A New Shop and a Book from a Chicago Area Author Offer Spellbinding Ways to Enjoy Cheese

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Erika Kubick grew up in the Chicago suburbs eating cheese and practicing magic, like any aspiring cheese witch might do. Now, she’s a self-described “cheese priestess” and the author of two books, the second of which, Cheese Magic, comes out September 16. “What is a cheese plate, if not an altar?” asks Kubick in the introduction, and off she goes. The book is divided by the eight sabbats of the seasonal Wiccan/Neo-pagan calendar, each with its own original recipes, pairings, and cheese boards illustrated with photos Kubick styled herself and shot on her iPhone. She playfully connects cheese and magic by aligning them seasonally, allowing the reader, with the help of the book, to “channel the energies of the changing seasons into your own practice.”

Her first book, Cheese Sex Death, says Kubick, is a “bible for the cheese-obsessed. It played on Catholicism in a cheeky way,” with a large dose of cheese porn and Zodiac fun folded into the recipes and lessons.

Cheese Magic is a touch more personal, and of course, quite magical. It’s the perfect introduction to learning about magic 101 – in your kitchen, through the lens of cheese. Kubick includes a step-by-step lesson in casting spells, a glossary of terms from “Alpine” to “Wicca” and a section of “Magical Correspondences,” where she guides you to an encyclopedic list of ingredients and the “energies they invoke.” You might already know, for example, that chocolate evokes love, but did you know that raspberries can mend a broken heart?

Not long before her book came out, Kubick and I visited Cheese & Board, a new European-style cheese shop in the West Loop, where the cheese is cut to order. To Kubick, this cut-and-wrap, counter-style service is ideal. “The cheese stays much fresher, and it’s a more interactive experience,” she says. “You can talk to the cheese monger… and having that guidance will lead you to the cheese that you really want. I think interaction with the cheese monger is so vital to the experience.”

Grace Shaf opened Cheese & Board after she left a career in finance and decided to “choose happiness.” To prepare, she signed up for Cheese State University, ate a lot of cheese, and watched dozens of Anne Saxelby videos on YouTube. She hired industry vet Dave Phillips (Marion Street, Potash Market) as her head cheese monger. The shop features a collection of beautifully curated domestic and imported artisan cheeses, plus sought-after treasures like hand-paddled Bordier French Butter and local salumi. On our visit, Kubick was particularly delighted, for obvious reasons, to find an unusual aged cow cheese from Switzerland called Old Witch, one of many delicious surprises in the case.

Along with crackers, accompaniments, and other gourmet provisions, the hand-built dark wood shelves are loaded with antiques and vintage items from Shaf’s visits to Indiana, Michigan, and Wisconsin. The most popular item out of the gate? Shaf’s custom boards packed with meats and cheeses, available in three different sizes for picnics and parties. A liquor license is pending.

Both Shaf and Kubick specialize in and share a love for the ritual and ceremony around cheese, from interacting with the monger, to selecting an enchanting collection of cheese, to creating boards that conjure both the seasons and the magic that excellent cheese pairings bring. I asked Kubick, Shaf, and Phillips to shout out their favorite pairings from the case.

Kubick: Pleasant Ridge Reserve (a farmstead cow Alpine-style from WI) and a Rye Manhattan.

Shaf: Shakerag Blue (a cow’s milk blue wrapped in whiskey-soaked fig leaves from Tennessee) and piedras de chocolate: cocoa-dusted chocolate almond rocks from Valencia. “It’s like a black cat meets a golden retriever,” she says.

Phillips: L’Amuse (an aged Dutch gouda) shaved over vanilla ice cream.

That pairing also appears in Kubick’s Cheese Magic, which includes a recipe for a spellbinding Gouda Apple Galette that calls for a shower of grated aged gouda before baking, served with vanilla ice cream – and more gouda, because it’s a cheese book.

Kubick’s Pesto-Baked Camembert (try the recipe here) suits the approaching Mabon Sabbat, which coincides with the autumnal equinox on Sept 20. She suggests serving it with roasted grapes to embrace the fall harvest. Apples, ciders, rosemary, and Chinese moon cakes also play together on boards and in recipes in this chapter, which will usher your guests happily into autumn.

Greeting the seasons with a little bit of sorcery seems easier with the guidance of Cheese Magic and the team at Cheese & Board. Embrace the magic and let the cheese cast its spell.