What Does It Hum When It Reaches This Age
It seems like the last time we visited the cheeses it was exactly a month ago but in reality less time has passed. I just haven’t gotten around to writing up the last cheese installment until now. I also seem to have skipped over a lyric of the Hard Cheese of Old England song so I thought I’d go pick that up. Anyway, cheeses!
This “week’s” cheeses came from Plum Market, which is like Whole Foods but on the west side of the city. If you are inside the store you couldn’t tell the difference. They do have a delightful selection of wines and beers and yes, we are drinking Cupcake wine. I mean, Cupcake! Winery! But of course I had to pick them up. (the white is a Chardonnay and the red is a pitite Shiraz). We also picked up some bland white crackers, some garlic cheese crackers and had the ubiquitous Ritz at home. Then it was the right time to pester the Cheesemeister (who gave us nice little chunklet sized tastes of cheese) for cheese recommendations. This is what he came up with (going from left to right):
Neal’s Yard Mongomery’s Farmhouse Cheddar: Oi that’s a mouthful of a name. In the Cheesemeister’s opinion, because I asked, this is the best cheddar ever in the history of cheddar, or at least among the cheddar they sell at Plum Market. It certainly is a cheddar with FLAVOR and it’s nicely sharp too without being crumbly. We kinda liked that aspect of the cheese but in our not Cheesemeister opinion, Kerrygold Cheddar is still the way to go. NYMFC cheese completely overwhelmed the white (wines and crackers) and even the Ritz crackers. However the garlic cheese crackers fought back deliciously for a pleasant pairing. The cheddar got an honorable mention for cheese of the night.
Cahill’s Irish Porter Cheese: This cheese tasted a little bit of dark beer but not as much as one would hope given it’s called ‘Irish Porter Cheese’. The last time we had a beer cheese we were also kinda disappointed at how unbeery it tasted, but this does not mean we will give up our search for delicious boozy cheese! This porter cheese was a nice quasi soft cheese (like a Monterrey Jack) and it had more porter flavor than the German Beer Cheese had beer flavor. Or German flavor. The Porter Cheese didn’t go great with either of the wines but if you had to have one of them with the cheese, the red was mildly less worse off. The Ritz is the cracker to sit this cheese.
Mitica Forever Cheese Canpo De Montalba is another cheese with a mouthful of a name. Sadly, it’s also kind of a forgettable cheese since I had to pop to the pic to remind myself what exactly this cheese was. Mind you, it has flavor – one that is fungal and a little sharp like a faint Asiago and it was a nice munching cheese. But ultimately it was one of those cheeses where you bite into it and think “Hmm, this is nice” and then go on about your day. It paired well with the white wine but the Cheese Garlic crackers owned the cheese, the Ritz tangled buttery with cheesey and the bland white crackers didn’t do anything for this cheese at all. We failed at crackers for this cheese.
Triple Brie was, surprisingly, the cheese of the night. TheMan hates brie but he really dug this cheese. Apparently it’s 70% awesome or something which makes it triple delicious. Or…yeah. Anyway, this was an extremely smoooooth cheese, almost buttery. It was also less fungal brie (the characteristic which TheMan hates about bries) and very inoffensively lightly cheesey. Hint of brie if you will. I had forgotten until I got to my notes that we baked up some french bread and the brie sat the warm bread like a thing which sits hot bread well. Man that was tasty. The brie also made up for the porter cheese in that you could have either wine with it and things were happy.
In actuality, we gave the favorite cheese of the night award to the Cheese Garlic crackers. Man those were tasty!
2008: I tell you, banjo-fiddle-flute “Cold Mountain Rain” beats the hillbilly hell out of 70s 8-track special.
2007: And making soup, but that bit of industry was sort of a spontaneous accident. What? There was a carcass in the fridge.
2006: Putting up the nativity scene is one of my favorite childhood Christmas traditions.
2005: Will Joy come off my shit list? Probably not unless this turns out to be really amazing chicken.
2004: No cheese humming today
2003: Yes, sandals. Shut up, it’s sandals until the things rot off my feet alright?