gariotin

What's the name of your cheese, Andi? It's smoked? - is it Ibores?

That is interesting, Andie - I was thinking that C with SII was a relatively new invention. Of course there has always been havarti w/dill and ched w/port wine, but all this fruity stuff seemed recent. So I guess there has been a C with SII movement afoot for longer than I thought. Speaking of brick, that is a great cheese and not found much any more - a real America original. Joe Widmer is still making it the old fashioned way - with real bricks as weights - but here on the East Coast it is not generally found. If anyone is in the NYC area, go check out the cheese room at the new WF Bowery store. The whole room is temp & humidity controlled so that all the cheeses can be displayed out on the marble counters. They had the most beautiful huge dolce gorg with the top cut off - they were scooping the soft cheese into cups to sell. Lovely. Also little robiolas wrapped in green cabbage leaves. Didn't buy one, as I was travelling, but looked amazing.

Oh my God, those are just unimaginably horrible! What were they thinking?????? That makes Wensleydale with cranberry or Stilton with Mango & Ginger sound pretty normal, in comparison. So...this could be our new motto..."Never eat cheese with obvious skid marks"?????

They all fall into a category that I call "Cheese with Stuff in it." All those stiltons w/dried fruit and cheddars w/chives & garlic. They are not my faves, but people seem to like them and they sell a lot.

Interesting...here in the states there is an imported Welsh cheese called Red Dragon with the mustard seed & ale. It is made by the Abergavenney cheese company. Must be a regional traditional cheese? They also make some other ones called Tintern, Harlech, Black Mountatin - all flavored with things like horseradish, chive, etc. Not very sophisticated cheeses, but likable and straight forward and great for entertaining as they go well with beer.

No help w/the chevre, Andi, but I did used to sell the yak cheese and when it is in good shape, it is wonderful. It has a very unique flavor - full of grass and herbs, but there is a different tang that is not quite like anything else. Problem is that it is quite inconsistent in quality, but I'm sure this is somewhat due to the transport method and time coming from Tibet. Keep trying - it is very interesting and serves a good service - supporting family farmers in Tibet with a value-added product that they can export. Love the Blacksticks Blue as well. It is a little lurid in its orangeness, but very yummy. GTO - tell us about Little Lincoln Imp (love that name!) and Y-Fenni - what were they like?

LOL - I love it!

Oh, that's just so wrong!!!!

I'll eat rabbit any day, but ferret is beyond my comfort zone!

I pay no attention to the "best before" dates on a lot of food. Especially things like yoghurt - I mean it is a fermented product! If things look, smell, and taste fine, I eat them and I've never made myself sick from anything.

Yum - I want to make the avocados soon - good excuse to invite folks over!

Hey everyone - who's up for crashing Dave's for dinner??? The menu sounds great and those cheesey beauties will be the icing on the cake, so to speak. Tell more about the avocado appetizer - sounds so interesting. Halved, sliced....where do y put the garlic butter...wrap the whole thing like a little packet...bake for how long? I am imagining something really yummy, with the warm avocado turning soft and melty. Thanks also for the good info on Laguiole and related cheeses. Laguiole is not easy to find here, and I applaud WF for featuringing this nationally two years in a row. We can find nice Cantal and Cantalet, but I have never seen Salers for sale here. It is a French cheese I have never tasted and would very much like to. I know what she is saying about the eggy taste - sometimes I think a traditional British cheddar has that note...like Lincolnshire Poacher. I have finally set my Italian tasting agenda - tried to balance things that weren't too obvious by doing side-by-side comparison.The group is very mixed in terms of their culinary sophistication. Mozz di buf vs crappy supermarket mozz La Tur - beautiful, creamy, lactic smallish cheese from Lombardy Medium aged Asiago Traditional Fontina Val d'Aosta vs Danish fontina Pecorino Toscano - maybe a young soft one which is great this time of year w/ fresh favas & salumi Reggiano Parm vs icky domestic version Taleggio Mountain gorg - a little more interesting than the dolce that most people know. I figured I would also bring Mostarda and Italian chestnut honey to drizzle on the gorg and just have sliced baguette for people who have to have bread or cracker to eat cheese. Everyone is supposed to bring a bottle of Italian wine to share, so it should be interesting. I'll keep y'all posted.

I agree...they would even go so far as to leave the hutch door awry, so that they could claim the bunny had escaped! No wonder my brother is a little crazy...

My grandparents, Bertha & Adolph (I am not making this up!) emigrated from Germany. When my brother was growing up, my Grandmother would give him a little bunny every spring. Each year, it would escape about a week before a Sunday dinner of haasenpfeffer (sp). It took him about 3 or 4 years to figure it out and claims he was scarred for life. This all happened before I was born, and I'm just sorry that I never had a chance to try her traditional rabbit stew - she was a marvelous cook.

I just redid my kitchen and used it as an excuse to get rid of 30 years of accumulated, non-matching junk. I invested in All Clad - the LTD ones - and bought: 1 qt saucepan 3 qt saucepan Saute pan - not sure of the exact size, but pretty huge Fry pan - more "normal" size Petit roaster w/rack Medium sized stockpot (I think 6 qts) I also splurged and got the steamer inset for the 3 qt pan I find this covers pretty much all bases, altho I must admit that I live alone, so most daily cooking is not too complicated. I entertain often, but again, go for simplicity over frou-frou these days. Xmas dinner was many-coursed and complicated, but I don't recall wishing I had anything extra to cook with. Just my opinion, but this works for a basic set.

Dave - you know your accessibility to great cheese always makes me jealous! Not familiar with Mont Salvey or Preferance - fill us in.

Where are all the cheeseheads? Just got back from a nice vacation in the Caribbean. Our upscale hotel had a "gourmet cheese & wine" spread every evening. "Gourmet cheese" consisted of manchego, young gouda, and pepper jack. The manchego was quite nice, so we nibbled on that as we drank our plonk-y "gourmet wine". Hey - it was free... Just went to the store to pick up milk, fruit, etc and had to buy a little piece of Brin d'Amour. This wonderful sheeps milk cheese is from Corsica and looks like it has been dropped on the barn floor, as it is rolled in rosemary leaves. We used to be able to get the original, raw milk version here in the States, which was hugely flavored and redolent of the sappy rosemary stems. Now it is a pasteurized version, and while not as full of the steamroller effect on your palate, still a very nice cheese experience.

Tell your pregnant co-worker that when my husband & I were on the way to the hospital to have a baby, we dutifully stopped and picked up something for him to eat in case it was a long labor. He came out with 3 cans of sardines. Even I thought that was pretty repulsive and I love the little things. As it turned out, I was in labor for 3 hrs, so luckily we never had to crack them open.

Niamh, How wonderful to be able to pop out and buy fresh sardines - and so cheap! How did you prepare them? With all the great tinned fish coming out of Galacia and the Basque area, I can't imagine that any any Spanish sardines wouldn't be delicious!

I'm checking in now that I have been living w/my soapstone counters for about four months. I haven't been having the chipping issue that some of you have, altho I do live by myself and don't do a lot of complicated cooking anymore. I'm sure I would have been rougher back when I was cooking for a family of four. I oil about once a month - mostly just to even out oil spots. I find nothing really stains, but oil or butter do make dark areas. I have an island and the area where I sit and eat also gets darker faster - I guess just from oil on my hands. I just oil the whole thing once and awhile and it all "dries" out the same color. That's really the only drawback I have found - otherwise it looks great and I love not having to worry about putting hot things down.

Enurmi, we had some great conversations about this topic a while back in the thread. Scroll thru to see some reports from others - someone also posted a link to a good webpage that gave ideas for cheese boards.

Lindsay is right, GTO - we love pix on this thread! I am interested in the smoked Poacher - are you suggesting that this is a smoked piece of Lincolnshire Poacher??? That sounds very intriguing. L Poacher is hard to get in the US and quite pricey, but well worth it when y find it. I think the idea of smoking it could be interesting. Cookwithlove - as to the mites on the Mimo, the cheeses are brushed well & cleaned off before leaving the factory, so you don't have to be worried about seeing them. I don't think they make the cheese age faster, they are just part of the unique rind formation of that cheese. I am also at a loss for an orangey goat cheese. To the best of my knowledge, the use of annetto to make the vibrant bright color is only used w/cow's milk - can anyone think of a goat or sheep exception? In general, a natural orangey-red rind is characteristic of a washed-rind cheese, and again, that is not often seen in goat cheeses. Sorry I can't be of more help on that question! As to wine & cheese pairings, there are several books & webpages that would give you some basic suggestions. Some folks believe that pairing a cheese with a wine from the same area is a good rule...but then again, some people don't adhere to that idea. Trial and error is the most fun!

Another great factoid about Mimolette is that the rind is naturally formed thru the work of cheese mites. If you look really closely at the rind, you can see small craters where they have done their work. Probably back when these cheeses were made at home on farms, they were put to mature on wooden boards. The mites migrated to the cheeses, where there work produced a protective rind so the inside of the cheese could age safely. Cookwithlove and GTO - a good cheese book is really helpful as you learn your way. Also, as GTO points out, a good cheesemonger who is willing to yack is about the best thing you can do. In the UK, there are books by Julia Harbutt, that also have great photos. Here in the US, there is the Cheese Primer by Steve Jenkins, which is now pretty old and needs to be updated, but still a good reference. Also good books by Max McCalman and Laura Werlin. Gotta love that cheese!

Beautiful pix, GTO. Have never heard of the blue - tell us about it. I have heard that the exotic sounding Yarg is really just the cheesemaker's name spelled backwards.

Lindsay is on the right track. How big is your piece of gouda? Can you finish it in 6-8 weeks? I am not an advocate of freezing - it will definitely change the cheese. If you think you can eat it within 2 mos, I'd wrap in saran, then foil, and put it in the veggie drawer. Cut from one side, so that if the other exposed face gets moldy, it will help preserve that side. You may need to trim and rewrap a few times. The bottom line is that once the wheel is cut, the cheese is still a living thing and will continue to change. In my opinion, freezing just mucks up the texture and flavor - of course people do it, but you can make an aged gouda last a long time in your fridge if you keep it from drying out.