In cheese-with-stuff-in news I sorta want to try this. Would anyone like to watch and laugh join in?
L’Etivaz
A hard, unpasturised, alpine cow’s milk cheese from Switzerland, bought from KaseSwiss.
This is a slice of pale yellow cheese. The brown rind tastes dark and musty – not an eating-rind, really. The cheese is slightly soft, and scattered with tiny white spots of crunchy potential
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I didn't even have a knife for cutting the cheese - you don't expect me to have a PHOTOGRAPH of it for you, do you?
A hard unpasturised goat’s milk cheese, made in Somerset and bought from Neals Yard Dairy.
Kat joined me for an impromptu picnic lunch, and we bought a wedge of this. (Note to self: next time choose a SOFTER cheese if you have no knife!) It’s a very pale parchment-coloured cheese, hard and smooth and with a smattering of tiny gaps, covered in a crumbly wrinkled light grey rind. more »
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This cheese is an old friend and favourite of mine, and I’m not sure why it’s taken me this long to get around to mentioning it here. We snaffle a wedge of it for lunch. It’s pale and crumbly in the centre, chalkily opaque, and coloured a gentle primrose primrose-yellow. Under the rind the curd has broken down and formed a soft, slightly sticky, darker translucent layer. The rind itself is a mottled brownish grey, musty, dark and dusty. more »
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Sorry! This is Stinking Bishop - they look very alike! I neglected to take a photograph before scoffing the cheese.
A washed rind cheese from Gloucestershire, bought from Neal’s Yard Dairy.
Very exciting! An FT cheese exclusive! I can’t find a mention of this sheep’s cheese anywhere on the internet. It’s a new cheese by the people who create Stinking Bishop. A variation on their infamous washed rind cheese, it’s made of sheep’s milk and it has a wonderfully surreal name. Apparently, once upon a time, the nuns of Caen had a bit of a yen for Double Gloucester, and it was shipped over to them regularly. This cheese is from Gloucestershire. It’s a spurious connection, but the name makes me grin.
Covered with a soft, damp orange rind, this cheese is pale – almost white – inside, and dotted with little holes. I don’t have to get my nose too near the cheese to get a snoutful of its aroma. It’s got a pungent, foot-ish whomph, cut with a boozy, alcoholic note that gets up my nose when I inhale too deeply. When I eat some, it’s soft and smooth in the centre, coating my mouth but not clinging too long. The rind’s crumbly. It tastes wonderful – the extra richness of the sheep’s milk means that it’s wonderfully creamy and luscious and sweet. It tastes of salted cream fudge, and butter, and apples and pears (I bet it’s washed in the same perry as its ecclesiastical sibling.). There’s a very mellow, soothing woodiness around the edges. Its smell (and it’s not the whiffiest of cheeses, I promise) is very much worse than its taste, stench-wise. This cheese is smooth and sweet and mellow, and incredibly more-ish.
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A raw-milk hard cow’s cheese made in Wisconsin, and bought from Neal’s Yard Dairy.
Inside this wedge of cheese the paste’s a bright yellow, scattered with the white dots that promise lactic acid crunch, and with cracks running the length. The rind’s crusty and brown, covered with a white residue in patches.
The texture, when I break a piece off, is somewhere between crumbly and elastic. As I chew, I can feel and hear the cheerful cracks and crunches of all the little crystals under my teeth. Taste-wise, it’s like a gouda, or possibly the creamier end of Comte. There’s a rich heartiness – plummy and slightly meaty – and smooth caramel sweetness, which develops into a slightly sharp tropical fruityness; pineapples, passionfruits and mango. There’s a hint of a green grassy flavour towards the end, and a smidge of olive. more »
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A pasturised goats cheese from Hertfordshire, bought from Neal’s Yard Dairy.
Childwickbury always makes me think of the moon; it’s a round of pure white, incredibly young cheese. It’s damp and crumbly, an adolescent creature existing in some hinterland between fresh curd and a grown-up cheese.
In the mouth it’s both creamy and acidic – first off, the sweet, milkiness appears, and then it opens out into a huge bright zesty lemonish explosion, reminding me of really tart lemon curd. It sparkles, almost fizzes, in my mouth. There’s a tiny, hidden sniff of grass and herbs somewhere in here as well, lurking deep below the lemon.
Cheese-eating chum says it has a wonderfully fresh mouthfeel. In a fit of hypocrisy, I laugh at his using the word mouthfeel. But he’s right! This cheese is like fresh green grass and bright warm sunshine after a spring shower. It’s delicious, and refreshing, and incredibly cheerful, and it always makes me grin when I eat it. I’m grinning now just thinking about it.
(We made a lovely cheesecake from this once; cornmeal and oregano base, covered with a mixture of childwicksbury, lemon juice and icing sugar, and topped with a slice of sugared lemon. And it’s my number one top cheese for eating with figs.)
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A beer-washed, paprika-covered spiced cows milk cheese from France, bought from Une Normande a Londres.
Boulette d’Avesnes is also known as suppositoire du diable – you can translate that yourself. It’s a pointed, conical little round of cheese, and comes in its own little plastic dome. It’s a deep, fiery, damp powdery orange on the outside – a result of being rubbed down with hot paprika – and when I cut into it the paste is pale, soft and crumbly, and liberally speckled with herbs.
It tastes very interesting, but not very much like a cheese. My first impression is that it’s sausagey, and subsequent tastings do nothing to dispel this. It tastes hot and smoky – the paprika rind, especially, is really quite intense. It’s strongly flavoured, but not in any very cheesy way; it’s very peppery, salty, and meaty. Spread on crusty bread, it makes an excellent dairysausage sandwich.
I’d not list this in my Top 10 Cheeses – I’m not entirely convinced that it’s a cheese at all. But it’s interesting and fun, at least in moderation. I’m not sure I’d like to try eating an entire one. And as an example of a cheese-with-stuff-in, it’s definitely nicer than most. The internet suggests pairing it with beer and I think that it would go very well with something cold and hoppy.
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Sleightlett
A small raw goat’s milk cheese from Somerset, bought from Neals Yard Dairy
This little squat, disc-like little round of cheese is covered in a bloomy grey and white mould. The centre’s bright white. It’s soft and creamy, slightly fluffy, wth a grainy fine-sand texture.
It’s an intensely creamy cheese, with a subtle fresh fruityness, fragrant and citrussy – lemon zest and orange flowers, I think. The bright fresh milkiness makes it feels like a very clean, clear cheese; it makes me think of tall glasses of fresh, cool milk. A touck of acididty gives a very slight hint of yoghurtiness. The rind is soft and sweet, with a touch of dry dustyness; henna powder, or dried, sun-warmed straw.
I read about Mexicana over on this here cheese blog. and I thought that;
And, lo! I stumbled across it today, and shamefully concealed it at the bottom of my shopping basket and so I can confirm that;
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I can't find a picture of this cheese anywhere. Here's a cute baby goat instead!
Brique de St Jean
A small goat’s cheese from France, bought from Mons
We have half a brick of this pale goat’s cheese. It’s covered in a velvety, slippery, cream-and-white Geotrichum-wrinkled rind (reminding co-cheese-scoffer Sarah of brain). Inside, it’s soft and white, chalky towards the centre and slippery and liquid underneath the rind.
It’s smooth, and melts quickly, slightly grainily, in my mouth. It’s wonderfully sweet and milky, a touch almondy, soft and comforting, with just the slightest hint of a green, bitter spinachy leafiness. Sarah takes huge snout-filling sniffs of this cheese’s delicate fragrance, and declares it the winner of the Best Smelling Cheese Award. more »
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