fellow bloggers, I go straight to the heart of things and introduce to you The Meat & Cheese Plate: Lomo Ibérico and Garrotxa.

Seeing how I’ve been working at Tertulia [a popular restaurant in the west village named after “a type of Spanish literary salon popular in Spain from the 17th century, initially held in private homes and then in clubs and cafes during the early 19th century.  Today the word is used to describe a gathering of friends marked by great conversation, food and drinks.”]–(info taken from Tertulia’s website) for one year now, it’s a no-brainer that the inaugural post for this month features a meat and cheese imported from a country that is currently fresh in my head:  Spain.  Lomo Ibérico is the loin of the Ibérico pig breed, a breed that is fattened with barley and maize and then left on the plains to feed solely on acorn nuts for the last 3 or 4 months before the sacrifice.  Being the leanest of the cuts, lomo is made with sea salt, garlic and pimentón (aka smoked paprika), as is customary in Spain, and then dried and cured for 90 days (sometimes longer for some producers).  Upon tasting, lomo has got a really nice meaty and slightly garlicky flavor.

What I found interesting about the lomo I bought from the Bedford Cheese Shop is that the cut was heart shaped with very little marbling while at my job and at most other artisanal shops (e.g. Despaña, La Tienda), the cut is more of an oval shape with a visible layer of fat on one side of the edge.    I’m assuming the shape and amount of fat varies on the producer as well as how the meat folds when inserted into the casing.  Additionally, I made the purchase with the intention of receiving lomo, but when I opened the wrapping at home, I was gladly surprised to see that the monger also included cabecero, an entirely different cut of Ibérico (as seen in the photo above).

To round out this meat and cheese platter, I chose Garrotxa cheese to partner with the fine qualities of the Lomo Ibérico. This cheese pleases the eye with it’s velvety, blue-grey mold (Of course!  I wanted something beautiful for photographic purposes), and satisfies the palate tenfold with it’s delicate, nutty, somewhat milky flavor and semi-soft texture.  Produced in the Catalonia region of northern Spain, Garrotxa is a goat’s milk cheese that is said to be best paired with most white wines such as Albariño.

I’ve learned that in most countries, meat and cheese plates are served to stimulate the appetite. Personally, I find these platters to be a perfectly good option as a meal in itself, if not a great snack to stave off your hunger for a few hours.  In closing, I’d like to apologize for the delay in publishing this post.  Truth is while this post was started back in July (as evidenced by green tree leaves in the photos above), I was busy getting married and traveling the southwestern slope of Colorado down to New Mexico in late September/early October.  But as I always like to say, “better ate than never.” Brooklyn, EAT your heart out!