Parrano

Parrano
Comes from: cows
Purchased at: Whole Foods
$8.99/lb

This cheese is pretty okay. It's got a nice sticky chewy-ness to it; go figure, it ranks with your traditional sandwich cheeses (... muenster?) on the hardness/wetness scale. (Um, that was surprisingly sexual. HARD. WET. AMERICAN. CHEESE.) I'm searching the archives, though, because I swear I've had a very similar cheese before, and recently... but maybe I just mean I *sampled* this cheese somewhere, so there's not an entry for it. Anyways. This cheese: Okay, not great, I'd probably want to do something with it if I had to serve it to the queen.

Cambozola

Cambozola
Comes from: cows
Purchased at: Trader Joe's
$11.49/lb
So mostly I want to talk about this cheese because its label alerted me to the existence of "microbial rennet," which is what vegetarians (and kosher-types?) can use to make cheese when they don't want their cheeses to contain delicious, delicious baby cow stomach. Hooray for science! (Except that some vegetarians apparently don't even think fake rennet is good enough, because... um, "Somehow, cutting a calf's stomach into pieces to create cheese, or inserting a calf gene into bacteria and yeast to produce bioengineered cheese is not very appealing." Wait, how are those *at all* the same thing?) (Oh, and now I totally want a campaign banner that says "LITVAK PALATE: ENFORCING MICROBIAL SLAVERY SINCE 2008.")

Anyway. Like that other time I ate an obscene amount of Trader Joe's cheese, I find myself at a loss here. Mostly because my blood is slowwwly flooding my digestivey bits and probably taking on a white undertone while doing so. Ew/yum.

This is a perfectly servicable stinky cheese, is what I'm saying, and it's not even *that* stinky, and certainly not offensively stinky. Not as strong as blue cheese of the type you'd find on your salads, but a milder verson of the same will put you in the right ballpark. I'm just not sure how I'd serve this one at my future hypothetical dinner party. It's not crumbly, so not on salads... Maybe you could use it to top your fancy burgers, though. It'd probably be awfully good at that. Or! Or an appetizer, on crackers, with honey. I think that'd be good.

Pecorino Grand Cru

Pecorino Grand Cru
Comes from: sheep
Purchased at: Whole Foods
$15.99
... Damn. Damn, this is a good cheese. You know, I love me some pecorino -- like I said, parmigian's saltier sheep-cousin -- but damn, maybe I have been buying the wrong type all along. Because damn, this one is salty but not too salty and just a hint of sheepy but not actually sheepy, like the memory of sheep or a lamb in the daisies. (And are there two poems that reference lambs in the daisies? because I feel like only one is about death.) Vote "yes" on proposition "this cheese," kids. And if you don't like it you are wrong.

Patacabra Goat (Zaragosa Spain)

Patacabra Goat (Zaragosa Spain)
Comes from: goats
Purchased at: Whole Foods
$22.99/lb


Now this? This is a good cheese. A solid "medium" on the hardness scale, somewhere around muenster but of course tasting nothing like it, and maybe it'd be softer, even somewhat spreadable, if you didn't eat it straight out of the fridge like (cough, cough) some. Anyway. Good solid goaty flavor but not too goaty, and the rind (chew-licious) has a good sour tang that's not foot-ish. HOORAY GOOD CHEESE. Also would pair well, I'm guessing, with apple butter.

Roncal

Roncal
Comes from: sheep
Purchased at: Whole Foods
$22.99/lb

A firmer cheese with air pockets, dry-ish rather than sandwich-cheese-wet. This cheese is also mild, but it's a *better* mild than yesterday's. I dunno; I guess there's just a hint of sheep-ish that means that the cheese has some flavor, but not, like, overwhelming sockfoot. Once again I have the urge to combine it with rosemary and olive oil.

Aged Mimolette

Aged Mimolette
Comes from: cows
Purchased at: Whole Foods
$19.99/lb

I'll be honest. I bought this cheese entirely because it is unnaturally orange. I mean, look at it! Only extra-sharp Wisconsin cheddar is that color, and that's because the kindly Wisconsinites add orange dye to it to warn us fellow Americans that THIS PRODUCT HERE MIGHT HAVE TASTE. CONSUME WITH CARE.

(Okay, actually the internets tells me that annatto, which this cheese contains, is the source of sharp cheddar's coloring, too. The more you know!)

(This cheese also contains RENNET, everyone's favorite cow stomach lining. HOORAY.)

Anyway. Despite the EYE-BURNING COLOR, this cheese is surprisingly mild in flavor. I mean, it *kinda* reminds me of Parmesan, but that could be -- in fact, I'm 90% sure it is -- because the cheese is as firm as Parmesan, if not more so. Not especially sour, a little salty... Yeah, mild. I don't know what else to call it but mild.

On the other hand, the color is impressive as hell, so if you want to bust up some mimolette for your next party and serve it on toothpicks, I'm sure you'll impress. I mean, unless your guests know anything about cheese, right? NO ONE KNOWS ANYTHING ABOUT CHEESE.

Double Cream Brie

Double Cream Brie
Comes from: cows
Purchased at: Trader Joe's
$5.49/lb

This is brie. Brie, everyone. Everyone, brie.

This is not quite half a pound of brie.

This is not quite half a pound of brie that I ate while I was studying the night before my step 2 CK.

Which did not go so well.

But there was brie, at least.

Brie from Trader Joe's.

Trader Joe's is kind of like the Ikea of cheese-sellers. You will not buy what you want; you will buy what the store *has.* In bulk.

It will be pretty good anyway.

Grass Stains: Soft Ripened Cheese with Peppercorns and Proprietary Herbs

Grass Stains: Soft Ripened Cheese with Peppercorns and Proprietary Herbs
Comes from: cows
Purchased at: Whole Foods
$19.99/lb

Yes, really, "proprietary." As in... owned by... somebody else? What the hell does "proprietary" mean?

In other quibblings, this cheese isn't really soft, which I interpret to mean "spreadable." It's more of a medium-firm cheese (think... swiss?), but it's much drier than your sandwich cheeses (and I made up that term just now to mean cheddar/muenster/provolone/swiss/etc), so it flakes. Mmm, flakey cheeses.

Anyway. So this cheese. I liked this cheese. Covered in (and incorporating) a mix of spices I can't really identify (thyme? was that thyme?) and pepper. Also surprisingly spicy, but I dunno, I liked it better than that other spicy one. Maybe because the primary taste was not "hot" but also "other herbs" and a little bit of cow cheese. Num.

Asiago Vecchio

Asiago Vecchio
Comes from: cows
Purchased at: Whole Foods
$15.99/lb

So I was really hungry when I ate this cheese and I didn't write a real review at the time -- I just took a photo and fell to -- and, um, now I don't have much to say about it. It is a hard cheese? You can eat the rind? I did not like it as much as I thought I would, though it was not bad?

Yep.

Parmigiano Reggiano

Parmigiano Reggiano
Comes from: cows
Purchased at: Whole Foods
$17.99/lb

Okay, so I eat at my desk. Pretty much always.

And my review of Parmigiano Reggiano was kind of predetermined, because you know what I have to say about this cheese? You know what I always have to say about this cheese?

NOM NOM NOM.

That is all.