Re-wrap cheese after each use.

A favorite food for snacking and cooking all over the world, cheese comes in a seemingly infinite variety of flavors and textures. With cheeses running the gamut from soft to hard and mild to strong, how can you know when a particular variety of cheese is no longer good to eat? And what's the best way to store cheese to keep it fresh and delicious? To get the scoop, we talked to a man who makes his living from cheese.

Born and raised in Providence, Rhode Island, Chris Pollan acquired an appreciation of food and cooking at an early age. In the late 1970s, Pollan achieved success and notoriety as a tour manager for some of rock's biggest acts, and touring the world allowed him to sample fine food from every part of the globe. By the mid-nineties, Chris was ready to settle down and spend more time with his family, and began working at The Cheese Store of Beverly Hills, where he discovered that food, wine and retail are his real passion. After three years, Pollan decided to open up a store of his own, and chose the eclectic, up-and-coming LA neighborhood of Silver Lake, where he now runs the aptly named Cheese Store of Silver Lake. Here he offers his expert tips for cheese care:

• What to look for.
  When buying a cheese, Pollan always looks for a nice color, a good composition of the rind, general cleanliness, and the condition of the cheese's flesh.

• À point:
  Most cheeses ripen with time, and there is an exact time when they are at their fullest flavor. The French call this "à point." It is usually easy to tell when a cheese goes past this point and starts to go bad. Softer cheeses will develop an ammonia smell, while harder cheeses tend to fall apart rather than getting rancid or bitter.

• Perishable.
  Cheese is delicious as a snack, meal or recipe ingredient, but you should never forget that it is perishable and needs to be cared for properly.

• The life of a cheese.
  When it comes to storage and shelf life, the general rule is that the harder a cheese is, the longer it will last.

• Wrap it up.
  Cheese should be wrapped in plastic wrap foil, or wax paper and stored in your refrigerator's vegetable crisper. Every time you take it out and use some of it, you should re-wrap it in new wrapping.

The Cheese Store of Silver Lake
www.CheeseStoreSL.com

Cheese.com
www.cheese.com

I Love Cheese
www.ilovecheese.com

Cheesenet
cheesenet.wgx.com

Fromages.com
www.fromages.com