Saturday, October 24, 2009

Crave Brothers Les Frères & Holly Springs Goat Cheese

Crave Brothers Les Frères
Comes from: cows
Purchased at: Whole Foods
$12.99/lb (Okay, that is pretty much impossible. Yet the only photo I have does not do a great job of reproducing the cheese-price. So... sorry, I have no idea what this cheese costs.)

"Will this cheese taste like French muenster?" I asked the dude in the square glasses who is sometimes at Whole Foods here.
"Yes," he said.
"Okay..." I said. "How much will it taste like feet?"
"It's an amazing cheese," he said. "The cheese-makers' father was Irish, and their mother was French, and they wanted to do something to combine the two."
"Uh-huh," I said. "So it'll taste like feet, then."
"It's a little pungent," he said. "But it's delicious."

Okay, so here is the thing: This cheese doesn't really taste like feet at all, which just goes to show you that sometimes the people who work at Whole Foods, *even at the cheese counter*, don't know what they're talking about.

Onnnn the other hand, this cheese *is* fantastic. Fantastic! That is how good this cheese is. It is not quite runny like brie, though it'd probably get at least minimally runny if you let it sit out at room temperature for longer than I was willing to let it sit out at room temperature before I ate it. But it just has a wonderful flavor to it, not at all foot-y, just... oh, it is so good. (Actually, the flavor was a teeny bit reminiscent of cheddar, which, given my history with cheddar, should not have appealed to me. What can I say? I am nothing if not inconsistent.)

I liked this cheese a lot.

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Holly Springs Goat Cheese
Comes from: goats
Purchased at: Whole Foods
$24.99/lb

This cheese is okay, a solidly enjoyable, moderately firm and dry goat cheese. Nothing spectacular, but still delicious and just great for munching. I wished I could pair it with fig jam or something similar, but I don't have any in the house right now. (Note to self: Fig jam! FIG JAM.)

Thursday, October 22, 2009

Tomme de Espelette

Tomme de Espelette
Comes from: sheep
Purchased at: Whole Foods
$21.99/lb


The internet helpfully tells me that "tomme" is just a general term for a semi-hard cheese, especially one made from skim milk (though this label says nothing so dreadful), and "espelette" is a red pepper. I think.

(Incidentally, this website is great; scroll down to the bottom to check out the texture chart. Dear person who is just like me on the internet, Hello and I love you!) (Oh, and he -- and here is where it gets weird, because I thought it was a he, and then I was like, But why? Because his background is black? and then I followed the links to facebook, and it does, indeed, appear to be a he who created the website, but then does that mean that men and women do indeed have gendered voices in the seminonymous paradise that is the internet? and, I mean, of course *some* voices are gendered, and some statements pretty clearly broadcast sex ("So I was pushing a baby out of my vagina the other day..."), but this is a website about *cheese*, and shouldn't it be gender-neutral? BUT IT ISN'T. -- Anyway, but he recommends this other site for you to read, which, meh, but oh, it links to DiBruno and now I miss Philly waaaah.)

Tomme de Espelette, incidentally, tastes like sheep-cheese with peppers in it. Moist, semi-firm (think cheddar but less dense, or, actually, swiss is a close approximation in terms of texture). It's good, actually; sometimes the whole cheese-with-stuff-added thing means that the added stuff overwhelms the cheese, or vice versa, but this is a nice complimentary, even symbiotic (like a lichen!) pairing.

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Also I just now ate some more manouri (from sheep, $14.99/lb at Whole Foods), but I'm pretty sure I reviewed it already.

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Hudson Valley Camembert, Lavort Herve Mons, & Cypress Chevre Bermuda Triangle

Hudson Valley Camembert
Comes from: sheep
Purchased at: Whole Foods
$19.99/lb

God, I love camembert. More importantly, I love this camembert. It's a sheep-camembert, which perhaps means that the French -- oh, those French -- would quibble (by which I mean "violently disagree, coughing up their phlegmy French throats, setting their rheumy, bloodshot, absinthe-ruined eyes ablaze") with calling it a camembert, since by law camembert comes from cows, just like brie. This camembert, though? It comes from sheep, and it is delicious.

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Lavort Herve Mons
Comes from: sheep
Purchased at: Whole Foods
$34.99/lb

You know, when I was eating this cheese I thought, This would be the perfect way to get children to drink milk cheese to illustrate what a sheep cheese *should* be.

That is high praise.

It's sheepy but not throat-destroying sheepy. The texture is firm, slightly moist. It's just... very... al dente, in a good way. (And obviously more firm than pasta al dente.)

If you are a sheep-cheese virgin, start here. Love, me.

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Cypress Chevre Bermuda Triangle
Comes from: goats
Purchased at: Whole Foods
$22.99/lb

You guys know why I had to buy this cheese, right? I mean, look at it! That is a *triangle* of cheese. And in case you *didn't* notice, it is also right there in the name. Bermuda triangle! That is this cheese.

(Does the Bermuda Triangle exist anymore? As... I don't know, a region to be feared? Because I would figure that the gun-toting Somali pirates of the... IndoChinese seas? would make that nautical zone more of a danger, rumored and otherwise, than, like, the drunken Floridian tourists of the Bermuda Triangle. I am just saying.)

Friday, October 16, 2009

Clothbound Cheddar Grafton Village & Mitica Amarelo Alla Beira Baixa

Clothbound Cheddar Grafton Village
Comes from: cows (raw)
Purchased at: Whole Foods
$24.99/lb

So the thing is, even though I don't love cheddar (never have, either, even that grocery-store stuff; my brother got cheddar on his sandwiches, and I got muenster, and also butter, on the muenster, which should explain everything right now), I keep *buying* cheddar. Because there are all these interesting cheddars at Whole Foods, you know? And I keep trying to convince myself that, you know, maybe it's just that I haven't had authentic cheddar yet.

But I still don't love cheddar.

That said, this cheese? This is probably the best cheddar I have tasted so far. But then, I also love its texture; a lot of the other fancy cheddars still ran to the moist, sandwich-cheese side of the spectrum, you know, pieces that give to the knife before they cut. This cheese is more to the dry, parmigiano side; it merely fragments. The flavor is cheddar, but subtle; you have to think about it before you recognize it. It's interesting.

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Mitica Amarelo Alla Beira Baixa
Comes from: sheep and goats (unpasteurized; is that different from "raw"?)
Purchased at: Whole Foods
$29.99/lb

The sign advertised this cheese as "buttery," and if your butter were made of the milk of sheep and/or goats (more sheep than goats, but you could really convince yourself either way), that adjective would be correct. Very smooth, squishy cheese, like... You know, the problem with growing up as an American is that cheese-texture puzzles me. I don't have enough adjectives that are communal. If we'd all grown up in France or Spain, maybe I'd have options other than, "This cheese's texture is like less-dense, melty muenster, and I mean the grocery store muenster, not that awful French stuff." Anyway. A palate-clinging, sheep-inflected (look! I did it again!) uniformly-textured cheese; right up to the rind it's pretty much equal density (as opposed to the last review's cheese, which had noticable... not strata, necessarily, but you could tell how far you were from the core). The flavor is neither subtle nor overpowering; it's a good cheese for mixing, I decided. Midway through my (generous) hunk, I decided it needed something, and then remembered that, lo, I had bought fresh figs on my same trip to Whole Foods, and lo, some of them were ripe. So I sliced a few figs into teeny-weeny hunklets and paired them with thin slices of this cheese, which turned out ridiculously well: The sweet and cool of the figs hits your tongue first, then the salt of the cheese, then the taste of the figs again, and finally, as you're almost ready to swallow, the full flavor of the cheese comes back and clings to your tongue and palate as the bite disappears. It's fantastic.

So. That is this cheese. Is pretty good.

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

There is nothing like a Dane

I have no idea what cheese this is.

Oh, hai.

(Clearly I just wanted to use that title.)

Soooo it's been a while, eh? In that my last published entry on this blog is from... three-plus months ago. (I've got one sitting in the hopper that I never published... was it a photo issue? Not sure.)

Wow. Seriously, I have not thought about cheese in so long -- that's not entirely true; I've just been eating crap cheeses, because: Houma, and also Winn-Dixie and Wal-Mart -- that I'm just skimming my entries. I went to Whole Foods tonight -- hence the above posting -- and I couldn't even remember what I liked. (Besides "mmm, goat." Obviously.)

Anyway. On my desk right now I actually have a whole baggie of little individual cheese-labels, because (1) I am weird, and (2) seriously! I have to catalog!

Here we go. Maybe I'll remember something.

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Rosenborg Castello Danish Brie
Comes from: cows
Purchased at: Winn-Dixie
$4.89 for 4.4 oz ($17.78/lb)

So this cheese. This cheese, I actually ate only ten days ago, so I sort-of remember it. I needed brie, is the thing. And I didn't want to buy, like, the President brie the size of my head, which is the other option at Winn-Dixie. I don't love President brie; it's not terrible, but, meh. So this brie was smaller than that one. I was a little disconcerted by the nutritional information on the box: How does this cheese have 20-30 calories fewer per ounce than any brie I have previously encountered? What have they done to the fat content?

I still don't know.

So that, in short, is what was wrong with this cheese. It was a fine cheese for a lonely Saturday night, but it wasn't *brie*. It didn't melt, it wasn't runny -- and y'all, I biked home from Winn-Dixie; surely there was time -- it just... was. Chewy-like. *Reminiscent* of brie, yes, but not brie. And consequently I cannot judge this cheese, because on its own merits it might be okay, but it is not what I was expecting.

I thrive on expectations.

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Hudson Valley Camembert
Comes from: sheep
Purchased at: Whole Foods, sometime 8/17-8/24
$24.99/lb

I usually like camembert, so this one was probably good.

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Gorgonzola Mountain (Picante) (Mountain Gorgonzola D.O.P. Cheese)
Comes from: cows
Purchased at: Rouse's in Houma, before 11/1 (duh)
$15.69/lb

I found this blue cheese almost too spicy, go figure. I like stinky cheeses, within reason (have I told you lately how much I hate French muenster?), but this cheese was a little too palate-burning for me. Also, I think it was fairly oily. Which is weird in a blue cheese? For me? Anyway.

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Ubriaco all [sic] Birra
Comes from: cows (raw), "red beer (rind bathed in beer")
Purchased at: Whole Foods, sometime 7/30-8/29
$24.99/lb

That is an excellent idea, cheese-maker.

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Gorgonzola Dolce
Comes from: cows
Purchased at: Whole Foods, sometime 7/29-8/19
$15.99/lb

I love me some gorgonzola dolce. Seriously, love it. The cheese-monger at Whole Foods in Philadelphia gave me a piece once, with a knowing look in her eye, and that was it. Love at first bite, my friends. Do you like blue cheese, even a little bit? You will like gorgonzola dolce. Try it.

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Cypress Grove Truffle Tremor
Comes from: goats
Purchased at: Whole Foods, sometime 7/31-8/14
$24.99/lb

I can't say I remember this cheese especially well, but Cypress Grove makes good shit, so it was probably delicious.

(Incidentally,
1. "Chevre" means goat. Thanks, google!
2. Holy crap, I really do love everything Cypress Grove makes. Wow.
2a. How did Cypress Grove come to be one of Whole Foods' main cheese-suppliers? I mean, I'm just curious.
2b. But then, how many large-scale, high-quality (to me), (ahem) "artisinal" cheese suppliers are there in the continental United States? I'm just curious.
2c. Probably I should ask someone. Preferably someone who doesn't work for Whole Foods.)

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Rembrant [sic] Extra Aged Gouda
Comes from: cows, presumably
Purchased at: Rouse's in Houma, before 8/30
$17.88/lb

Eh. I guess I don't love all gouda after all.

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Abbaye de Tamie Herve Mons
Comes from: cows (raw)
Purchased at: Whole Foods, sometime 7/25-8/24
$26.99/lb

God, I wish I remembered this cheese. Probably it was delicious.

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Herve Mons Cone du Port Aubrey
Comes from: goats (raw)
Purchased at: Whole Foods, sometime
$36.99/lb


Well, obviously I had to buy it. It's cheese in a cone-shape, y'all.

(According to legend -- and per the Whole Foods guy -- the shape is due to the cheese-monger's sudden flash of inspiration and decision to use his wife's underthings as a mold. For what it's worth.)

You know, I just now, after months of loving everything Herve Mons does, googled it. Is it a place? A style? Non, non, mes amis: It is just some dude's name. Some dude in France. Some dude whose life I envied, 'til I realized that he had to get up even earlier than anesthesiologists.

Fuck that noise.

But I'm glad someone does it.

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Doux de Montagne French
Comes from: cows, presumably
Purchased at: Rouse's in Houma, before 11/1
$16.87/lb

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Lamb Chopper
Comes from: sheep
Purchased at: Whole Foods, sometime 7/8-8/7
$22.99/lb

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Rocastin Sheep Brie
Comes from: sheep
Purchased at: Whole Foods, sometime 8/3-8/10
$21.99/lb

Mitica Clara Raw Goat Cheese

Mitica Clara Raw Goat Cheese
Comes from: goats
Puchased at: Whole Foods
$24.99/lb

I think the answer is, I like ash. Ash! Who knew? But this is an ash-cheese, and that Humboldt Fog... whatever, the ash one, that one is delicious. So there you go.

When you break it against your palate this cheese has a solid woody goaty flavor. Woody? I dunno, I just needed an extra adjective. It sounds stupid, after all, to say that a goat cheese tastes goaty. This cheese! Tastes like its ingredients! Etc. Anyway, you break it against your palate -- it's a soft cheese, this one, easily fragmented by your tongue, not melty-soft but just not very dense -- and the taste just explodes and when you swallow it clings to the back of your throat, stinging just a little. Bites with the ash in them are sharper, more astringent, and really do sting the back, but in a good way. The occasional bite with no ash at all, meanwhile, has an almost Swiss-cheese note -- yes, I just used the word note -- to it, hollow and... I dunno, something about this cheese sometimes reminds me of Swiss.

In short, this cheese is delicious, and you should eat some.

Fin.