Alternative Valentine's Day Cheese - go stinky!

Ah yes, Valentine's Day.  A day of panic for men everywhere.  A day of hopeless expectations for everyone, in a relationship or not!  Might I recommend cheese as an alternative to chocolates (or perhaps as a first course to chocolates)?

I was going to introduce you to an herb crusted Corsican cheese called Brin d'Amour.  I mean - it's the obvious choice, right?  French love cheese.  But really, isn't that a bit tooo obvious?  Maybe I'll save that one for a time of year that needs a little extra love.  Instead, I'd like to suggest that in the same way that two lovers can share a plate of garlic pasta and share the bad breath, they can share some incredibly rich and pungent blue cheese with the appropriate accessories for an alternative, and creative cheese course.  Darling Husband and I tested this out tonight with a powerful Spanish Cabrales.

Look at the incredible blue marbling!  The amount of penicillium mold in this paste makes it very tangy and sharp, but with a dark sweetness hiding underneath.  This is a very rich cheese, and a bit challenging on its own.  When I did the initial nibble, I was almost overpowered, as was DH.  The goal for tonight was to remember to do pairings and not just gobble the cheese off the board, and so when a bit of honey was drizzled on the cheese which was softly spread on the bread everything just popped!  The underlying sweetness of the cheese came back to the surface, and was so much more accessible to the palate.  Dried apricots and a little port rounded out this perfect little dessert.

Enjoy your weekend with those you love.  Share a laugh, create a memory, and if you do it with cheese, all's the better!

Cheese for a Wednesday, pt. 16 - Majorero

As we hurtle toward 2010, I look forward to many more Wednesday night cheese discoveries!  I think it only fitting that the last Wednesday night cheese of 2009 be something festive, spicy, creamy, exotic and dee-licious.  From the Canary Island of Fuertaventura comes Majorero.  This rich, creamy, smooth goat cheese is a beautiful white on the inside - par for the goat course, I think - with a beautiful red rind, courtesy of spicy pimemton pepper.  The pepper was originally used to keep the bad bacteria out during the aging process.  The fabulous side effect was a delicious spicyness that permeates at least 1/4" into the cheese.  The rich paste keeps it from being too overpowering, and don't think it's anything like Pepperjack (though I actually love a good Pepperack cube from time to time!).

This cheese is named for a word for special shoes made from goat leather (um - ew?).  Majorero is also the name given to the current residents of this Canary Island.  (Many thanks to Wikipedia for this amazing photo of the island - another place to put on the dream travel list!)  I think that I'm definitely becoming a fan of the cheese of the Canary Islands.

The happy goats on this island are protected/herded by local dogs of the same name (you must click this link for a picture of the cutest puppy ever!), and something about the grass on the island and the (perhaps inbred) goats themselves, the milk produced on this island is especially high in butter fat, which makes the cheese all the more tasty.

We enjoyed this cheese first with a tasty hard cider, and then with a delicious Tempranillo red (made from traditionally Spanish grapes.  Go figure.).  We finished up the ends by melting them onto a piece of toast for a tasty, spicy snack.  A great cheese for the last Wednesday of the year!

Cheese for a Wednesday, pt. 10

Here we are again.  A Wednesday night - the least exciting day of the week - always in need of a little bit of a perk-up.  Tonight we are featuring aged sheep's milk cheese from Spain named Ombra.  The rind on this is hard as a rock, but such a warm brown color, that I had to bring it home.  And, did I mention that it smells amazing!  Rich, salty, nutty.  Yum!

Because this cheese is aged at least 4 months, it is beautifully crumbly (more time aging = more moisture loss = crumbles!) with little air holes throughout the paste.  But even dry, it sports the oily sheen of a good sheep cheese.  It is so light and delicious, though.  Not a bit oily on the tongue.  It isn't overly salty, and I swear I can taste the fresh spring grass that the sheep were grazing on in beautiful Catalonia.  I can't tell you how much I need to go there!

Anyway, this cheese is subtly complex.  There is a sweetness to it - butterscotch maybe?  And near the rind, I swear I could taste a little citrus - grapefruit?  Further research was necessary - a few more bites.  Yup, a definite sweetness at the end, and it smells of the meadows.  Sigh.  I really likes this cheese - just don't eat the rind.  To hard.

This cheese would be amazing on a cheese plate - a little cube of surprise to enjoy with a Zinfandel. (Which I did!)  I also ended up grating a huge amount of it to put on a dinner of ravioli, broccoli, peas and a little olive oil infused with garlic, salt, pepper and basil.  A great alternative to Parmesan. Yum!

I'm dreaming of a cheese trip to Spain!  How about you?

Packed in Rosemary, Flown in from Spain!

Continuing on the theme of wrapped and packed cheese for this week, for your drooling pleasure, Romao!  This sheep's milk cheese from Spain is rubbed in olive oil and rosemary during its eight months in the cave.  This cheese is 27% milk fat!  It is definitely a bit on the oily side, or at least the chunk I got from the end of a wheel was.  But you'd be oily too if you were marinated in olive oil  for eight months!  It looks really shaggy with all the rosemary stuck to the oil and cheese.  Romao comes in one pound wheels from the region of Cuenca, Spain in the center/east of the country.  According to Wikipedia (I know, I know...), this region is full of gorges, which I'm sure create a very exciting climate for the sheep!  This is definitely a sheep cheese.  Full of its own oils and nuttiness, it has a complexity beyond the rosemary.

Anyway, the rosemary flavor doesn't permeate the interior of the paste, but like the other cheeses this week, the flavor does go at least 1/2 inch in.  Because it is aged for as long as it is, it has that crumbly, almost crunchy texture.  The oil bath does reduce the crunchiness a bit, but it doesn't drown it out completely.

Perhaps the thing I was least expecting is that the shaggy rind wipes right off, due I suppose to the olive oil mixed with the rosemary crust.  Originally, I cut the rind off, but after the Darling Husband swiped the last TWO pieces at the same time, I needed to figure out a way to feed my own cheese hunger, successfully wiping it all off, and munching down on the completely edible rind dimpled with impressions left by the rosemary leaves.  Sigh.

Oh, and very tasty with a Cabernet Franc from the Santa Ynez Valley, though I'm sure a Spanish red wine would be perfect! Ole.