How 'bout a vote for a good Cheddar? Not the grocery store cheddar you get for $3.99/lb., but a real honest-to-goodness English Cheddar, one that’s sharper than the knife you slice it with.
Real buffalo mozzarella is fantastic…
My 5-year old son is quite taken with the smoked goat gouda at the Whole Foods Market.
Good kid. He also likes bittersweet Valhrona.
I second that emotion for Blue Castello, the King of Cheese!
Also very nice is Drunken Goat Gouda, a firm but not hard cheese with a dark purple rind. Nice to just have a little wine and slice off a bit…maybe a bit more…what happened to all the cheese? The cat must have eaten it!
MMMMMMMMM VELVETA! …and a nice big jelly jar of welch’s grape juice to wash it down.
And for a good everyday cheese, try Sharp Tillamook.
My Dad got me started on Tillamook cheeses when I was 2 years old. It’s been a great love of mine for over 40 years.
I know, everyday, boring, and not international. But pretty darn good.
And Tillamook makes many different cheeses, including a White Extra Sharp cheddar that is aged for 2 years.
I highly recommend the book
The Cheese Primer by Steven Jenkins
(ISBN on my 1996 copy is 0-89480-762-5, and I don’t know if they’ve published a new edition)
Jenkins has a bit of a sense of humor, and writes about cheese in a very straightforward and (IMO) un-pretentious way.
Work your way from cover to cover, eating the cheeses as he writes about them. Yum!
It’s not exhaustive, and mainly covers cheeses he likes, skipping over ones he’s not interested in, but we’ve discovered some great cheeses this way, including Taleggio (smelled bad, tasted great), Tomini (creamy & soaked in oil & red pepper & herbs), Sage Derby, Double Gloucester, & c & c & c.
AND we learned about the bestest ever way to use up the various little bits of many types of cheese that accumulate in the fridge when you’ve been buying lots of cheese: fromage fort!! Basically all the varieties of cheese chopped up together, seasoned with wine & garlic, and left to “mature” overnight in the fridge. Eat it on bread. Yum!
If you can find Stilton with ginger, you’ll be in for a treat
And if you find some Old Quebec vintage cheese, it’ll slap Black Diamond around like there’s no tomorrow
As for Viognier, I’d go for some nice crumbly Feta
A plate of stilton, a bowl of smoked almonds and a glass of aged port. mmmmmm.
Go to http://www.gibbsvillecheese.com/ and get yourself some aged or supersharp white cheddar. So good, and one of my and Qadgop’s relatives works at the factory!
God, you people are making me hungry.
I’m undecided about Sage Derby. I loved the first bite. Waffled on the second, and then ended up using some of the rest with eggs (which was a great combination). I adore sage and I was actually disappointed that the sage taste wasn’t stronger. On the other hand, if the sage taste were stronger, that’d be one weird cheese.
If anyone likes sage, give it a try. It’s greeeeen!
I have not, but just from description alone, it sounds fabulous! Cheese is a big weakness of mine. I could eat almost any kind!
FB
[singing]What a friend we have in Cheeses![/singing]
Joking aside, I had a wonderful brie-and-avocado sandwich on a croissant that was to die for.
Robin
A good friend of mine manages a cheese shop in the Cheesehead Capital, Milwaukee, WI. He swears only women ever buy dill havarti. Can anyone here disprove this theory? (Men buying cheeses meant to be eaten only by women don’t count.)
Side note: this particular friend is lactose-intolerant, so he can’t actually taste anything he sells. He makes recommendations based entirely on secondhand comments and smell, but people say he does a damn good job.
snip
Well, to be honest, it was husband who spied it at the deli and said, “Let’s give that a try.” He liked it, too, but probably not with the same depth of feeling that I did. I’m serious about cheese.
FB
Tried some new ones last weekend.
A Double Glouchester/Stilton layered. Yummy, but difficult to slice.
A cheddar with green onion and wasabi. ::drool::
I read somewhere the other day that being lactose intolerant shouldn’t interfere with eating cheese as there is hardly any lactose in cheese or that it was changed somehow. It was in a book called ‘The Man Who Ate Everything’ and was written by an American guy who was the Vogue food critic (well worth reading BTW) can anyone shed any light on this fact?
I would like to add my recommendation: St Agur. This is a wonderful blue cheese from France that is factory made but was recommended by my Mums (French) SO. This guy is a total foodie and an absolute cheese purist so it is testament to the quality of this fantastic cheese that has become his and my favourite blue cheese. There is another cheese I tried recently for the first time but can’t remember the name. It comes in a wooden box similar to Camembert and looks fairly similar but once the outer rind is broken it is much runnier inside and has to be scooped out with bread or crackers. It has a very distinct taste, which is sort of yeasty, and also has that slight ‘sting’ associated with strong blue cheese. It is absolutely fantastic but was also ‘terribly expensive’ as my Mother insisted on pointing out, does anyone know what it might be? If I heard the name again I would almost certainley remember.
I don’t know the specifics, or whether there are multiple kinds of lactose intolerance, but my poor friend had all sorts of tests run on him before the docs arrived at this diagnosis, including a very painful liver biopsy. And eating even a slice of pizza if the cheese has been pulled off makes him violently ill.
I know for myself, though, that having, say, a couple mugs of milk-based hot chocolate will sometimes upset my stomach (I’m not a milk drinker at all), but an analogous amount of cheese or yogurt doesn’t bother me at all. So maybe there’s something to that theory.
And by the way, I am passionately in love with goat’s-milk Brie. Even more than regular Brie. It’s a bit sweeter and runnier…mmmmm, brie…
I’m a nut about Gouda cheeses. I like the middle-aged stuff (or “extra belegen” as they call it in Holland-- I don’t know how aged it is because I only know it by the Dutch name).
A lot of Americans seem to like smoked Goudas. I think they are an abomination–a trick used merely to cover up the fact that it is an inferior Gouda.
By the way-- for the person who asked what cheeses are good for macaroni and cheese, I think you should use some Gruyere and maybe some Emmenthaler, too. You’ll also need some fresh Parmesean and maybe some Cheddar. Anad skip the bread crumbs (IMHO) they take away too much from the great cheese flavor.
Gjetost!!! A norwegian goat cheese, this sweet, creamy caramel-colored delight is great with fruit or by itself.
http://www.prairieridgecheese.com/gjetchees8oz.html
QtM, whose daddy was born in an old cheese factory!
(And you thought your grandma’s house smelled funny!)
Lissla, you like kasseri, too? 
We are mad, mad, mad for kasseri in my home, SO, me and Cinn Babe. If you like parmesan or romano, kasseri is great. Smells like month-old gym socks, but…mmm…dee-lish. Will have to find saganaki. Sounds incredible!
Also, good buffalo mozzarella with vine-ripened tomatos, fresh basil leaves and an excellent basalmic. Orgasmic!
By itself or on salads with slices of red onion, crumbled feta.
You can never go wrong with a good cheddar.
Brie with strawberries and water/table crackers.
Any fondue, but especially Gruyere with white wine.
Oh, and Cinn Babe has got me hooked on string cheese. What fun!
[Modified Franklin]
Manchego is proof God wants us to be happy.
[/Modified Franklin]
There are two cheeses that are absolutely magnificient with a good cabernet… a god bleu cheese and, of course, manchego. Manchego is a drier, nuttier cheese and personally I prefer the Spanish makers.
Peccorino Romano, as mentioned by Romansperson (go figure), is fantastic on baked potatoes, salads, pizza, pasta, etc.
Cervaise, manchego ice cream? Never would I have guessed…