Tom Chatfield grew up on seventy acres in southwest England, the son of a first-generation sheep farmer who drove trucks at night to fund his pasture. Tom loved the land, but he did his best to avoid, as he puts it, “learning to drive tractors and pull lambs out of sheep.” His father grew up similarly disinterested in the range life—Tom’s grandparents had ascribed to their son that he would be a farmer, and he scoffed at the idea of his life’s work being dictated to him. But despite his stated disinterest, Tom’s father eventually felt the call of the land. And despite his stated disinterest, the same happened to Tom.

Tom doesn’t live far from where he grew up, though the farm he is on is certainly much larger: 1,500 acres in the Devon countryside. This land is the home of Quicke’s Farm, which produces one of the world’s greatest cheddars. The Quickes have tended this land since it was allotted to them by Henry VIII. Yes, really. That was in the 1500s. It’s a rather old farm. “Twice as old as America,” Mary Quicke, who runs the farm, likes to quip.

Mary is a hardcore surfer, and that’s how she met Tom—he is surf buddies with her son. One day, when they were all on a surf trip together, Mary asked Tom if he was interested in working on the farm. There would be no tractor driving, she told him. No pulling lambs from sheep. Rather, he’d be working with cheese, supporting the values he grew up on, supporting people who do the kind of work his father does. And he’d get to surf on work trips. That all sounded pretty good.

Today, Tom is the head of sales and marketing at Quicke’s, in charge of communicating the farm’s values to the world. Perhaps the most foundational value—the one all the others are built upon—is stewardship, the idea that land doesn’t truly belong to anyone, but that if you provide for it, it will provide back. It’s an idea that Quicke’s articulates quite well, as is evidenced by this footage from their farm:

Mary’s mission with her cheese is to create joy and pleasure. It’s a simple notion, but if you don’t mind us getting a bit romantic for a moment, we’d like to suggest that it’s quite a beautiful one as well. Not just the idea of spreading cheer. That’s easy. Rather, the manner in which she does it, through stewardship of the land. Food is ephemeral by its nature. It is created to be consumed, and that’s about where the experience ends. But it comes from the land—the soil, the grass, the terroir—and that is eternal. What’s beautiful about Mary’s mission is that her cheese is an expression of the land, an experience of something eternal. And, as her cheese demonstrates, the eternal is rather delicious.

Exhibit A: Mrs. Quicke’s Goat Cheddar. It is cut, pressed, drained, and clothbound by hand, then aged on the farm for six months. During that time, it develops flavors of toasted almond and whipped butter. As Tom says, “People who think they don’t like goat’s milk almost can’t believe it.” It so confounds the pre-conceived notions of a goat’s milk cheese that one of Tom’s colleagues likes to have people taste it without telling them what it is. This ensures they are tasting the cheese itself, not any baggage they may or may not associate with the type of milk it’s made with.

In addition to just being flat out tasty, it’s a terrifically versatile cheese, as good for bringing silky texture to a dish like pea risotto as it is paired with a bottle of red wine on the beach. Like everything that comes from Quicke’s, it is a result of the farm’s devotion to stewarding the land. So, if you’re looking for joy, if you’re looking for pleasure, look no further. Grab yourself a wedge of goat cheddar and a bottle of wine. You’ll be eternally glad you did.

All through the season, we’re featuring Winter White cheeses—those wedges, wheels, and blocks that are bright as snow and keep you cozy in the cold. To celebrate these cheeses, we are sharing some of our private recipes, prepared by Murray’s head chef David Elkins. This week’s spotlight is a grain bowl from the new Made By Murray’s menu that he dreamed up for our store in the West Village. It’s called the Israeli Chickpea Bowl with Yogurt Dressing, and it looks like this:

The Mediterranean vibes are strong with this one, as is often the case when you’ve got feta and olive oil in the same place. You can buy each of those ingredients individually, but we recommend a jar of Meredith Dairy Marinated Feta, one of our all-around favorite cheeses. It comes bathed in premium olive oil , with sprigs of herbs right there in the jar to infuse even more flavor.

The recipe for this dish is super simple. Here’s how to make it:

If you’re using Meredith Dairy Feta, simply measure out your olive oil directly from the jar when preparing the dressing. This is one Winter White recipe that’ll have you feeling like it’s summer by the sea.

Cheese and beer both offer incredible variety. Lagers to lambics, bloomy rinds to blues—the taxonomic kingdom of each is vast. And, of course, beer goes with cheese are a natural duo. But with so many options, how do you go about selecting the proper pairing of each? We put together this guide to answer that very question. Presenting: The Murray’s Guide to Beer & Cheese.

Brie + Belgian Pale Ale

Decadent, buttery cheeses, like double and triple crèmes, call for relatively bubbly brews to cut through the richness. The best beer for that is a Belgian ale, either pale or golden—the kind that comes in a corked bottle that you pop like champagne. The cork signals in-bottle fermentation, which provides the proper effervescence.

Cheddar + IPA

Why do these two work so well together? An IPA is hoppy and bitter, which holds up well alongside the crumbly, acidic properties of a traditional cheddar.

Gouda + Stout

A well-aged gouda has a wonderfully caramelly, butterscotchy quality, and calls for a beer that is just as full-bodied and subtly sweet. That’s the profile of a good stout, with notes of roasted coffee and dark chocolate.

Washed Rind + Trappist Ale

Washed rind cheese was born of Trappist beer, when one day, a monk notice an unwanted color on some cheese he was aging. He dipped a rag in some beer, rubbed it on the wheel, and both removed the coloring and inadvertently developed a new style of cheese. Naturally, one goes quite well with the other.

Alpine + Brown

The profile of an alpine cheese is nutty, roasty, and slightly sweet. That’s the very same profile of a brown ale as well. As one of our pairing principles goes: Like goes with like. It’s no wonder alpine cheese and brown ale is such an excellent match.

Blue + Barleywine

On a cheese plate, blue cheese is often paired with something sweet and fruity: toffee, molasses, caramel, dried stonefruits, etc. In beer form, this manifests as barleywine. It’s an ale with loads of character, anchored by a malty sweetness.

 

There’s plenty of room in each category to explore nuances and expressions, but so long as you stick with these principles, you can’t go wrong. Happy pairing!

Nachos are the ultimate DIY game day food. And with the ultimate game day just around the corner, we figured we’d take a moment to discuss the proper way to prepare the dish.

When done right, a good nacho is a veritable frenzy of flavor and texture, everything contrasting and complementing at once. It is crunchy and chewy and creamy and gooey, spicy and roasty and tangy and sweet. And while it’s quite a straightforward dish to make, it’s not as simple as dumping stuff on a tray and sliding it all into the oven.

After all, we’ve all had nachos that amount to less than the sum of their parts. The tortillas turn soggy under too much weight. The meat seems to be there more to tick off a box than to provide texture and taste. The cheese comes shredded from a bag and is mostly reminiscent of wax. There are plenty of potential pratfalls while navigating your way through NachoLand. So we are sharing our recipe to help you find your way. Behold, Murray’s Monger’s Nachos:

At the core of this recipe is the selection of cheese and meat. We use wheels of Arzúa-Ulloa and Pawlet, both of which are exceedingly excellent melters and combine for a buttery profile that provides the ideal base on which to build the bold flavors of a proper nacho. And you’ll be getting some of that boldness from La Quercia Nduja—a spicy prosciutto spread—and Palacios Chorizo, a smoky, chewy, dried sausage.

The technique for making your nachos sturdy and durable is straightforward but essential: you want to build them in layers. A common mistake is laying down all the chips, then plopping on all the toppings. You want build your nachos almost like you would a club sandwich or a lasagna: there should be a couple levels of chips, each layered with cheese, meat, and toppings. That’ll keep the textures, flavors, and proportions balanced throughout. Keep that in mind, and you’ll have your nachos looking like the ones above by following this recipe:

Naturally (or shall we say: nachorally), that’s not going to be enough for game day. Your average football game lasts 3 hours and 15 minutes—and this is no average football game. Factor in the pregame broadcast, a glut of commercial time, and the high-production halftime show, and you’re looking at an event in excess of 4 hours. Kitchen expertise—what we’ll call conventional oven wisdom—has established that the primary folly of game day-hosting is frontloading the food offerings. If you prepare everything to be served at kickoff, your food will be fresh for about the first half of the first quarter. That leaves you and your guests snacking on limp, lukewarm food for most of the night.

Instead, you want to get everything set beforehand, and then bring the food out in waves. For example, prep your nachos before the game, and then pop them in the oven at the beginning of the second quarter. They’ll be ready before halftime, and will carry your crowd through to the latter part of the game, at which point it’ll be time to bust out the sweets.

Still, you need to hit them with a solid spread upon arrival, and we’ve designed one for that express purpose. We call it The MVP:

That’s 2.5 pounds of cheese and half a pound of premium charcuterie, along with buttery olives and two types of crackers. It easily serves 8-10 people and requires absolutely no prep on your part. It is also best enjoyed at room temperature, meaning you can put it out before your guests arrive and they can return to it throughout the game for periodic pecking.

Between your nachos and your cheese platter, you’ve got a first-rate, sharable feast that will minimize your time in the kitchen and maximize your time enjoying the game. And just like that, no matter who ends up winning, you’ll be sure to come out on top.

There’s nothing quite like a warm blanket in cold weather. We’re not talking about wool or fleece or polyester, though—we’re talking, as we so often are, about cheese. Specifically, we are talking about raclette.

Raclette is a cheese from the western Alps, where the mountains move from Switzerland to France. In the taxonomy of cheese, it is technically Swiss, but it is named for the French word racler, which means “to scrape.”

The origin story goes that cow herders used to bring this then-unnamed cheese with them when leading their cows to high mountain pastures. When they’d set up camp for the night, the herders would place the cheese next to the fire, letting the exposed paste get bubbly and gooey. Once it was perfectly melty, they’d scrape the layer of bubbling cheese over some bread, and then repeat the process. And that, in a nutshell (or rather, in a cheese rind) is how raclette got its name.

Because it is simple, interactive, and undeniably delicious, raclette is quite the popular dish for dinner parties. The most show-stopping melting method is to fasten your wheel of raclette into an industrial raclette machine, which looks a lot like a tanning bed for cheese. While quite the spectacle, these machines are also expensive and unwieldy. You can do just as well with this mini racellete machine or this “partyclette” from our pals at Boska, both of which are completely portable, eminently economical, and incredibly easy to handle.

We’d otherwise take this moment to provide instructions for preparing raclette, but it’s so easy and self-evident that saying “first, melt the cheese…then, scrape the cheese” would be an insult to your intelligence. Instead, let’s talk about what to blanket your raclette over. You’ll obviously want some nice, crusty bread, as that’s the vessel farmers originally used in the high pastures. But raclette’s since come down the mountain, and a proper spread will include an assortment of meats, pickles, and starches. We’ve put together this page to highlight our favorite raclette-able items. Here are a few you won’t want to do without:

Cornichons

With their pleasant tartness and snappy crunch, these lil’ gherkins have both the texture and taste to hold up under a pungent sheet of melting curd.

Speck

An alpine meat itself, Murray’s Speck brings a simpatico flavor profile for this kind of meal, along with a nice touch of beechwood smoke.

Salami Chub

A good chub will have a nice chew, which is just what a bite of raclette calls for. The flavors of white pepper and garlic in this Genoa salami bring out the best in the cheese too.

Dried Apricots

A good raclette has a deep fruitiness, so it makes sense that these dried apricots—which have similarly chewy properties to the salami—work so well with it.

Once you’ve assembled your provisions on your plate, well…you know what to do. This:

Happy racletting to you and yours.