October 02, 2006
FEATURED CHEESE: Caciotta with walnuts
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To describe today's cheese, I scanned a cheese-tasting lexicon searching for the mot juste that would do juste to the fromage du jour.
Oily? No.
Piquant? Not quite.
Waxy? Hmmm ... no.
Goaty? I'm not even sure what that means.
Still at a loss, I decided I had no choice but to come up with my own word, a neologism that I trust will become commonplace in cheese-tasting circles worldwide. And here it is: bluck.
Some examples of how it could be used:
"Bluck! What is this?"
"Oh bluck. Hand me a soda."
"Bluck me. This is awful. Holy bluck."
And so on. It does, I think, accurately capture my feeling upon tasting Caciotta with walnuts, a cheese made from sheep's milk and seasoned with evil. Even the walnuts, which are easily a top-five nut in my book, do nothing to mitigate its unmistakable, undeniable, pure and irredeemable bluckiness.
I even considered giving it zero mice. But that would mean not using the silly mouse graphic, of which I am perhaps unduly fond.
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In other dairy news, you can read the results of my intrepid investigation into the raw milk underground in the Washington Post Magazine. The free link goes away, I think, in a week -- so drink it in now, like a big, frosty glass of unpasteurized milk.
Posted by teb at 12:40 PM | Email this entry
July 18, 2006
FEATURED CHEESE: Mini Babybel
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What's noteworthy about Mini Babybel is not so much the cheese itself -- a bland, moist semisoft -- but the packaging. Each Mini Babybel is sealed in red wax, wrapped in plastic and placed inside a tough, net-like bag. Freeing the cheese from these multiple layers of protection requires a tool (scissors to cut the bag), dexterity (to peel back the plastic and wax) and time (about 30 seconds, give or take). After the cheese has been consumed, one is left with a small, interesting piece of red wax. What can be done with this red wax? I'm glad you -- I -- asked. Here are my results:
-- Will the dog lick and attempt to eat the piece of red wax if it is offered to her?
Yes.
-- If balled-up and thrown at the kitchen wall, will the wax stick?
No.
-- What if it is balled-up and thrown at the kitchen wall again, but this time with greater force?
Still no.
-- If placed next to a heat source, will it get all melt-y?
Yes.
-- If dropped in a glass of water, will it float?
Affirmative.
-- Can the red wax be molded into a slightly creepy head-like shape that when viewed at just the right angle vaguely resembles an extremely tiny bust of a middle-aged Will Rogers?
It can.
-- After these experiments, will the red wax be truly, genuinely disgusting?
Indeed it will.
Posted by teb at 08:03 AM | Email this entry
June 26, 2006
FEATURED CHEESE: Parmesan
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The word "parmesan" comes from the Italian "parm" meaning dry and "esan" meaning very or extremely. It's an appropriate name as parmesan is a very dry cheese. First discovered around 1430 by a blacksmith living in a village near Florence, parmesan was for centuries thought to keep evil spirits at bay. Italians would sprinkle parmesan on the mentally ill in hopes of driving out their demons. Even today, saying someone "smells like parmesan" is considered a comment on that person's sanity, or lack thereof.
While grating parmesan for a salad recently, I popped a small chunk of it in my mouth. The flavor is robust but agreeable and it made me wonder: Why isn't parmesan promoted as a snacking cheese? It's good for grating, sure, but let's not put unnecessary limits on its uses.
By the way, I made up the stuff about parmesan's history and etymology. It is my sincere wish that it will end up plagiarized in a research paper or, at the very least, on Wikipedia.
Posted by teb at 09:56 AM | Email this entry
April 19, 2006
FEATURED CHEESE: Gruyere Special Reserve
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Gruyere Special Reserve is a stiff, onion-y, piquant cheese. It’s the sort of cheese you want to nibble rather than gobble. Leave me alone with a block of Bergenost and, when you return, it will be gone and I will be guilty. Not so with Gruyere Special Reserve. That’s a distinction, not a criticism: This is good cheese to be taken in small doses.
I sampled GSR at Whole Foods before I bought it. Next to the cheese, there were two unmarked containers of toothpicks. In one container, the toothpicks were neatly stacked. In the other, they were jumbled. Everyone assumes, I suppose, that the neatly stacked toothpicks are new and the jumbled toothpicks are used. But what if it's the other way around? What if everyone takes a toothpick from the jumbled pile, uses it, and then places it very carefully alongside the neatly stacked toothpicks?
It probably wouldn't happen. But, still, you can never be too careful.
Posted by teb at 10:19 AM | Email this entry
December 16, 2005
FEATURED CHEESE: WisPride Cheddar, Swiss and Wine
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For today's cheese tasting, we brought in an outside non-expert: Kellie. Before sampling WisPride's spreadable, triple-cheeese variety pack, Kellie cleansed her palate with a swig of water and a single Ritz cracker. No one asked her to do this; she just did it on her own. It seems like something professional cheese tasters might do, assuming that such people exist. We were very impressed.
Here are her reactions to each of the cheeses:
Cheddar: "Tastes like a cheese log." (When it was argued that this actually is a cheese log of sorts, Kellie correctly pointed out that it's not "log-shaped.")
Swiss: "Pretty good for Swiss. I don't really like Swiss." (It's true. She doesn't.)
Wine: "Unremarkable. But I like it because it's pink." (When told that we were interested in the taste of the cheese, not its color, she gave us a look that, loosely translated, means "Oh please.")
Posted by teb at 10:40 AM | Email this entry
November 08, 2005
FEATURED CHEESE: Cotswold
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Named after the Cotswold region in England, where it was first made, this is a hard, cheddar-like cheese seasoned with chives and onions. It’s pretty good. Not excellent, but edible. I’m giving it three mice.
By the way, note the above picture. Isn’t that nice? You might assume that I simply grabbed it from another website. In fact, no. I spent several hours setting that shot up, making sure the cheese was perfectly centered on the plate, getting the lighting just right. Notice how a couple of tomatoes are peeking into the frame, adding some much-needed color. I did that. And then, on the right, we see the bottom edge of a large wheel of cheese. I bought that large wheel of cheese just for this picture. It cost me some money (I had to buy that plate, too) and took most of a weekend. So why did I go to all that trouble? Because I care, damn it. I care.
Posted by teb at 10:18 AM | Email this entry
September 28, 2005
FEATURED CHEESE: Derby with elderberry wine
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By semi-popular demand, Featured Cheese is back and it's better than ever. Or at least as good as it was. Certainly no worse.
To celebrate its return, we enjoyed some excellent wine-flavored cheese. This is the kind of cheese one imagines being served on silver trays by tuxedoed waiters at a fashionable soiree held at a country estate on Martha's Vineyard attended by wealthy, attractive people with manicured nails who whisper conspiratorially about the Hollywood scandal du jour or laugh uproariously at jokes of dubious quality and afterwards are driven home in their Cadillac Escalades to their own country estates where they slip out of their evening wear and into a sunken jacuzzi. Also good with crackers.
Posted by teb at 09:22 AM | Email this entry
May 29, 2005
FEATURED CHEESE(S): Vintage Irish Cheddar and Coach Farm Button Goat Cheese
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I wanted to like Vintage Irish Cheddar. It has a lovely label and it's from Ireland, my ancestral homeland. Alas, the cheese is only so-so: It's kind of dry and has a somewhat pungent aftertaste. On the other hand, the Irish have given us so much (Guinness, the Pogues, Guinness) that it's unfair to expect good cheese as well.
Much more enjoyable was Coach Farm Button Goat Cheese. It's crumbly and moist and has a nice, mild flavor. It comes packaged as a disgusting-looking ball (see above) but it's actually pretty good. I think of goat cheese as a pizza topping but it works on a cracker, too. Who knew?
Posted by teb at 10:37 AM | Email this entry
May 17, 2005
FEATURED CHEESE: Cracker Barrel Extra Sharp Cheddar
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Cracker Barrel Extra Sharp Cheddar comes in two varieties: sliced and unsliced. The price on the packages is the same (at least at the grocery store where I shop) but you get slightly less cheese if you opt for the sliced. I usually choose the sliced because I am extremely lazy. Here's another admission: I prefer Cracker Barrel Extra Sharp Cheddar to most frou-frou cheeses. It's just good, honest cheese. It's a cheese that's not afraid to be what it is. It's a cheese that stands up and says "Hey, I'm ordinary cheese -- and you know what? That's okay." There's no novelty packaging, no precious and almost certainly apocryphal backstory. None of that. It's just cheese. They'll even slice it for you. And in these troubled times, isn't that a comfort?
Posted by teb at 10:16 AM | Email this entry
April 17, 2005
FEATURED CHEESE: Heart of England
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Everything good is British: tea, music, accents -- and now, we discover, cheese. Our Featured Cheese is a blend of not one, not two, not three, not even four but five (!) delicious cheeses that combine to form a medley of dairy delight unrivalled in the Velveeta-munching colonies.
Our previous Featured Cheese was a semi-soft from France. It was tasty but seemed weak somehow, lacking in character, ready to capitulate at the slightest threat. This British cheese, however, is firm and resolute. One can imagine it enduring wave after wave of attacks, its head unbowed, its spirit unbroken.
At first I tried to taste each layer individually but quickly realized that this was a mistake. It's best to enjoy the cheese as a whole, letting the constituent cheeses -- red and white cheddar, white stilton, double Gloucester and Leicester -- mix and mingle, allowing the contrasts to entertain the palate. Spot on, old chap. Spot on.
Posted by teb at 12:00 PM | Email this entry
April 04, 2005
FEATURED CHEESE: Morbier
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It’s late at night somewhere in the mountains of France's Franche-Comté region. Two French cheese executives are sitting at a table in a windowless conference room. They are bleary-eyed, disheveled, unshaven. Neither man has showered in days (although it’s France so nobody really noticed). They are surrounded by wadded-up paper and empty wine bottles.
French Cheese Executive #1: Time is running out. We must choose a label design.
French Cheese Executive #2: I've got it! What about a painting of a 16th century juggler?
French Cheese Executive #1: What does that have to do with cheese?
French Cheese Executive #2: Can you think of something better?
French Cheese Executive #1: Okay, fine. Now I will go smoke an unfiltered cigarette and contemplate the futility of existence.
French Cheese Executive #2: Hold up -- I’m coming, too.
And so the label for Morbier cheese was born.
Morbier is a semi-soft cheese notable for its bisecting line of dark vegetable ash. The greenish-black ash is tasteless and has no purpose. So, you ask reasonably, why is it there?
That’s not really clear. One Web site says adding ash is a tradition that began when a wheel of cheese was dropped on the floor. Another says that the ash was used to preserve the cheese after the morning milking, i.e., the cheese-maker would make a batch of cheese in the morning, cover it in ash, then return in the evening to make another batch. Yet another Web site says the ash is added "between steps to prevent a rind from forming during the molding process." That doesn't seem right: People make semi-soft cheese all the time without vegetable ash -- if it were critical to the manufacturing process, wouldn't it be used in all semi-soft cheeses? Yes. I think it would.
The cheese is stinky but it tastes good. It has a pleasant, strong flavor. One description I read said Morbier has a bitter aftertaste but I didn’t find that to be true.
Posted by teb at 02:05 PM | Email this entry
March 26, 2005
FEATURED CHEESE: Port Salut
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Our Featured Cheese is Port Salut [por suh-LOO], a semi-soft cheese named for the French abbey where it was created and is still made. After unwrapping the cheese, I left it on a plate on the kitchen table while I prepared tea at the stove. When I turned around, one of our cats -- Huxley, a notorious cheese lover -- was on the table, his head in close proximity to the recently unwrapped and fragrant block of cheese. To be clear, I did not see him lick the cheese. That said, he had ample opportunity (my back was turned for more than a minute) and a strong motive (cats like cheese). Plus he looked guilty. I considered slicing off a thin layer of the area where he was most likely to have licked. Then I decided I didn’t care.
In retrospect, maybe I should have let Huxley have the rest. The cheese wasn’t terrible, just unremarkable: The consistency and texture was similar to our previous Featured Cheese but the tangy taste was less pleasing. It reminded me of Velveeta, only not as good. Those French monks might consider turning their attentions to other activities, such as carving sacred figurines, weaving tapestries, or snowboarding. Because the cheese is only so-so.
Posted by teb at 10:42 AM | Email this entry
March 20, 2005
FEATURED CHEESE: Bergenost
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Our first Featured Cheese is Bergenost, a triple cream Norwegian-style butter cheese. The brand is Yancey’s Fancy and I learned from their Web site that this cheese won a gold medal in the 1999 New York State Fair Cheese Contest. The cheese is soft and creamy (thanks to the "triple cream," I suspect) and the flavor is mild and pleasant. It’s great by itself or on a Ritz cracker. I planned to eat just one square but ended up eating ... a lot. Probably too much. The label says that each ounce contains 132 calories, 99 of them from fat. I’m guessing I had about 800 calories worth of Bergenost cheese this morning. The label also says the cheese is "A True Taste of Norway." Well, if this is how Norway tastes, I’m ready to eat the whole country.
Posted by teb at 02:10 PM | Email this entry