My favorite recipes
We bought this at the Burlington NC Barnes and Noble for $10, The Cheese Bible (Christian Teubner) 2009. It not only gives background on some European cheeses we’ve never tried before, but has some great recipes — so good that we even bought a 2nd book for a family member who is a great cook. The illustrations and paper are so nice that is almost an artbook on cheese, but the writing is well-d0ne and easy-to-understand.
Okay, we bought this for the look (like a wine label, I suppose), but would buy it again for the flavor. French Mimolette is a hard, brittle, bright-orange cheese with a very nutty flavor. Carrots are pretty popular in this house, so this has been dubbed our new Carrot Cheese. The Mimolette is spherical like an Edam but with a rough moon-like surface (from cheese mites) and a bright orange interior. It resembles a melon when cut open. The cheese originated in Holland and is made in a similar way to Edam.
Several months ago, a friend had a blue cheese at our house from Calvert Woodley that she just loved. However, we didn’t have the label. We thought it was a French cheese. When she returned to CW, that let her taste about 12 kinds. However, not one was right. However, on Friday, during the DC snowstorm, we got in before they closed, and the cheesemonger remembered us — she had decided it was a Danish blue cheese, Blue Castello.
The Danish Castello Blue is a triple-cream, blue-veined gourmet cheese with a washed-rind. It is also called Blue Castello. It’s fairly mild with a Brie-like texture.
When I was visiting in N.C. a few weeks ago, we had the M’s up for a cheese tasting. I think they liked it — they are now giving cheese as Christmas presents. We had Manchego, and some others. It was pretty good.
Saint Andre
milk: French cows
Manchego
milk: Spanish sheep
Asiago d’Allevio
milk: Italian cows
Stori Dimon
milk: Icelandic sheep
This was our first Icelandic cheese. It was good. AT bought it at Whole Foods in Silver Spring. It came in a cute, wooden box (which has already been recycled into a great gift container) . Another Triple Cream that goes down like butter.
See photos and read more about the Cougar holiday season: Some 40,000 packages of Cougar cheese are shipped between the months of October and December, which accounts for nearly two-thirds of the creamery’s annual cheese sales. So if you want some for Christmas, order now. Cougar Gold, our favorite, has remained the number-one seller throughout the years, making up nearly 80 percent of their annual sales. For more information on Cougar cheese or to place an order, please visit http://www.wsu.edu/creamery
We got fogged in, so it was just the 2 of us in the country. We started the Thanksgiving dinner with a cheese tray. It was a baaa… night = all sheep.
Old Chatham Nancy’s Hudson Vally Camembert. Mmm…creamy New York sheep cheese.. And good with the cranberry sauce (less sugar than most, but added some ruby red port for flavor). Sheep cheese is supposed to be the easiest to digest.
Ricotta Salata. First time for this one. “One of Italy’s most unusual and least understood sheep’s milk cheeses.” Regular ricotta without the curds. A beautiful white. Salty like a dry feta. In Italian, ricotta simply means “”recooked.”” It is a cheese-making process rather than a specific cheese. This ricotta is also a salata, or “”salted,”” cheese. Good.
Cordobes. “Made from Merina sheep’s milk, this semi hard cheese is made specially for Whole Foods Market” — not really much about this. We expected it to be more like manchego- not really, but also good.
An unexpected surprised from a friend — cheese from Portugal. “Gardunha is a raw goat’s milk cheese from the Gardunha Mountain range of Portugal. This cheese has a great texture and flavor. The flavor is intense and rustic.” I came in a package of 2, and the rind was damp and goaty — washed rind? Goes perfectly with fruit – we had pears. Also olive bread.
We just had to try out the new Kitchenaid ice cream attachment. We made pineapple sorbet–mainly because the pineapple was right. And if you have a cheese course in the same meal as a rich ice cream, it’s a bit too much in one meal. Next time we try a cheese ice cream…
The Old Man Highlander was from Cowgirl Creamery, but the others from Calvert Woodley:
Campo de Montalban is a Spanish cheese made from a mixture of cow’s, sheep’s and goat’s milk. This cheese is made in the region of la Manga and looks very similar to Manchego in texture and appearance, both have light to dark, waxy herringbone rinds and light butter colored interiors. In fact Campo de Montalban was considered a Manchego until 1985.
Etorki is a hard cheese made in the French Basque region of the Pyrénées from the milk of black-headed sheep (sic.)
Pecorino is always a favorite from Italy.
Started out at PS7 in D.C. (777 I ST NW; blocks from Chinatown metro) for happy hour. The bar is probably the quietest room in the restaurant, and they have good happy hour drink specials — and surprisingly appetizers that included crispy dough and cheeses:
Untraditional Topped Flat Breads:
Mad Chicken: Buffalo chicken, celery, carrot, blue cheese; (nice and spicy sauce).
Sundried & Roasted: Eggplant, pesto, sundried tomatoes, feta.
(The Artisan Cheese Selection with house made accompaniments included: Red Hawk, Cow, California; Midnight Moon, Goat, Holland; Barely Buzzed, Cow, Utah; Cashel Blue, Cow, Ireland — but since they kept their red wine too cold, I assumed they treated cheese selections the same way.
I was there with K for a Balvenie’s single malt scotch whiskey tasting. The 21-year-old stuff was good, but I liked the feature the best: Available in very limited quantities, the new addition to The Balvenie 17 Year Old range is finished in casks that once held Madeira Wine.
It was so nice to get a hostess gift on Columbus Day from the As. We didn’t have a cheese tray this size, nor did we have the Oxo cheese slicer. (sturdy like other Oxo products; dishwasher safe; but you do need to have the cheese nice and cold — not eating temperature).
For Saturday night dinner, I decided buy everything at the Kensington Safeway, and they do have a fairly large grocery store cheese selection — there were some aged cheeses just sitting in the case for $22 a pound. I chose: Aloute Baby Brie, because I had a rebate up to $6.49 through the end of 2009. For a grocery store brie, it was fine tasting, but not particularly creamy — could much more see it as a baked brie rather than room temp on the cheese tray.
I also got Stripey Jack–Five layers of cheese in one, giving a striking display of red and white layers of traditional regional English cheeses–just because I knew it would look pretty on the cheese tray. Red Leicester, Double Gloucester, white and yellow Cheddar and Lancashire. Last: Denmark’s finest blue cheese — crumbly and good for salad, but probably not the best cheese plate selection.
