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This page contains an archive of all entries posted to 365 Cheeses in the Soft category. They are listed from oldest to newest.
Semi-Soft is the previous category.
Washed Rind is the next category.
Many more can be found on the main index page or by looking through the archives.
© 2008 Kirk Samuels
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Soft Archives
La Tur is one of my favorite cheeses. The best way to describe it is like butter with an attitude. At the proper temperature and ripeness it is soft, smooth and spreadable but still dense with pungent, ripe flavor. It is sold in small 4-inch disks about one inch deep placed in pleated paper like a cupcake. The outside has a light white undeveloped mold and the inside is the color of cream. It goes well with a warm French baguette. We also tried it with two condiments, a Spanish quince paste, Membrillo, and fig jam. The fig jam didn't work. It was not sweet enough to compete with the stronger cheese flavors. The quince paste was delicious though, sweet but not cloying, a little acidic, a little tart.
La Tur is a triptych blend of cow, sheep and goat milk. It is pastuerized but at the lowest temperature allowed by law which helps retain some of the flavors of unpasteurized cheeses. It is aged for about two weeks before being shipped around the world.
If you can find it buy it. Did I say it was one of my favorites? Yes I did.
Name: La Tur
Type of Milk: Cow's, Sheep's and Goat's, Pasteurized
Type: soft
Produced in: Italy, Alta Lange, Caseificio Dell'Alta Langa
Date Produced: Unknown
Date Purchased: 11/4/2006
Date Eaten: 11/5/2006
Purchased Where: United States, North Carolina, Raleigh, Whole Foods
Price: $19.99/lb.
Steve Jenkins put it perfectly in his essential cheese book, Cheese Primer, "Explorateur is to cheese what Champagne is to wine." Explorateur is ultra-decadent. This triple-cream cheese oozes creaminess and effervesce. The tangy, mushroomy outer white mold plays perfectly with the buttery, light interior. It pairs well with Champagne. A brilliant cheese!
The name comes from the first United States satellite in space, Explorer I, launched in the 1950s shortly before the cheese was developed.
Name: Explorateur
Type of Milk: Cow, Pasteurized
Type: Soft Ripened
Produced in: France, Petit Morin
Date Purchased: 12/22/2006
Date Eaten: 12/23/2006
Purchased Where: United States, North Carolina, Raleigh, Whole Foods
Price: $9.99 for 9 oz.(255g)
The name of these cheese tells you a lot about it if you can translate from the Portuguese. I will try my best. "Amanteigado" means "buttered up" and the cheese has a rich, buttery aroma and flavor. "Cardus" is a type of thistle traditionally used in Portugal as a vegetable rennet to coagulate the milk and start the cheese-making process.
The small golden round also came swaddled in gauze bandages requiring it to be unwrapped like the Invisible Man before eating.
The washed rind gives this soft, almost runny cheese a tart yet creamy flavor. A nice and rare find.
Name: Amanteigado Cardus or Cardus or Amanteigado Mini
Type of Milk: sheep's, unpasteurized
Type: washed rind, soft
Produced in: Portugal
Date Purchased: 2/13/2007
Date Eaten: 2/15/2007
Purchased Where: United States, Online Order, www.murrayscheese.com
Price: $7.99 each
The French epicure Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin once compared a meal without cheese to a beautiful woman with one eye. I might compare a meal with the cheese named after Brillat Savarin (pronounced "bree-ya sav-a-ran") to a beautiful woman with all her body parts intact, enhanced to perfect proportions. Like Explorateur and Saint André
, Brillat Savarin is a triple cream, rich and buttery. In a bling taste test I don't know if I could differentiate one from another but I doubt I would care. All are outstanding.
At first glance the cheese appears deceptively solid but as soon as it enters your warm mouth it begins to melt and release its ripe flavors.
Name: Brillat Savarin or Brillat-Savarin or Brillat Savarin, Affinage or Brillat Savarin Affiné
Type of Milk: cow's, unpasteurized
Type: soft
Produced in: France, Ile de France
Date Purchased: 2/13/2007
Date Eaten: 2/15/2007
Purchased Where: United States, North Carolina, Chapel Hill, A Southern Season
Price: $22.99/lb.
Castelbelbo is brought to us by Caseificio dell' Alta Langa, the same folks who make one of my favorite cheeses, La Tur. It is not nearly the same quality as that fabulous cheese but no slouch compared to most you will find. Castelbelbo is a bloomy rind, soft cheese made from a blend of three milks. Light and creamy but not complex Castelbelo is a decent everyday sort of soft, spreadworthy Italian cheese. I served it on some great rosemary crackers that have become my new favorites for uncomplicated cheeses.
Name: Castelbelbo
Type of Milk: cow's, goat's and sheep's, pasterurixed
Type: soft
Produced in: Italy, Bosia, Caseificio dell' Alta Langa
Date Purchased: 2/13/2007
Date Eaten: 2/15/2007
Purchased Where: United States, North Carolina, Chapel Hill, A Southern Season
Price: $14.99/lb.
"This cheese makes me think of Italy," our friend Ann said. I understand her point. Robiola is not one of the spectacular cheeses that is brought out on special occasions. It is a cheese for every day.
In short Robiola is Italian cream cheese. Soft, spreadable and a little bland, it is a good cheese for breakfast to spread on a croissant and have beside your cappucino. There are different producers of Robiola and the one I found was definitely a commercial cheese factory turning out a lesser quality cheese. There are suppsoedly better examples out there.
It is not a great cheese but if you've breakfasted in Italy a few times it may bring back memories.
Name: Robiola
Type of Milk: cow's, pasteurized
Type: soft
Produced in: Date Purchased: 2/13/2007
Date Eaten: 2/15/2007
Purchased Where: United States, North Carolina, Chapel Hill, A Southern Season
Price: $4.99 each
I bought Tia Anna's Queso Fresco on a whim. I was in Whole Foods planning the evening's meal and looking for a nice cheese to incorporate into a chicken burrito. In the packaged cheese section I came across this new product, a locally produced fresh queso. What the heck, I thought, I'll give it a try. My previous experiences with queso fresco have not been impressive. Earlier cheeses have been bland, bland, bland with a rubbery, boring texture. After the first taste of Tia Anna's I said, Hey now, this is something to pay attention to. The overwhelming flavor impact is freshness not complexity. It tastes fresh, like cold bright, new, whole milk straight from the cow herself. The texture is crumbly but soft. It is refreshing over a salad of greens and delicious in my chicken burrito. Unlike many American-made, factory produced quesos frescos Tia Anna's melts well making the perfect choice for stuffed chiles or baked enchilladas. I will difinitely buy it again.
Name: Tia Anna's Queso Fresco
Type of Milk: cow's, pasteurized
Type: fresh
Produced in: United States of America, North Carolina, Gibsonville, Callico Farmstead Cheese LLC.
Date Purchased: 6/2/2007
Date Eaten: 6/6/2007
Purchased Where: United States, North Carolina, Raleigh, Whole Foods
Price: $9.99/lb
Coupole is one of a few artisinal cheeses made by the Vermont Butter and Cheese Company, a company in Vermont that makes butter and cheese. The name comes from the French word for "dome" and pictures of the cheese on the producer's web site show
a rounded top to the cheese which did not survive in the mail order shipment. Produced from pasteurized goat's milk and sprinkled with ash Coupole starts out slightly firm and sliceable. As it ages the cheese softens and takes on a creamier, even runny texture.
I bought two of these little domes/disks trying one four days after the first. In that time Coupole took on an oozy edge with a still firm center.
The flavor is delicious--fresh with a mild goaty bite. The older version is creamier, almost as if melted. The taste was much like one of my favorite cheeses, La Tur, a blended milk cheese, but being strictly goat, Coupole packs a bit more bite and lacks some of La Tur's smoothness. Despite that it is a great goat's cheese and can convince people who think they don't like goat cheese to reconsider that opinion.
Name: Coupole or Vermont Butter & Cheese Company, Coupole
Type of Milk: goat's, pasteurized
Type: soft
Produced in: United States of America, Vermont, Vermont Butter and Cheese Company
Date Purchased: 6/8/2007
Date Eaten: 6/12/2007
Purchased Where: United States, Online, www.murrayscheese.com
Price: $11.99 each
Yes, it's a cute little white pyramid, pleasingly packaged in bleached waxed paper, calling out from behind the glass display cooler with puppy-dog eyes that say, "Take me home." But this is not just a cute pound puppy, it's a rich pedigree of traditionally hand crafted cheese of the finest order.
Unwrapping the cheese from it's paper, you discover not a pure white coat (unless you are taking it home very young and fresh, maybe a little under-ripened) but a palette of white and grays, tans and creams, painting the bloomy rind. Do not cut into the cheese until it has had some time out at room temperature. Ten to fifteen minutes should do. Once warmed up a little cut off one of the pyramid's four sides to expose the golden treasure of the pharaohs. The flavor and texture show the age of this adolescent goat cheese. Ripe, it will run a little around the edges and have a little sweetness on its way to richer depths. A very good cheese and for the price worth buying often. Try slices of this delicious chevre with crisp apples or even on top of a burger off the grill. Can pair well with Sauvignon Blanc if you favor drier wines or a Riesling if in a sweeter mood. Cypress Grove Chevre are the same folks who bring us another of my favorite cheeses, Humboldt Fog.
Name: Cypress Grove Chevre's Pee Wee Pyramid or Pee Wee Pyramid
Type of Milk: goat's, pasteurized
Type: bloomy rind, soft
Produced in: United States of America, California, Cypress Grove Chevre
Date Purchased: 7/2/2007
Date Eaten: 7/4/2007
Purchased Where: United States, North Carolina, Raleigh, Whole Foods
Price: $7.99 each
or "Dairy of a Mad Goat Lady"
And by "mad" I mean crazy enough to try to make a fresh camembert from North Carolina goats. And by "crazy" I mean crazy successful! Chevre Camembert is such a rare treat in the United States. Soft and buttery, young and slightly mushroomy, this young camembert-style cheese with an edible white rind represents the best of this style of young bloomy cheeses, alive with rich flavor. From a small goat dairy in Randolph county North Carolina producing a handful of small-batch artisinal chevres, Goat Lady Dairy Chevre Camembert stands out even among cow's milk cheeses of the same type. The goatiness is subtle but the camembertiness stands out. Seemingly pricey by the pound, $24.99, a disk is less than half that weight at around $10.00 each making it comparable in price to many lesser cheeses. It quickly became a favorite.
Name: Goat Lady Dairy Chevre Camembert
Type of Milk: goat's, pasteurized
Type: bloomy rind, soft
Produced in: United States of America, North Carolina, Climax, Goat Lady Dairy
Date Purchased: 7/3/2007
Date Eaten:7/4/2007
Purchased Where: United States, North Carolina, Raleigh, Whole Foods
Price: $24.99/lb.
I've held off on writing about Celebrity Dairy goat cheese for a while. It is the most famous of the locally produced cheeses of the Triangle area of North Carolina and maybe that is why I thought it deserved special mention and careful review. I also knew it was a cheese I could readily obtain so I would wait until my options for cheese purchases narrowed and it would mark the point in the journey where my job of finding great and unique cheeses got a lot harder.
I have been familiar with Celebrity Dairy cheese for many years but to be honest I have not tried it for some time. It was one of the first goat cheeses I tasted and it really helped me enter the bigger world of cheese outside cow's milk. But now I come back to it after having tried some of the best goat's milk cheeses of France and Spain, Portugal and Italy, Vermont and California. The experience of those cheeses made coming back to Celebrity Dairy Chevre a little less welcoming.
Do not get me wrong. Celebrity Dairy Chevre is a wonderful cheese, a fresh goat cheese like many of the best of similar style in France. But compared to a Humboldt Fog or a Coupole goat cheese, chevres like Celebrity Dairy are prepubescent sisters of the buxom college coeds. A lot of people of talked to think they do not like goat's milk cheeses. My guess is the only ones they've tried are those like Celebrity Dairy chevre. It can be a little acidic, the tangy bite of goat's milk singing through. To the uninitiated this is a new experience that their history with cow's milk cheese does not prepare tem for. It really can be an acquired taste.
But one thing Celebrity Dairy Chevre is great for is as an ingredient in other dishes. I baked a Leek and Goat Cheese Tart with a pastry crust, sauteed leeks in butter and thyme, a mixture of sour cream, egg and heavy cream, and good-sized chunks of Celebrity Dairy Chevre. Accompanying the tart was a salad of mixed greens, pinenuts, thyme and chevre in a balsamic vinegrette. Served with a cold Pilsner beer or crisp Riesling it was a great summer dinner.
Celebrity Dairy Chevre comes in different flavors: plain, confetti - a mix of different pepper corns, party - the everything bagel of goat cheese, and dill. I didn't find the herbs and spices necessary and think they tended to mask a lot of the chevre's charm. Still, I am lucky to have access to this local treat.
Name: Celebrity Dairy Chevre
Type of Milk: goat's, pasteurized
Type: soft
Produced in: United States of America, North Carolina, Chatham County
Date Purchased: 7/14/2007
Date Eaten:7/15/2007
Purchased Where: United States, North Carolina, Raliegh, Whole Foods
Price: $16.99/lb.
Cambozola and I have had a strange past. Something about the pre-printed Bavarian-blue cheese label seemed too processed, a little too contrived to me. The name had a fake, manufactured quality to it. I thought of it as a stuck up girl in the cafeteria who had no real grounds for her airs. With that prejudice I avoided even approaching her to find out if my assumptions were correct. Finally, having taken out all the other local girls and needing a date for Sunday night I decided to give Cambozola a try. We hit it off swimmingly.
Labeled as a triple cream, this cheese bears more of the qualities of enriched camembert-like cheeses than of its blue relatives. It is mild for a blue and may be a good starting point for anyone who thinks they do not like blue cheeses. Germany is not famous for its cheeses, sitting at the foot of the great Swiss cheeses to the south. Many might find Cambozola too processed but I really enjoyed every bite.
According to the manufacturer's web site the name is a tribute to a 4th century Bavarian settlement called Cambodunum. The name of the producer Käserei Champignon, "Champignon Cheesemakers" or "Button Mushroom Cheesemakers", confused me for some time. I was unclear if "champignon" was a reference to the blue fungus seeded into the soft cheese. Instead the name came about from the mushroomy smell that many of the bloomy white rind cheeses have and that being the main style of cheese the Käserei produced, they took the French word for mushroom as their brand.
Name: Cambozola
Type of Milk: cow's, pasteurized
Type: soft, blue, bloomy rind
Produced in: Germany, Bavaria, Lauben, Käserei Champignon
Date Purchased: 9/23/07
Date Eaten: 9/23/07
Purchased Where: United States, North Carolina, Raliegh, Whole Foods
Price: $14.99/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
Brie is a region of France outside of Paris and cheese produced there is called Brie. Being over 5000 square kilometers in size there are subdivisions of the region and the Brie cheese form. Brie de Nangis hails from the town of Nangis just as Brie de Meaux, perhaps the most famous Brie cheese, comes from the town of Meaux. Most people recognize any white disk of soft yellow cheese as "brie" or "camembert" and they would stand a good chance of identifying Brie de Nangis correctly.
The flavor is buttery and creamy with an earthy, mushroom aroma. Having endured two long voyages, one from France and another from New York to North Carolina, my cheese held up fairly well, suffering only from mild temperature changes and being a few days past its prime.
Name: Brie de Nangis
Type of Milk: cow's, pasteurized
Type: soft, bloomy rind
Produced in: France, Brie, Nangis
Date Purchased: 9/28/07
Date Eaten: /9/30/07
Purchased Where: online, www.artisanalcheese.com
Price: $14.25/lb.
It could be called "Brie de Coulommiers" and people would have an easier time identifying this cheese. Going by only it surname, Coulommiers, after the town in Brie, where it is produced, has all the characteristics of other Brie cheeses: white disk of bloomy rind; buttery, pale yellow center; softening to a gentle ooze as it ages. I was served Coulommiers in a bistro in Denver recently and it was one of the best things I ate that evening, thought that owes more to the quality of the other courses than any inherent qualities of the Coulommiers.
Name: Coulommiers
Type of Milk: cow's, pasteurized
Type: soft, bloomy rind
Produced in: France, Brie, Coulommiers
Date Purchased: 9/28/07
Date Eaten: 9/30/07
Purchased Where: online, www.artisanalcheese.com
Price: $15.25 each
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