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Favorite Cheese


AzRaeL

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Cheese glorious cheese! I must preface that I am not an expert, I just enjoy yummy cheese!

Blue: Maytag blue is a hallmark cheese. Sharp and creamy and a little salty. Wonderful with pears. Also Roquefort, the most classic blue cheese, is wonderful. Strong flavored, full bodied but not quite as pungeant as the Maytag in my estimation.

Brie: Brie is a lovely creamy, mild flavored cheese. Somtimes it can be a little nutty or a little "dusty" in flavor. Melts very well. My favorite is the triple cream, it is almost like butter! I like this with grapes (classic) but also have put it in a sandwich/panini with roasted red pepper, turkey and avocado. The creamyness of the avocado matches very well with the brie IMHO.

Cheddar: This is my main snacking cheese. Some are very sharp and crumble more than others. I like them sharp but not extra sharp. Good on sandwiches and is often paired with apples.

Spanish Manchego cheese is wonderful. Semi-hard I think but melts very well. Is creamy and very nutty flavored.

Goat Cheese is something I really like. For a soft goat cheese, try the Humbolt Fog. It has an ash line down the middle and is tart. For a semi-hard goat cheese, Drunken Goat is very good.

I could go on and on! You just need to keep tasting and trying! That is the fun of it!

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St. Andre cheese is my all time favorite cheese ... made from cow's milk in France, it has a soft texture. A soft-ripened, triple-crème with a velvety-smooth texture, St. Andre is delicately rich and has a decidedly buttery flavor, which is what I enjoy most .. I use it as an extraordinary dessert cheese paired with fruit and a slightly sweet wine.

Melissa Goodman aka "Gifted Gourmet"

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I'm very partial to Brie.

For after dinner with port, a stilton is great.

And I've been known to shave a good parmegiano reggiano wafer thin and eat it on crackers. :smile:

Balderson's 7 aged 7 year cheddar is a nice tangy cheese that we really like as well.

The Whole Foods that recently opened here is very dangerous for me. They have an amazing cheese section, including a cheese aging room.

Marlene

Practice. Do it over. Get it right.

Mostly, I want people to be as happy eating my food as I am cooking it.

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Where are you? Do you have access to a serious cheese shop? That grocery store cheese is just generic medication when you need the hard stuff. One you get it you'll never go back to that gouda again (though you'll find other gouda that blows you away).

Get some Morbier or Taleggio, both semi-stinky and relatively widely available, great gateway cheeses to the washed rinds like Pont L'Eveque, Livarot or Gubeen. Humbolt Fog or anything by Sally Jackson (but especially her sheep's cheese) prove that there are people in the U.S. that make cheese as good as anywhere in the world.

Get some Gorgonzola dolce if you like blues and you're feeling Italian or, or make a pizza crust and melt Fontina, garlic and olive oil on top until the cheese just browns.

When I first started discovering cheese, I bought a quarter pound of serious-ass gruyere that changed my life. Not the mass produced stuff, it had sat in caves for a few months and when I ate it still chilled on sliced baguette, I said to myself: "this is the cheese I've been waiting my whole life for." Sliced on bread and melted under a broiler, it's astounding.

Scraped some aged provolone (not the regular stuff) over pasta tonight. The taste stays in your mouth for hours and in your mind for days. And you're damn glad it did.

Just find the best cheese place you can and eat your way through it. Even more than wine (I've drunk so much bad wine), learning about cheese is a delight.

I'm on the pavement

Thinking about the government.

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To paraphrase the old Yip Harburg lyric: When I'm not near the cheese I love, I love the cheese I'm near.

The beauty of cheese is not the superiority of any one kind of cheese, but in its infinite variety. Find yourself a good cheesemonger, get to know him or her, and let yourself go, tasting whatever you can afford.

Of course I have personal favorites, but they are quite dependent upon time and place. For example, right after I come back from an orchard with fresh picked Cox Orange Pippins, I want to cut one up and serve it with what I call "rat" cheese, a good, sharp, salty Canadian cheddar. But with those roasted beets I sliced up and adorned with walnuts, orange sections and vinaigrette, I'd prefer a feta or a creamy fresh chevre. With cocktails or a dry sherry, a rich, stinky sheep cheese, blue or not, works for me, with some olives and nuts to nibble, too.

That's just scratching the surface. Find that cheesemonger and explore!

Bob Libkind aka "rlibkind"

Robert's Market Report

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Thanks for all the lovely recommendations and advice (and the ones to come as well!). Busboy, I live in Seattle and have been tasting most of my cheese from the local whole foods. One of the service people at the cheese counter in the store is really friendly and very open to letting me taste anything that catches my fancy. She always tells me a little bit about what I'm tasting as well and never makes me feel stupid :).

I've also tasted most of the cheese from Beecher's at Pike Place Market here and enjoy those as well.

I don't know if the whole foods cheese section is a "serious" cheese shop or not :) but I do plan to taste my way through their selection until I find something better. That's why I started this thread, so I'd be able to see if they have the stuff that people claim changed their life :). I did get the Humboldt fog goat cheese sometime and realized what the big deal about goat cheese was (I had tasted some generic supermarket stuff before and wasn't terribly impressed). It was kinda nice stumbling upon something tasty like that :). I got it because I liked the whole spiel the cheese girl gave me about the cheese wheels being covered in ash and stuff!

Having started along this path (despite several objections from the dear husband who wishes I'd turn him onto a good diet instead :P ), am really looking f/w to the trip.

thanks,

w@w

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I choose my blue cheese by smelling them. If I can't smell them through the plastic wrap, they're probably not strong/flavorful/stinky enough for me.

I tend to get a lot of my cheeses at the local Whole Foods, too. They were tasting an Epoisses yesterday that was just wonderful (and which I didn't buy only because we happen to have a lot of cheese around right now) - smelled like old gym socks, tasted like heaven.

They also had what I call "painful cheddar": cheddar so aged there are crystals of lactic acid in it. I don't find this too often, and it's a real treat.

Marcia.

Don't forget what happened to the man who suddenly got everything he wanted...he lived happily ever after. -- Willy Wonka

eGullet foodblog

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I've seen a lot of cheeses I like mentioned in this thread, so one thing I'll add is, if you like anything smoked or barbecued or tandoori (etc.), try some smoked cheeses. I've liked smoked ementhaler ("Swiss") and cheddar since I was a little kid and my father carved them into different shapes for me and my brother. I still like smoked cheeses from time to time (gouda and mozzarella can also be good, for example). And then there's also Armenian string cheese, which you can have with nigella seeds only or with those plus hot pepper and some green leaf (I forget which) -- a non-smoked cheese but one that has some non-cheese flavors in it.

We've had some previous threads on cheese, which you might want to look through.

Michael aka "Pan"

 

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Ahhh a popular topic... I'm always glad to read about it. You may be interested in these threads on cheese which discuss some of the best. This one is about blue cheese, and this was one of my favorite threads, where we tried to limit our favorite cheeses to three.

Life is short; eat the cheese course first.

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Thanks for all the lovely recommendations and advice (and the ones to come as well!). Busboy, I live in Seattle and have been tasting most of my cheese from the local whole foods. One of the service people at the cheese counter in the store is really friendly and very open to letting me taste anything that catches my fancy. She always tells me a little bit about what I'm tasting as well and never makes me feel stupid :).

I've also tasted most of the cheese from Beecher's at Pike Place Market here and enjoy those as well.

I don't know if the whole foods cheese section is a "serious" cheese shop or not :) but I do plan to taste my way through their selection until I find something better. That's why I started this thread, so I'd be able to see if they have the stuff that people claim changed their life :). I did get the Humboldt fog goat cheese sometime and realized what the big deal about goat cheese was (I had tasted some generic supermarket stuff before and wasn't terribly impressed). It was kinda nice stumbling upon something tasty like that :). I got it because I liked the whole spiel the cheese girl gave me about the cheese wheels being covered in ash and stuff!

Having started along this path (despite several objections from the dear husband who wishes I'd turn him onto a good diet instead :P ), am really looking f/w to the trip.

thanks,

w@w

Seattle, eh? I just scored some excellent French washed rind stuff at a cheese shop in the Pike Place Market when I was visiting last month -- don't know if it was Beecher's, it was in the section across the street from the main building, near Fero's meats -- so you're in good shape for serious cheese-eating. I wish I could remember the name of the cheese, but I can't. The texture of a morbier but without the stripe.

Whole Foods has a decidedly mixed reputation, at least here in the other Washington. One store I go to is rather lame, the other one has a serious cheesemonger (mogress?) behind the counter and it's great. Trust your nose; if you like cheese enough to post on eGullet about it, you're already able to tell the good from the bad.

I'm on the pavement

Thinking about the government.

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Worm's Whole Foods is definitely a serious cheese shop. They have a fantastic selection. My current fave, which I get at PFI but they might also have at WF, is Affidelice de Berthaut. It's a Chablis-washed relative of Epoisses, and I find it absolutely irresistable. You need a separate fridge for it, though, as it's so...fragrant.

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They also had what I call "painful cheddar": cheddar so aged there are crystals of lactic acid in it. I don't find this too often, and it's a real treat.

Marcia,

You might like to check out Cougar Gold, produced by the WSU Creamery. They're not shipping right now due to weather conditions but, when they are, their cheese usually has the lactic acid in it.

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I second the manchego nomination. Look for a cheese aged 1 year or more. It's semi-hard, a bit crumbly, with a wonderful nutty flavor. There are some available that are aged only 3 months, and they're a whole 'nother animal. Nowhere near as tasty as the longer-aged stuff.

Enjoy!

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I was going to vote for Dutch cheese as well :biggrin:

another current favorite of mine is St Marcellin. It comes in a little earthenware pot.. it stinks.. but the flavor is not very pungent. It's extremely creamy, when it's at the right stage of ripeness, with a runny interior. It has the most wonderful round and satisfying mouthfeel...

I could use some, right now. :laugh:

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I adore cheese...in fact, half of my dinners consist of a cheese plate, a glass of wine, some chutney, and bread. Here are some of my favorites (I've added some "withs" as I think they enhance the flavour of the cheeses):

Blues: Stilton (Colston Bassett) with red onion jam, Gorgonzola Dolce with figs and honey, Cashel Blue (fairly mild and with a tang of sweetness, so I have this one just with some fruit)

Hard: Linconshire Poacher (a flavour which is a marriage of gruyere and cheddar), Comte (actually, this cheese is better to cook with than eat)

Rinded: Vacherin Mont d'Or (warmed in the oven and eaten fondu style with apples, potatoes and kielbassa sausage!), Wigmore (a british sheeps milk cheese which is runny even in the fridge)

Peculiar: Stinking Bishop (smells like the sneaker of someone with athlete's foot, tastes georgeous)

Goat: Purple Haze (a California aged goat...I like this even better than it's Loire Valley counterparts!)

Fresh: Mozzarella di Buffala di Campagna (with basil, salt, olive oil, San Marzano tomatoes of course)

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Really good Comte' is probably my favorite cheese of all!

Jenna, do you make your own red onion jam, or do you get it somewhere? I've never had the chance to try that. Is it made with raw or cooked onions?

Michael aka "Pan"

 

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I forgot to mention Beemster Triple Aged Gouda.  Aged 2 1/2 years, it's full of crunchy sweetness, a total pleasure to eat.

I do love aged Goudas as well. Also nice, is a young goat Gouda.

I'm also a fan of the Italian alpine cheese: Fontina Val D'Aosta. It has a nice nutty flavor and smooth texture.

I'm just starting to explore American artisanal cheeses but one good brand you may be able to get up there is Cowgirl Creamery---Red Hawk is a nice variety.

"Under the dusty almond trees, ... stalls were set up which sold banana liquor, rolls, blood puddings, chopped fried meat, meat pies, sausage, yucca breads, crullers, buns, corn breads, puff pastes, longanizas, tripes, coconut nougats, rum toddies, along with all sorts of trifles, gewgaws, trinkets, and knickknacks, and cockfights and lottery tickets."

-- Gabriel Garcia Marquez, 1962 "Big Mama's Funeral"

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My local Whole Foods always has a basket labelled "Cheese for One", which has small pre-wrapped portions of cheeses that are a more manageable commitment for someone shopping only for themselves. When I'm in the mood, I always buy a couple of small pieces and make myself a nice cheese platter for dessert with no waste whatsoever. Like I'm planning to this evening! :smile:

Katie M. Loeb
Booze Muse, Spiritual Advisor

Author: Shake, Stir, Pour:Fresh Homegrown Cocktails

Cheers!
Bartendrix,Intoxicologist, Beverage Consultant, Philadelphia, PA
Captain Liberty of the Good Varietals, Aphrodite of Alcohol

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There's still so many cheeses I haven't tried, but a recent discovery that just blew me away was Taleggio. It's creamy, a bit firmer than brie, a hint of sweetness, and just enough stinkiness to make it really interesting. A wedge of Taleggio, a big glass of a lusty spanish red, and I'm in heaven.

Runner up is blue, just about any, especially if melted with mushrooms and prosciutto and served on a baguette.

My local whole foods is doing a tasting of goat cheeses that I'm looking forward to as well.

:) Pam

Edited by pam claughton (log)
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I'm just starting to explore American artisanal cheeses but one good brand you may be able to get up there is Cowgirl Creamery---Red Hawk is a nice variety.

I love Cowgirl Creamery's cheeses, especially the Mt. Tam, which are indeed available at the Seattle WF.

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My local Whole Foods always has a basket labelled "Cheese for One", which has small pre-wrapped portions of cheeses that are a more manageable commitment for someone shopping only for themselves.  When I'm in the mood, I always buy a couple of small pieces and make myself a nice cheese platter for dessert with no waste whatsoever.  Like I'm planning to this evening!  :smile:

What a great idea!

I'm sure a lot of people are slightly put off buying cheese due to it either being prepackaged in far to large amounts or not wanting to ask for small amounts at the counter, or even the 'don't know how to pronounce it' dilemma.

My old favourite cheese shop has shut down now, I have had to start buying it from the supermarket, which is just not the same.

There is a french cheesemonger on the market who is ok though - always VERY ripe cheeses, handy for improptu lunches. I do like to support local cheesemakers when I can though. If you can get hold of some, try some Britich cheeses (Jennahan mentions a few good ones) - We do go beyond cheddar and Stilton, although of course good ones of them are excellent.

I love animals.

They are delicious.

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Delicious Cheese.

Me and the missus have..umm...struggled our way through a number of the Quebec Raw milk cheeses that are becoming more available on the Ontario side.

I used to say I'd never met a cheese I didn't like but I had to draw the line at cheese that smells like a mortuary, and usually tastes like what I think a cadaver would taste like. That said, they are interesting and stupefying in their popularity with certain people more hardcore than us. One such cheese was labelled as "mountain cheese", another had a cute logo of a dairy girl and a cow, and both tasted pretty much as described above.

But isn't that the true fun of cheese? So many different flavours and just as many people loving the taste of rotting flesh as those who like Kraft shredded jack cheese.

I AM a big fan of truely smoked gouda (i.e. not flavoured artifically), the manchego, near any brie or camambert, and old cheddars such as Balderson's 5 year. My budget usually allows for a few hundred grams of something we've never tried before, and Ottawa has great cheese in different locations.

This thread makes me hungry.

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