Of a Friday, I am tempted by the cheese shop. I’m getting towards the end of last week’s wedge of Cheshire now. Mrs hawthorne has no love of cheese, so how about a cheese of the week? Around this time of the week we could put an agreed style on the shopping list and compare notes about how excrementally runny (or not) a cheese is. Let’s keep it to styles rather than really specific cheeses - no “Emu Creek pecorino from a sheep named Flossie” - so that anyone with a half-way decent deli has a chance to find an example.
I’m tossing up between gorgonzola or some washed rind cheese for my next curdly splurge. Any takers?
[Jean Harlow voice]“Gorgonzola—my favorite tango! Do you like Roquefort or Gorgonzola? I used to eat Roquefort, but now I only eat Gorgonzola, ever since I heard that they have this whole town in France where they do nothing but make Roquefort cheese, and they do the ROTTENEST things to those sheep! They keep them in caves, and they slap 'em around to get the milk all thickened up, and . . .”[/Jean Harlow voice]
Me some too! Good idea, hawthorne. This will be no problem in the Pug household, whose cheese tab and arteries are in an equally awful state. I’ll go get me a little nob of gorgonzola at lunch today. As well as a bit of tawny port, perhaps, to accompany it?
Right now, I’ve a ball of mozarella in the fridge reserved for a pasta dish I’m making tomorrow. I’ve also a wedge of asiago to shred atop said pasta dish.
I love goats’ milk brie. It’s my fave.
Am I weird because I crumble Wensleydale in the Indian dishes I make at home? Give it a whirl someday, it’s nummy.
Druken goat cheese makes me very happy. It’s wonderful with apples and pears.
Smoked gouda and gorgonzola are also cheeses I buy often.
Has anyone tried the goats’ milk cheese produced by Coach Farms? The founders of Coach Leather sold Coach (which explains the crappy handbags now) and started a goat farm. They have these wee balls of cheese rolled in cracked pepper or herbs. They’re very good with crostini.
A) Gorognzola is a fantastic cheese, much better than normal “Bleu Cheese”. Two of the best ways to eat are:
Room temp (or just a hair cooler), with slices of apple.
or, in the following recipe:
Take crusty french or italian bread. Toast it. Take a raw garlic clove, cut it in half and rub the cut half on one side of the bread. Take really good olive oil and drizzle a bit of it on the bread. Take some crumbled gorgonzola and sprinkle it on the top. Put back in an oven at about 300 or so until the gorgonzola gets all melty. Eat.
B) Another really good cheese (though very hard to find) is aged gouda. It’s nothing like regular gouda, and has a very nutty flavor and firmer texture that’s nothing like the normal creaminess of regular gouda. The easiest way to tell the Gouda is an aged gouda is that the wax that covers the cheese will be colored black.
I just cracked open some 5 year-old cheddar the other day. Yummy! The best I ever had was 11 year old cheddar, but that’s hard to come by. I’m putting up the cheeses myself, to age them.
Gotta go with the gorgonzola myself, have a chunk at all times in the fridge. I use it on homemade pizzas I make every sunday. I also use it with this pasta, spinach & Gorgonzola dish I make.
Definitely the Cheese of the Week.
And Blink178?? That’s disturbing. (Try Romano instead of parmesan, or better yet-incanestrata)
Frist of all, as you know, the French have more types of cheese than there are zits at a Junior Highschool prom. The two are not related.
I usually get Comte (double rich) for home, but this time I got “Old Amsterdam” which I recommend HIGHLY. It’s a hard cheese, very creamy and saltyish.
Yummy. I love living in France. Well, the yummy cheese part of it anyway.
(Try Romano instead of parmesan, or better yet-incanestrata)