The cheeses we’ve tried.
T&M came down to DC to visit and to celebrate his birthday. They brought one of the wheels of cheese we made last October at Valley Shepherd.
Our own wheel of sheep cheese
Valley Shepherd
milk: sheep
type: gouda
aged: October to March
Our very good sheep’s mild cheese that we made at the Vally Shepherd Dairy in New Jersey. It has been aged in their cave since October. Very nice, with comments of: rich, creamy, earthy, leather
We had other cheese when T&M were down from NJ for his birthday.
Mount Tamalpais
CowGirl Creamery
milk: cow
type: triple cream
dairy: Straus Family Dairy
Buttery/cream, edible rind, umm…., that was good
Cabra la Mancha
Cowgirl Creamery
milk: goat
type: semi-hard
Goaty, firm, white unsalted/buttery
Pierce Point
Cowgirl Creamery
milk: cow
type: washed-rind
smooth, fruity, licorice, fermented, dried apricots
Jan 31, 2009: The NJ folks picked up the first 3 cheese wheels at Valley Shepherd Creamery from our Oct 19, 2008 cheesemaking class. The phone message said, “The cheese is yummy.” Cheese eating party to be planned down South. M said it had complex flavors.
We finally got a chance to stop by feast!, a cheese shop in Charlottesville, VA, and what a shop it was! The proprieter, Kate, was very knowledgeable and helpful on choosing the right cheese. We wanted local cheeses, and had the usual criteria: one brie/triple-cream, some sheep, and not much goat. Well, Kate certainly supplied us with what we wanted, and we ended up with this:
Delice de Bourgogne
milk: French cow
a very nice triple-creme cheese
Everona Piedmont
milk: Virginia cow
Grayson
Meadow Creek Dairy
milk: Virginia sheep
Very smelly. Did not get better with age. Creamy texture.
McClure
milk: Virginia cow
type: similar to Tallegio
Yes, very much like Tallegio (very smelly). NA liked this a lot.
Roaring 40’s blue
milk: Austrailian cow
We drove to Burlington for the January birthdays (Angela and Ken). We stopped by Harris-Teeter, which has a good selection of cheese (for a grocery store), and got Manchego (of course), and a blue that we hadn’t seen before.
Butter
Angela gave me a “cookbook” for Christmas, The Home Creamery, by Kathy Farrell-Kingsley. It describes how to make butter from whole cream, which we did, and it was delicious!
Goat Brie
Angela got this at Brookville in Cleveland Park. It was a hit, and everyone (but me) liked it. Well, I thought it was very good for goat cheese(!).
Manchego
Always a favorite.
Amish Blue
Actually it was from Wisconsin, but was a good blue.
One time we were at a restaurant talking to someone, and they said “I like cheese”, but we doubted them. Well, as you can tell from this blog that we really like cheese, so we decided to develop a quiz to see just how much someone really likes the stuff:
Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese. G. K. Chesterton
English author & mystery novelist (1874 – 1936)
New Year’s Eve before the Kennedy Center. Frigid weather, so cheese had to be easy. W got Italian cheese, Romano and Parmesan from our favorite Bethesda Italian deli, Cornucopia with owner Ibrahim “Ibo” Selmy. As an impulse item, I picked up a Triple Goat Brie Cheese in a cute little box from DC Brookville. For about $5, it was pure heaven to N and me — though is just not a goat fan. Fabulous texture. From a Canadian Dairy, Woolwich Dairy, that now makes some cheese in Wisconsin. Last week we saw it in Safeway.
Champagne complemented it all.
Only goat brie issue: it stained my stainless steel knives and our wooden cutting board. I emailed the dairy who told me that was new to them, but they took the numbers from the box to check into it.
Video From J in Washington State: Owner of Vinotique Wine Shop in Lakewood, WA from Tacoma News Tribune 1/12/2009
The 3 cheeses the owner would take on a desert island:
Saint Agur: A French blue cheese. “It’s so creamy. It’s the creamiest blue cheese ever. You have to eat it at room temperature.” ($26.99 a pound)
D’affinois: A French cheese. “It’s like brie on steroids. I love pears with it.” ($16.99 a pound)
Iberico: A Spanish cheese. “It’s made from sheep, goat and cow milk. The sheep’s milk gives it a nutty flavor, combined with the goat milk it’s… pungent. And the cow’s milk makes it so smooth.” ($22.99 a pound)
For beginners she suggests: gouda, danish havarti and Italian fontina.
I was in Silver Spring, so I went to Whole Foods. It’s not the best (they don’t cut the cheese off of the wheel like they do a real cheese shops, but it was the best I could do at the time). We also had Coffee Egg-nog with it.
Bel Paese
milk: Lombardy, Italy cows
Semi-soft, mild cheese. Nice.
Manchego
milk: Spanish sheep
As they say on Splendid Table, when you want to try out different cheeses, there’s more than just Manchego. But as I said, I was at Whole Foods, so I had to do my best.
Stilton
milk: English cows
A very good blue; we’ve had this before. I lost the label, so I don’t know what creamery this one came from.