April 12, 2005

• I've never tried it but Frumunda is supposed to have a delicate musty flavor, best served with tea.
• Brie de Meaux and Brie du Melun are heavenly. I highly recommend both. Also try Manchego (spanish sheep's milk cheese) and there's a 5 year old cave aged Gruyere that I've seen recently that is also awesome. The best thing to do is find a local fromagerie, and listen to them.
• I'm definitely a fuddy-duddy when it comes to cheese. Provalone, Smoked Gouda, American, Cheddar, Mozzarella. That's about it. Parmesan and Romano on pasta. I don't like stinky and/or soft cheeses.
• I love the Cheese Cube
• I've never met a sheep's milk cheese I didn't like.
• For any NYC-area cheez-luvin monkeys that haven't been, drop by Murray's Cheese shop on Bleecker St. This place opened my nose with it's incredible selection. They'll fill you up with samples and recommend the perfect cheese for any meal/occasion. blue! Yummy stuff...
• Wensleydale with cranberries in it. mmm, so good. Not stinky, not soft.
• I was wondering what the cheese ingredient "rennet" was in relation to being vegetarian. This site has the answer. Long and short - newborn calf stomach. Which is a little depressing frankly. Vegetarian cheese is fine, it's just hard to find.
• Fresh mozarella is the best ever, the kind shaped like a knot (or sometimes little balls) and soaking in milk. Sliced and on fresh bread with some combination of sundried tomato, roasted pepper, proscuitto, and olive oil. I like brie and fontina too, really any cheese that goes with fruit and wine.
• If you don't love American Pasteurized, then you hate America. Won't you think of the children?
• Aged spiced Gouda. Comes with the DNA.
• I made a cheese fondue this past weekend with emmentaler and gruyere. Along with a loaf of crusty french bread and fresh green apples, it was a little bit of cheese heaven.
• Small boutique cheddars - if you can ever find them, the Barry's Bay cheeses are fantastic. I like my cheese sharp, like I like my men.
• My favorite: Reblochon (I was born and raised in Reblochon country, they make Tome de Savoie there too -- really good when it's really young.) My second favorite: Beaufort. If you like the nutty flavor of Gruyere, Beaufort will blow your socks off. Cheeses from Corsica are outstanding and the stinkiest, some people can't even stand the smell. Raclette cheese can be had at Trader Joe's (for us USians,) it's an interesting alternative to Fondue. *open wine bottle, slice bread, fetch cheese*
• > Fresh mozarella is the best ever, the kind shaped > like a knot (or sometimes little balls) and > soaking in milk. Sliced and on fresh bread with > some combination of sundried tomato, roasted > pepper, proscuitto, and olive oil. Real Mozarrella is made from buffalo milk -- if you like Mozarrella, buffalo Mozarrella is like crack.
• I fear no cheese. Love em all, but I've been eating a lot of manchego lately.
• Pecorino toscano, drizzled with honey. mmmm.
• I loves teh Leicester!
• Ripe Munster with a little cummin. Old farmers-Gouda with mustard. Water buffalo mozarella in a Capri salad. Rocquefort. I am made out of cheese and wine.
• i just had a lovely ham and Port Salut sandwich... but i do love me some Boursin, as well.
• Waaaah! What a cruel thread! Yesterday my doctor declared me lactose intolerant, so she ordered me off all dairy products for a week. And I love cheese! All kinds! *presses nose to glass, drools*
• Cheesecake. Grilled cheese, sharp cheddar. Roaring 40's Blue Cheese.
• Epoisse and trou du cru (yes, that's the correct name for it), crottin de chavignol, Maroilles, Pont l'Evêque, Livarot, etc.,etc..
• a good resource for french cheeses here. my most frequent purchases are comte, cantal, and saint agur. if you have access to irish cheeses, i'd recommend cashel blue, smoked gubeen, and dubliner (a difficult to classify mature cheddar-like very nice cheese).
• My two favorites gotta be gruyere and gorgonzola.
• Sorry to get so specific, but with spring upon us, here is the cool recipe I use to ring in the new season with cocktails, courtesy of Saveur: "Serve this salad well chilled. Cut 8 trimmed celery ribs crosswise into 1/2'' pieces, transfer to a bowl, add 4 oz. crumbled Maytag or other good blue cheese, 2 tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil, a little salt, and freshly cracked black pepper. Gently toss. Serves 4." And their latest issue is a "Cheese" issue, giving about a dozen U.S. cheese shops some time, as well as some good recipes.
• As a London monkey, this is my particular place of worship. If you go in there, they feed you cheese. It is expensive cheese. You will buy it anyway. I adore their Orkney, a sweet-sharp, crumbly cow's milk cheese that's great with quince paste. And a nice runny Verulamium is a joy to behold. I also love slices of Feta cheese on an onion bagel, toasted till squishy. Or Halloumi, sliced thinly and baked crisp under the broiler. GOD I LOVE CHEESE.
• I've seen that place on Bleecker, Sugarmilktea. Thanks for reminding me that I need to actually go in next time. I like a good havarti, preferably with dill.
• Well, I was sitting in the public library on Thurmond Street just now, skimming through `Rogue Herries' by Horace Walpole, and I suddenly came over all peckish.
• Danish fontina, a current favorite. Just about any cheese, barring processed ones.
• I also love the Wensleydale with cranberry. I avoided Brie for a while but now I like it, especially warmed with apricots and nuts. Basic goat's milk cheese (chevre) is my overall favorite; spread on crusty bread and eat that and an apple while sitting in the woods. Whatever that Italian table cheese is, it's hard, that one's good too. Fresh mozz in liquid, in balls; serve with tiny tomatoes in a few splashes of good EVOO and balsamic. I picked up a Dutch soy cheese with no name the other day and I'm amazed to see that it actually melts. It came in a fairly big brick and it's turning hard and red at the edges, but it tastes like fake cheddar. Good cheddar rocks. I used to like Port Salut, but not so much now. Any cheese that goes with nuts makes me happy. Feta goes in salads to make them better. Moldy cheeses are right out, however.
• Nobody going to speak for the king of cheeses, Rocquefort?
• The cat's eaten it.
• Many cheeses are spectacular. I happen to like English cheeses and pecorinos from Tuscany. I have a blue goat cheese in France that was served properly ripened into a gooey consistency that almost made weep it was such a perfect combination of texture, aroma and flavor. But my favorite is Uplands Cheese Company Pleasant Valley Reserve. It is in the style of a French/Swiss mountain cheese made with milk from pasture feed cows that are naturally cycled. Umm, I need to make a trip to the fridge and get a nibble, this is making me peckish.
• Long and short - newborn calf stomach. Which is a little depressing frankly. Pitee rennet's seen in gentil havarti! Cheese is the one animal I'm having the worst struggle to give up.
• St. Andre - from an industrial scale producer, but very tasty. Finnish Midnight Blue - a very, very nicely balanced blue cheese; creamy while maintaining the bite without any astringency. Pierre Robiere - a very nice triple cream, better slightly chilled. and of course unpasteurized English Stilton - makes anything less taste like crap, and I hate the mouthful of wax you get with the pasteurized. Those are only the ones I've bothered to remember the names of though. There are so many to try still! Mmmmmm. I loooooove cheese. Cheese, and olives and some nice wine, and some farmhouse pate, and some whole wheat toasts, and fresh figs, and an apricot tart....then some more cheese with a nice port.
• The Drunken Goat is the greatest of all cheeses. No arguments, go to your local fromagerie and eat it. Buying it first is recommended but optional.
• I was actually curious about the rennet thing; one page I found said most rennet is now made in lab, but Whole Foods says it's all confusing and mixed up (which is probably more correct than any other current answer.) Apparently, though, 'cottage cheese, ricotta, and some mozzarellas' are rennetless.
• Which begs a fpp about vegetarians...
• mercurious and fish tick to the principal's office . . . mercurious and fish tick to the principal's office please . . . (Wah wah . . wah wapb buah wah whah)
• The king of cheese is fucking Stilton you idiots. Or a good (I mean GOOD) camembert. Or chesire blue (basically stilton). My fave is probably morbier though. Bitter as fuck, sweet cream, a layer of ash. Damn cheese is good.
• Anything that stings the roof of my mouth. I like Asiago, some kinds of strong Provolone, and a Portugese cheese whose name I can't recall.
• Wait someone likes port salut but doesn't like moldy cheeses? port salut is the most offesive of all cheeses (although delish).
• For every day consumption, gruyere of any sort is pretty amazing on anything.
• manchego/asiago are crap. goat cheeses are good but they should really be rated seperately. on a side note: my hard drive is amazingly fragmented.
• gruyere and leicester, especially the latter, are the best melting cheeses.
• Münster, probably the worst stinkin' cheese in the universe. But it tastes good. Very good. Oh, and not the American shit they sell under the same name...
  
• Ah, so much cheese, so little time. I can even get into limburger. And, there a goat cheese with garlic and hers that they sell at Trader Joe's here In California that's great on bread or in chicken rollatini. Oh, and Boursin, brie, camembert! But what I really miss is the cheese they use in queso al horno (fondu, more or less) and in quesadillias in Mexico. When melted, it has the slippery, slidey texture of taffy when it ready to be "pulled" (though not the taste) and it has to be 90 percent fat, it's sooo good melted and really boring cold. It might have been queso Menonito (made by Mennonites who settled in Mexico) but I'm not sure. It also got me through several bouts of "la turista" since it was better than lomotil in settling things down.
• I can't afford what I like, so I refuse to talk about it.
• Small cheeses from local small-cheese-producers are lovely in parts of California. Cowgirl Creamery, out by Point Reyes, is great to visit - I havent been there for a couple years. It seems they have a Library of Cheese. Now, that's nice.
• Oh, and my favorite cheese memory (I love cheese) was of a Pont L'Eveque in 1988 in Normandy. I bought one in the States afterward and found the cheese totally unpalatable. But that day in France it was the best taste in the world.
• For London monkeys (again): this place is also delightful. But Neal's Yard Dairy is great too (because it's a giant fridge, with all the cheese out in the open, and has enthusiastic staff. Must be a great place to work in the height of summer, which is the last time I visited).
• I rarely eat cheese by itself. And which one I'm currently craving depends on what dish I'm craving that includes cheese. Some of my favorites are chicken stuffed with either goat cheese or Boursin, Gideon's Fault (a sandwich with brie, hot Creole mustard, and salami, either baked or grilled), grilled salami, arthichoke heart, and Gouda sandwiches, Foggia beef roll (a meatloaf stuffed with hardboiled eggs, sweet Italian sausage, and jack cheese), or baked brie en croute, often with almonds, brandy, and slices of apple layered between the crust and the brie.
• Goat cheese is your all-round utility player, IMO. One of my favorite chicken recipes has you mix soft goat cheese with sauteed shallots and rosemary, then smear it under the skin with your fingers. Really slather it on. Toothpick the skin back down and butter it, then bake the chicken. Easy, messy, yum.