Curdled Milk ... Is There Anything It Can't Do???

Behold the Power of Cheese ... (J&B's house; Lesser Stinktown; February 24, 2008)

The day did not begin with dreams of cheesemongering ... it began like many a Sunday around our house:

"Did we win the Powerball?"

"Nope."

"There go our dreams of early retirement...again"

So there I was, lurking around the DIS and catching up with some long over-due responses that I owed to my food lovin' friends, when a very nice reader popped in and informed me of a contest that the DIS was sponsoring... a restaurant review contest. The winner would receive a two-night, three-day trip to WDW where he/she would have dinner with the official review guru of the DIS pod-cast group. Even better, the winner would get to broadcast his/her review on the podcast!

My scalp tingled...my hips twinged...my fingertips started to itch...point me to the DIS-commandments, otherwise known as the official rules, so that I may begin my quest to win the battle royale of food and verse.

Can you imagine my devastation approximately 14.5 minutes later when I was informed by no less a being than the DIS review guru himself that: a) there were no official rules posted anywhere; b) there was no official deadline; and c) the contest was over anyway.

Oh, my friends, I fell hard from the euphoric mountaintop of potential victory all the way to the slough of defeatism and despair. I'm not enough of an ego-maniac to assume that I would have won the contest, but I think I could have had a good shot at being a finalist.

I coulda been a contender.

Jay, being the dear, dear hubba that he is, suggested that some cheese might make me feel better. So we left the house and its bitter memories for a few hours and did some shopping and then later that evening during the Oscar Meyers we gorged on accessorized artisan cheese and followed it up with some creamy butternut squash soup.

So for your reading and future cheese-tasting pleasure, I present to you now ...

Improvised Cheese Plate a' la Armpeeet du Midwuest

The first cheese is quite possibly my all-time favorite - Fromager d'Affinois. It's a French cow's milk cheese - a double creme cheese with a white rind that is relatively stench-free. This is a fantastic, soft, creamy, ripened cheese that I prefer at room temperature - once it's warmed up a bit I just smear it across a slice of sourdough bread and I'm in taste bud heaven. I could eat this every day and never get tired of it. The texture is silky and the taste is slightly salty with just a hint of mushroom - think brie but much more soft and creamy and subtle.

Best Cheese Evah - so good it deserves its own plate!

We had three more cheeses that did their best to distract me from the taste treat discussed above; in Mickey's left ear is Ossau-Iraty; in his right ear is Comte', and filling out the rest of Mickey's head is a big slice of Double Creme Brie.

We don't spend much time on presentation when it's just the two of us, so it's perfectly understandable if you're underwhelmed by our lack of cheese artiness; but trust me when I tell you that if you stop by the house some day for a wine / port / cheese party we'll make it pretty.

So let's talk about these cheesie choices ... Ossau-Iraty is a French cheese made from ewe's milk. It has a very delicate flavor - smooth and slightly sweet with just a suggestion of nuttiness. There is no bitterness to this cheese at all and it has a firm texture without being hard or dry.

Comte' is a French cheese made from unpasteurized cow's milk and if I remember my reading correctly, it is the most highly produced cheese in the country. This cheese's rind is usually a dusty-brown color - the cheese itself is a pale, creamy yellow. The texture is firm yet flexible - there is a hint of oiliness - and the taste is mild, slightly sweet, and nutty.

The Double Creme Brie was a new choice for us - the only other time we've ever had brie is en croute, which is taaaaaaa-stteeeeeee. Brie is also a soft cow's milk cheese from France (I'm sensing a trend here...) and it is pale in color with a slightly grayish tinge underneath its white rind. The rind is meant to be eaten with this cheese, which presents a problem for me because I don't like rinds. If this cheese tasted the way the rind smelled, no one would ever eat the stuff because it smells like Grandma's mildewed basement. You know...the dark, dank basement with the giant crickets drinking homemade wine and playing poker with the bloated water bugs. Yeah, that's the way this rind smelled.

The other thing I noticed with this Brie is that no matter how long it sat out, it never really softened up - it spread like butter that's forgotten how to melt. And it had a very bitter aftertaste that I just couldn't get past. The lesson for me is that brie needs to be baked into pastry in order to be enjoyed properly.

So, what sort of "stuff" did we have to dress up our cheese? Well, apart from the fresh sourdough bread that we picked up from the St. Louis Bread Company earlier in the day, we had some crackers, dried cherries, lingonberry preserves, and Il Balsamico (30 year).

Fix your own damn cheese plate - what do you think this is, a restaurant?

I can tell you that the Fromager needs nothing but sourdough bread, or maybe a cracker if you run out of bread. The preserves and the balsamic paired exceptionally well with both the Ossau-Iraty and the Comte, as did the dried cherries. The brie was good spread on the sourdough, but it was so thick and so bitter that I found myself avoiding it after two tries - it just couldn't compare with the Fromager.

Every cheese-fest needs a beverage. In this instance there were two because I wanted port and Jay wanted wine.

Drinkie, drinkie...

My beverage of choice was R. L. Buller & Son's Premium Fine Muscat - Australia. Actually, this is not a port - it's a dessert wine that's very similar to a young, tawny port. It has a gorgeous, deep amber color with a spicy aroma. The taste is rich - like liquid toffee - and it pairs unbelievably well with every cheese we tried this evening. For the cost conscious among us (and who isn't to some extent) this bottle sells for about $13 - an exceptional bargain for the quality of the beverage. And just for grins: this was given a 92 rating by Wine Spectator, and a 97 rating by Robert Parker.

Jay opted for Indigo Hills Pinot Noir - California, 2004. As I've said many times before, I'm not a big red wine drinker. However, I did give this a try and as red wines go I thought it was good. The aroma was subtle and it seemed like I picked up hints of cherries and maybe even some strawberries. The taste was strong but not overpowering and it didn't coat the tongue like so many red wines seem to do. Jay thought it was a terrific choice with the cheese and I thought it was a bold choice on his part - I'm a traditionalist and if I don't drink a dessert wine with cheese I default to a white wine every time.

Once we'd had our fill of cheese we decided to have some warm, comforting soup to round out the evening. Our choice, organic butternut squash soup that we purchase at the store and re-heat once we're ready to eat. I add about 4 ounces of heavy cream to the soup while it heats to give it a creamier, less intense flavor. I like to eat mine just like that, but Jason adds curry powder to his.

Creamy...butternuttery...squashie...

And there you have it! An unplanned little cheese-fest that filled my belly but didn't really do much to dispel my disappointment. Eh, the world is filled with disappointments ... thank gawd it's also filled with cheese! I recommend three out of the four cheeses we tried on this evening - I just can't bring myself to endorse the brie. I really do think it's better when baked into pastry and all melted and gooey.

See ya soon with more cheesie goodness - thanks for reading!