Fontina Val D'Aosta

Fontina Val D'Aosta
Comes from: cows
Purchased at: Whole Foods
$18.99/lb

So I get home tonight, and I'm hot and sweaty and hungry and I just want to *eat.* And so I pull this cheese out of the fridge.

Meh.

Sadly, I don't have much to say about this cheese. It's not a *bad* cheese, exactly, but it's not an *astounding* cheese, either. It's not unusual-looking, and it's not unusually-textured; it sort of ranks with swiss on the hardness scale. It does have an unusually... pungent odor, kind of like sweat or that muenster-cheese sandwich you left in your locker overnight as a kid. It vaguely tastes of muenster, too, but again, more pungent and simultaneously blander. Hard to explain unless you've ever had French muenster, you know, the melty bad kind (RayRay?). This cheese is both less melty and less bad than that, but not enough.

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In the interest of full disclosure, I should mention that I tried three other cheese today at DiBruno brothers, Abbaye de Belloc, Piave, and Moliterno. I *bought* the Moliterno, which should give you some idea of how I felt about it (and also should give you the idea that it was the only cheese of the three sold in reasonable single-person chunklets), and of course a full review is to come. But as for the other two, here are the recaplets:

Abbaye: I am not sure how I feel about sheep's milk cheeses, which should make it interesting when I review the sheep's milk cheese I already purchased at Whole Foods. About equal to the Murcia Curado D.O. Raw Goat in hardness. Did I mention it was sheep-y?

Piave: Num?

(Actually, in the interest of full disclosure, I should mention that I've had some string cheese this week too, but if you need a review of 2% skim mozzarella string cheese you're an idiot.) (Translation: I am saving the Battle of the String Cheeses for a rainy day. Sorry.)