The cheese board
I spent a little time tasting some cheeses today and decided that we needed a cheese tasting and commentary section on the web-site. If you find a cheese that you think is good, bad, over-priced, or in some way special to you; then please let us and our readers know about it.
Here is my first entry: Ardi Gasna
This cheese has an interesting flavour for me because of a cheap dish that Dave and I used to make during our college days that we called "goop" - it was just a cheap nacho-flavoured macaroni and cheese dish. With my first bite of this cheese the memory of that dish came flooding back - it actually took a couple more bites before the actual taste of the cheese would over-power the memory.
Ardi Gasna (Basque for sheep cheese) comes from the Basque region of France and is a firm andy creamy cheese, sort of like Fontina, that melts well (though at $22/lb. it is a bit pricey for this purpose); tastes really good in turkey sandwiches (good to know for after Thanksgiving); and has a sweet and spicey flavour from the minced Espelette chile bits that were mixed through the cheese before it was shaped. The rind is edible but does not do much to enhance the flavour of the cheese once it is ready to eat.
While it is a good eating cheese there is nothing about this cheese that makes it note-worthy for the cheese snob. Were it not for the memories that came back when I first bit into it I would not have brought it home and tried it out in the kitchen - though now that I have I am sure that I will go back to it from time to time for chicken and turkey sandwiches for some of my work lunches.
I got this from the cheese counter at my local New Season's grocery store.
(Espelette is not spelled correctly on the label.)
Isle of Mull Cheddar is a cheese that I read about and have waited and lobbied for at the New Seasons cheese counter for several years. I have worked my way through about 1/3 of the Neal's Yard cheeses this way and there have only been a couple that just did not do it for me.
So far, the Isle of Mull Cheddar is my favourite of the Neal's Yard cheeses that I have tasted, Lincolnshire/Poacher is next, and Montgomery's Cheddar is third. The other cheeses that I have tasted from them have all been good, but just not worth the price.
Isle of Mull is a strong and sharp cheddar that is not quite as crumbly as it looks. I have been able to get whole slices that are about 1/8" thick with no problem. I enjoy this eating this cheese straight, with slices of tart apples, and in sandwiches with slices of a hot coppacolla.
Because of the small herd and varied grass, greens, and wild flower diet this cheese is supposed to have quite dramatic flavour changes from season to season. I hope the manager at the cheese counter will order this cheese a few more times this year so I can find out without paying a small fortune in shipping.
On the fieldtrip to the EcoFarm conference in Monterey last week, I tried three different Trader Joe's cheeses as part of my hotel room stash. At the top of my list is the English cheddar with caramelized onion. The onion made it a softer cheese than you would expect from a cheddar, but it was real tasty sliced onto crackers.
The second cheese I tried was a smoked jack. Unlike a lot of smoked cheeses, this one is meant for people who really like smoked flavor. Each thin wedge of cheese is individually and heavily smoked, giving it a lot of surface to volume ratio, The cheese itself was a decent jack, but the reason to get this cheese is all about the smoke flavor.
The last cheese I got was a sharp cheddar made in New Zealand with milk from grass-fed cows. There really isn't anything special about this cheese, as far as the taste goes. It isn't all that sharp, and doesn't have any distinctive undertones, it is just a sharp cheddar. The real appeal to me is the health and environmental aspects of pastured dairy and meat products, and I'm willing to pay a little extra to support responsible producers. This will be my cheese of choice for replacing any commodity cheddar in my dishes.
At the conference there was also a free organic beer and cheese tasting event, but I just couldn't bring myself to stand in line to taste little samples of the cheeses.
I have to wait until November for the next season batch of the Isle of Mull Cheddar so I am trying a few other cheeses. One that is quite suprising is Edelweiss Grazier Gouda from the Edelweiss Creamery in Monroe, WI.
The milk is from grass fed cows and you can taste it in the cheese. There is a strong grassy background when you eat the cheese straight with a little bit of nut flavour when the cheese is heated. At $10/lb. I will definitely be using this one in some fondue when I get my kitchen back together.
Good idea about a cheese thread. I've been a little too busy lately to get to play with many cheeses lately, so I'm definitely looking forward to Christmas break.
About a month ago I stopped at Grocery Outlet (*gasp*) because they are now the closest store not me, and I found myself out of canola oil. While there I happened to look at the cheeses and they had an organic grass-fed mild cheddar. I almost never buy mild cheddar, but I haven't found grass-fed cow cheese for several years and it was only a couple of bucks.
The basic cheddar flavor was so good that I didn't mind that it was a mild cheese! The colour was more yellow-gray than I've seen in any white cheddars, suggesting higher butterfat than you get with grain-fed cows.
I recently learned (from a conventional dairy farmer no less) that one of the reasons that organic and grass-fed milk tastes so much better is because any given cow will produce the same amount of fat and protein, no matter if she is producing 35 pound of milk or 80 pounds of milk each day. Organic dairies aren't able to push their cows as hard to produce, and pastured cows produce even less milk.
Of course, when I went back to Grocery Outlet three days later, they had sold out. Obviously someone else liked it as well and bought them out like I planned to do.