Introducing CHEESY WOOFER! Finlay the dog has very generously agreed to help me review these cheeses.
Selles sur Cher
A French raw goats cheese, bought from Mons
This little flat round cheese has a greeny-grey charcoal rind, speckled with a white bloom. There’s a soft squishy translucent layer directly underneath the rind, and a putty-like dense bright white layer in the center. The clean white paste inside contrasts really prettily with the dark rind.
The rind tastes prickly and peppery and medicinal; hints of TCP. Inside it’s soft and smooth, and melts in my mouth. It’s very creamy, for a goat’s cheese and has small bursts of thyme and rosemary flavours and a gentle sweet nuttiness.
Cheesy Woofer: Finn eats this cheese after some persuasion. He doesn’t recommend it. (However, I do! It’s very tasty.)
Kirkhams Lancashire
A semi-hard raw cow’s cheese from (can you guess?) Lancashire, bought from Neal’s Yard Dairy
The Lancashire is a crumbly pale yellow slab of cheese. It has a soft buttery texture, tastes tangy and sour, and reminds me of gooseberries and lemons. It’s almost fizzy in its exuberance – Pete compares it to eating cola bottles. It’s creamy, too, but in a sharp yoghurty way. This a giddy teenaged slab of Lancashire we’re eating. It does get calmer as it ages; I’ve had older, sweeter, creamier versions of this in the past.
Cheesy Woofer: The hound LOVES this, scoffs all he is given in one big drooly gulp, and makes huge puppydog eyes asking for more.