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This page contains an archive of all entries posted to 365 Cheeses in the N category. They are listed from oldest to newest.
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Many more can be found on the main index page or by looking through the archives.
© 2008 Kirk Samuels
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N Archives
You either love or hate blue cheese. I love it. I love it by itself. I love it on bread. I love it cooked or baked with other cheeses. Neal's Yard Dairy Colston Bassett Stilton does not disappoint.
The colors of this blue cheese are not milky white with bluish streaks but a gradation of brown to buttery yellow speckled with gray to green pocks of mold. The cheese crumbles into large pieces making it great for bread or salads. We ate it last night in a green salad with pear and walnuts, a classic pairing for blue cheese. The cheese was wrapped in plastic from the store and when unwrapped the Stilton had an overpowering odor that I mentioned in the Fourme d’Ambert article. But this time I let it sit out unwrapped by itself for about 20 minutes and the obnoxious smell had evaporated and the cheese tasted great.
This leads to my general rules for the best storing and serving cheese:
1) Whenever possible store firm cheeses in paper instead of plastic. Cheese needs to breathe and plastic wrap can suffocate a cheese. I don’t always follow this rule, in fact, paper wrapped cheese is currently the exception in my fridge but I can see the difference in how well it works.
2) Allow cheese to come to room temperature before serving. Unwrap the cheese and let it sit out. Ten to twenty minutes is usually enough. Cold cheese hold on to its flavor instead of releasing it in your mouth. If the cheese gets too warm, fat may come to the surface or it may dry out. Unwrapping the cheese lets any built up odors or “cheese exhaust” escape and should return the cheese to a state of balance.
Overall the Stilton from Neal’s Yard Dairy Colston Basset had a great flavor and texture and when properly cared for, produced great results.
Name: Neal's Yard Dairy Colston Bassett Stilton
Type of Milk: Cow, Pasteurized
Type: semi-soft, blue
Produced in: England, Colston Bassett, Nottinghamshire, Colston Bassett & District Dairy, by Richard Rowlett & Billy Kevan
Date Produced: Unknown
Date Purchased: 10/23/2006
Date Eaten: 10/24/2006, 11/5/2006
Purchased Where: United States, North Carolina, Raleigh, Whole Foods
Price: $17.99/lb.
Hoop cheese is cheese curd that has been pressed in a round hoop-like mold. Depending on the curd it is either fresh, white, moist and unsalted or firm, orange and cheddar-like. North Carolina Hoop cheese is the latter, fresh cheddar curds pressed in molds then covered in red wax. The flavor and texture is like fresh cheese curds, even a little squeaky. It used to be sold in country stores next to the cracker barrel. It was cut to order by a device called a hoop cheese cutter, a round pedestal with a blade that swung out and down to cut off a measured amount of hoop cheese.
North Carolina Hoop cheese locally is a good price. Compared to factory cheese in the grocery store aisle it is incredibly more flavorful and tastes, well, like cheese. This may sound strange, but most cheese hanging in bags in the dairy aisle is insipid, tasteless, rubber.
Name: North Carolina Hoop Cheese
Type of Milk: Cow, Pasteurized
Type: semi-hard
Produced in:
Date Produced: Unknown
Date Purchased: 11/9/2006
Date Eaten: 11/13/2006
Purchased Where: United States, North Carolina, Raleigh, Whole Foods
Price: $6.99/lb.
Nostrano, a cheese from the town of Fiavè in the Trentino region of Italy, has a unique flavor that makes it a nice addition to any Italian cheese tray. The cheese has an Emmental-like texture. The taste has a hint of gruyere but with some other subtle flavors I find difficult to describe. I would serve it with mild hams or mortadella so as not to overpower it.
Go ahead an try it. I'm not saying it will become your new favorite cheese but it will be a nice change from the norm.
Name: Nostrano Fiavè
Type of Milk: Cow, Pasteurized
Type: semi-hard
Produced in: Italy
Date Purchased: 11/25/2006
Date Eaten: 11/28/2006
Purchased Where: United States, North Carolina, Raleigh, A Southern Season
Price: $11.99/lb.
I love the way this English Cheshire from Neal Yard Dairy crumbles. Not like a cheddar with large curd, Appleby's Cheshire has curds like a cottage cheese--small pressed orange lumplets that cling to each other for dear life. The color is an uneven pale, natural-looking orange. The flavor is complex but not difficult to munch on. An easy snack cheese made by master cheesemakers, the Appleby family. Check out the great photos on the cheesemaker's, Neal Yard Dairy, web site.
Name: Neal Yard Dairy Appleby's Cheshire or Appleby's Cheshire
Type of Milk: cow's, unpasteurized
Type: semi-hard
Produced in: England
Date Purchased: 1/11/2007
Date Eaten: 1/16/2007
Purchased Where: United States, North Carolina, Chapel Hill, A Southern Season
Price: $18.99/lb.
From the mind of Murcia, the town and region of southeastern Spain, the same region that gave us Charo, comes a wonderfully simple aged goat's cheese called Naked Goat. Its Spanish name, queso de Murcia curado, translates simply as Aged Cheese of Murcia while the English plays on the pure, raw milk origin of this delightful cheese. I even like the label with a cartoon goat, naked of course, though I am not fooled by the playfullness and simplicity. This is a deceptively fine cheese. Aged for about 6 months Naked Goat has many of the same qualities of the great Spanish sheep's milk cheese but a solid, rich goat's milk flavor.
Name: Naked Goat or Murcia Curado DO (or DOP) or Queso de Murcia Curado
Type of Milk: goat's, unpasteurized
Type: semi-hard
Produced in: Spain, Murcia, Mitica
Date Purchased: 1/28/2007
Date Eaten: 1/30/2007
Purchased Where: United States, North Carolina, Chapel Hill, A Southern Season
Price: $15.99/lb.
Farmstead Noord Hollander is an extra-aged, four year-old gouda. The color is rich butterscotch with similar notes of flavor. Noord Hollander brings an intensity of flavor like other aged goods, balsamic vinergar or good Kentucky bourbon. The slow drying over the years has left a salted nutty bite to this intense gouda that can probably only be consumed in small amounts. Fleming said, "I love that crunch at the end of a bite. Almost like it has its own cracker." A prefect description. A super cheese. I recently saw a 7-year-old gouda in the cheese shop and am aching to compare it to Noord Hollander.
Name: Noord Hollander or Noord-Hollander or Farmstead Noord Hollander Gouda
Type of Milk: cow's, unpasteurized
Type: hard
Produced in: The Netherlands
Date Purchased: 1/28/2007
Date Eaten: 1/30/2007
Purchased Where: United States, North Carolina, Chapel Hill, A Southern Season
Price: $15.99/lb.
From the sheep that bring us Merino wool comes a lovely ewe's milk cheese from Portugal that makes us feel as warm as a sweater. The taste is nutty and milky with the right amount of age and salt. One of my favorite Portuguese hard cheeses.
Name: Nisa
Type of Milk: sheep's, unpasteurized
Type: hard
Produced in: Portugal, Alentejo
Date Purchased: 2/13/2007
Date Eaten: 2/15/2007
Purchased Where:United States, Online Order, www.murrayscheese.com
Price: $21.99/lb.
Fresh cheese. Certainly not something we come across too much in in the U.S., even in higher-end food outlets like Whole Foods. So when I saw the sign for Chapel Hill Creamery's New Moon that noted the cheese had been aged for only "9 days" I told my dred-locked cheese monger to wrap one up. New Moon viewed from the top has a bloomy white rind resembling a full moon on a cloudless night or as Fleming described it, "about the size, shape and color of an albino Ding Dong". Upon getting it home I couldn't wait to cut into the fresh creamy goodness. Major disappointment followed.
I screwed up in leaving the store without first inspecting my purchase closely. Had I given it a thorough exam of smell and touch or at least asked the cheese seller to do the same, I would have spotted that this New Moon was on the wane. Bloomy white rind cheeses like Brie, Camembert and New Moon can go through a similar transformation: from firm and underage, to softening and almost ripe, to soft and starting to ooze, to super-soft and really oozy, to hardening from the outside in, to hockey puck. If cared for improperly, some cheeses can skip the soft-stage all-together and go straight into an awful childhood of aromas of rotten-mushrooms. The cheese I took home hadn't been abused but it certainly was well past the 9 day mark. The rind was chalky, the center dry and unappealing.
Knowing the temperamental nature of some cheeses and the demands of retail, as well as wanting to support my local cheese producers, I decided to give New Moon another shot. I went back the following week and saw the same sign describing the youthfulness of this cheese. This time I asked the cheese seller when the small white disks had come in. "I'm not sure," he said. "I know it wasn't this week because we didn't get any this week." I asked him how they looked and if they were ripe. He bent down, peering into the case, and shook his head. That was all I needed. I passed on New Moon that day.
Eventually almost two months later I decided to seek New Moon out again. This time I had better luck and better cheese. Again I asked the right questions but the answers I needed to hear. The New Moon was ready to take home. Still a little young I kept it cool in my cheese fridge for a day before bringing it out to breathe two hours before dinner. I could tell from the pale peach fuzz mold, the soft center and the milky aroma that the New Moon was ready. As the knife cut through the center I could see it was perfectly ripe, at least to my liking. The edges still had some solidity while the center flowed like honey. The taste was good. Not as rich as a camembert but buttery with a hint of grass.
New Moon appeared in full form on the menu again just last night at a local food bloggers’ dinner in Durham, NC with special guest Michael Ruhlman, author of some of my favorite books on the craft and careers of passionate chefs, The Making of a Chef, The Soul of a Chef, and The Reach of a Chef. He announced a new work available soon titled The Elements of Cooking, modeled somewhat after Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style, the bible of writing well. It reminded me of a quote by, I think, George F. Will who said wanting to meet a writer because you like his work is like wanting to meet a cow because you like her milk. If her milk made great cheese I’d want to meet her too.
Name: Chapel Hill Creamery's New Moon or New Moon
Type of Milk: cow's, pasteurized
Type: soft, bloomy rind
Produced in: United States of America, North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Date Purchased: 7/22/07, 9/15/07
Date Eaten: 7/22/07, 9/15/07
Purchased Where: United States, North Carolina, Raleigh, Whole Foods
Price: $5.99 each
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