Like it or not, many non-Europeans just don't know that the French, having more that 300 different kinds of cheeses in a territory slightly smaller than Texas - that can be as confusing as their politics - consider how to slice cheese one of the many pillars of culinary art and savoir-faire, ingrained in everyday life. Cheese, such as Brie or Camembert , having a round shape and surrounded by crust on all sides, should be cut into wedges, like a round cake would.Then comes the confusion - not to mention the potential for a major diplomatic incident - when a square shaped cheese such as Pont l'Eveque is presented as the table. One would think that it would be sliced longitudinally, but there lies the error...
Even as the cheese is square-shaped, it is also cut in wedges.
Another situation at the dinner table can arise when the cheese presented in front of you is just cut as one BIG slice with crust on just three sides but flat on the serving platter - What to do?
As counter-intuitive as it may seems, this is when you do in fact start on the smaller part of the big slice and cut it longitudinally so that your slice includes two pieces of crust on each edge and no one gets stuck with just all the crust - it's viewed as a question of table manners. Now that you're in the know, go cut some er...fromage!
