Sunday, 28 November 2010

A Surprise of Cheese


One of the nicest things about going away is, of course, coming back. And among the most intriguing are those things you forget about, refuse to throw away, however uninteresting, and toss in a corner. I DO have my own corner for experiments now.
Well, after a week of eating unfathomably good food in the Loire Valley this past week, I started cooking goose a dozen ways for D'Artagnan (to be posted anon) and I spotted a little cheese I forgot about a couple of months ago, that just didn't taste that great.
Lo and behold, it matured beautifully. Nutty, with a nice tart bite. Not unlike Parmigiano at all. Fabulous in slivers, grated I'm sure will be great. It's a local milk, raw. And disproves my theory that you can't make decent cheese in very small batches. This was just two gallons. About 3/4 of which you see in my hand. Probably cost me more than $20 a pound, but it is really fine, and utterly local. Natural bacteria, no starters, conditioners or other crap. Voila. C'est le terroir.

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