Murcia Curado D.O. Raw Goat

Murcia Curado D.O. Raw Goat
Comes from: goats
Purchased at: Whole Foods
$19.99/lb


So if you're looking at these photos and thinking, "Hey, that looks like one of the cubbies at Healthyman Library," you're right. If you're looking at these photos and thinking, "Hey, there's no eating allowed in the Healthyman Library!" well, you're a jerk, and also, you have never been to the Healthman Library, have you? Because there is food *everywhere.* I had to clean the remains of someone's breakfast out of this cubby before I sat down. This cubby is *mine* and I will eat here if I want to.

This cheese is a paler shade of yellow/white than it's looking in the photos, I think. It's about the same color as pecorino, but much softer and not at all grainy. I'm eating it at room temperature, so it might be a little softer than fridge-cheese, but on the hardness scale I think it'd still fall well below muenster but well above your liquid cheeses like brie. Soft enough to explode with your tongue against the roof of your mouth, if that makes any sense. About a 3 on the cheese hardness scale I just made up right now:

1-----------2------------3----------------4------------5-------------6
brie-------feta------mozzarella------muenster------cheddar-----parmesan

(The cheese hardness scale clearly needs some work. Gouda, for example, and Armenian string cheese: both 5.5? Is Gouda a 6, like parmesan? And Armenian string cheese is *chewier* than chedder, but does that make it *harder* than cheddar?)

First bite: Mmm, goatiness. I don't know how to describe goat cheese to those who've never had it, and it's not like goat cheese is exotic, really, so maybe I don't need to, but on the other hand I feel like everything in life should be able to be described with words, and possibly I have modeled myself after Nan in Witch Week just a little bit. You know, Nan in Witch Week?

Anyway.

For some reason goat cheese makes me think of a quiet, wood-paneled room that's not used much. Not musty, just... quiet. And wooden.

Okay, so maybe not everything can be described with words. I will just call this cheese "goaty, in a good way." Definitely a non-cow cheese, but not overpoweringly so. There's a nice tang, too, when I do that thing I just mentioned and tongue-burst the cheese up against my palate. A pleasant deeper-goaty after-effect.

In other news, the rind is edible (I always eat the rind, because IT IS MADE OF CHEESE (and wax) AND I DO NOT WASTE THINGS MADE OF CHEESE.), if you care about such things.

Overall, then, I'd call this a very good basic goat cheese. Would probably be delicious with fig or apple butter, but again, I wouldn't know because I -- wait for it -- have already eaten it all.