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This page contains an archive of all entries posted to 365 Cheeses in the Favorite Cheeses category. They are listed from oldest to newest.
Cheese Type is the previous category.
Milk Type 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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Favorite Cheeses Archives
Mario Batali and others call it "the undisputed King of Cheeses"--Parmigiano Reggiano. I would not agree with the undisputed part--I do know some Frenchmen and this cheese isn't French--but I do say yes to its royal pedigree. Most often used grated or shredded because of its granular texture, grana, parmigiano is great shaved thin to top salads and pasta or broken into small shards for a cheese plate.
The first comment I thought I would write about this majestic cheese is the taste of salt. After all, it is used time and again to punch up other tastes with its saltiness. But tasting parmigiano again and alone, I was surprised that salt was not the first flavor on my tongue. First comes the texture. The peaks of the granules brush the tongue and the sides of my mouth. Then the taste buds around my tounge perk up. I sense the sweetness of milk. Then the tang of a cheese like Swiss Emmentaler followed by a slight nuttiness. Only then does the saltiness emerge. Occassionaly my tooth will hit a grain of saltier, harder cheese tucked into a larger bite.
Like a lot of Americans my first experience of "parmesan cheese" came out of a green cardboard can with a yellow smiling top. When my family had spaghetti with store-bought sauce we always topped it with the yellowy-white cheese. I liked it but then I didn't know any better. After tasting the real thing I could never go back. (That's not 100% true. I promise I will never buy the stuff but if I am visiting my parents and we eat spaghetti at home, there is a nice nostalgic comfort in the combination of Ragu and Kraft Parmesan, much like the affection I will always have for Kraft Macaroni & Cheese Dinner--not the best of its kind but a comfort from childhood.)
I have tried Argentinian "parmesan" and it can be an adequete substitute in cooked dishes. But its texture is worlds apart from the true thing. It lacks the marble-like layers of grana that flake away when cutting into real parmigiano.
Try the big PR, Parmigano Reggiano. Truly one of the world's best.
Name: Parmigano Reggiano
Type of Milk: Cow, Part Skim, Unpasteurized
Type: hard
Produced in: Italy, Emilia-Romagna
Date Produced: Unknown
Date Purchased: 10/23/2006
Date Eaten: 10/24/2006
Purchased Where: United States, North Carolina, Chapel Hill, A Southern Season
Price: $15.99/lb.
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.
Yes! This Red Leicester is a beautful cheese and so far my favorite new cheese I discovered this year. Not too sharp. Perfect bite. Lingering flavors of delicious cheese. Port wine flavors. "Addictive and distinctive" says Fleming. "Not a phony cheddar, it tastes like what cheese should taste like--really great cheese!" I agree.
Seek this cheese out this holiday season. You will be hooked.
Name: Rothbury Red Leicester
Type of Milk: Cow, Unpasteurized
Type: semi-hard
Produced in: England, Rothbury
Date Purchased: 12/082006
Date Eaten: 12/09/2006
Purchased Where: United States, North Carolina, Chapel Hill, A Southern Season
Price: $15.99/lb.
The United States produces some amazing cheeses. Award-winning Humboldt Fog is one of them. Named for the morning vapor rising from the ocean in Humboldt county of Northern California where the cheese is produced, Humboldt Fog is first and foremost a chevre or goat's cheese, with the distinct characteristics of a dry, chalky, ghost-white young curd and slightly acidic goat milk tang. Immediately identifiable by its medium-sized wheel, center vein and outer rind of ash, and ripening white goat curd from the outside in, Humbodlt Fog can be quickly picked out of a line up (at least I am yet to see its Doppelgänger). The riper this chese gets, the more the drier inside becomes soft, creamy and runny. Ripe is good. Ripe is more flavorful, more complex, more pungent. Humboldt Fog is one of my favorite goat cheeses and one of my favorite cheeses, period.
Name: Humboldt Fog
Type of Milk: Goat, Pasteurized
Type: soft ripened
Produced in: United States of America, California, McKinleyville, Cypress Grove Chevre
Date Purchased: 12/22/2006
Date Eaten: 12/23/2006
Purchased Where: United States, North Carolina, Chapel Hill, A Southern Season
Price: $19.99/lb.
If Parmigiano-Reggiano is the King of Cheeses, Parmigiano-Reggiano Vacche Rosse is the Emperor. Made from a once near-extinct breed of red dairy cows, the Reggiana, Vacche Rosse tastes the way the cheese did in the days before World War II, richer, higher butter-fat content grana cheese produced in smaller batches. Can I taste the difference between modern Parmigiano-Reggiano made from more productive black and whites and the red cow product? It is hard to say. Red cow is damn fine. As wonderful as every other properly handled Parmigiano. Yes, I will say it is better. But...
Red Cow is expensive. I mean the most expensive cheese I've ever paid for, and there weren't any truffles or Sauterne inside. At Christmas time sales I found it for $31.99 per pound, well twice what I'd pay for a standard Parmigiano-Reggiano. Unless it's a very special occassion, like Christmas or the day I win the lottery, I will stick to the normal Parmigiano-Reggiano.
Name: Parmigiano-Reggiano Vacche Rosse, Parmigiano-Reggiano delle Vacche Rosse, Red Cow Parmesan Reggiano
Type of Milk: Cow, Unpasteurized
Type: hard
Produced in:
Date Purchased: 12/22/2006
Date Eaten: 12/23/2006
Purchased Where: United States, North Carolina, Chapel Hill, A Southern Season
Price: $31.99/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)
After a bite Fleming said, "Wow! This is now my favorite blue cheese!" I can't say Rogue Creamery's Smokey Blue cheese knocked off my title holder but it is a strong young contender. Last week I heard Steve Jenkins mention this cheese on the radio so I put it on my shopping list and sought it out.
The first bite for me was wonderful but ambivalent. "Is it smoked blue cheese or a blue smoked cheese?" Smoked cheeses are particular favorites of mine since the flavor is usually a single note--smoke. Smokey Blue is different. The blueness, the tang of piquant blue mold and the rich creamy cheese create a harmonic of powerful flavors. Smoked over burning hazelnut shells the cheese has a great balance between the forces of smoke and mold. This cheese has a kick but it is well-worth finding and tasting.
Name: Rogue Creamery Smokey Blue
Type of Milk: Cow, Pasteurized
Type: semi-soft blue
Produced in: United States of America, California
Date Purchased: 12/27/2006
Date Eaten: 12/31/2006
Purchased Where: United States, North Carolina, Chapel Hill, A Southern Season
Price: $19.99/lb.
The French gastronome, Brillat-Savarin, called Époisses "roi des fromages", "king of cheeses". Though not the sole crown of European cheeses, Époisses deserves to sit on a throne. When sold in Europe this cheese is produced from raw cow's milk but the version for sale in the U.S. is pasteurized. This process kills some of the flavor but there is still plenty to go around.
The big argument I find when reading about this and other washed rind cheeses is "When is it at its peak?" Affinage is the French term for aging cheeses to their best ripeness, but when that precise moment occurs is a matter of taste. Époisses starts out semi-firm but softens with age to the point of runniness. Wait too long and the beneficial forces of bacteria that aided in the process turn against the cheese and leave it unedible. Some prefer the cheese soft but still a little firm but as John Cleese's character says in The Cheese Shop sketch, "I like it runny."
The cheese produced by the Berthaut company comes in a niffty wooden round box.
The rind gets its orange color from being washed with Marc de Bourgogne, a distilled pomace wine of Burgundy.
This is a great cheese! I cannot wait for my next trip to Europe to try the unpasteurized variety.
Name: Époisses or Époisses AOC or L'Époisses or Époisses de Bourgogne or Epoisses
Type of Milk: cow's, pasteurized
Type: semisoft
Produced in: France, Burgundy
Date Purchased: 2/13/2007
Date Eaten: 2/15/2007
Purchased Where: United States, North Carolina, Chaple Hill, A Southern Season
Price: $13.99 a piece
I don't know what Saint Agur is the patron saint of, but if it is soft creamy blue cheeses he was a good choice for the job. The eponymous cheese is a member of the gorgonzola family, a rich creamy French blue veined cheese that has become one of my favorite blues. I couldn't stop eating it. The buttery cheese is a perfect balance to the sharpness of the blue mold. I ate almost an entire baguette with this awesome cheese.
As a side note I believe the saint in question is the prophet Agur of the Old Testament who supposedly wrote the 30th chapter of Proverbs which has a lot to say about eating and sin.
Verse 8: Remove far from me vanity and lies: give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with food convenient for me.
Verse 20: Such is the way of an adulterous woman; she eateth, and wipeth her mouth, and saith, I have done no wickedness.
Verse 33: Surely the churning of milk bringeth forth butter, and the wringing of the nose bringeth forth blood: so the forcing of wrath bringeth forth strife.
Name: Saint Agur or Saint-Agur or St. Agur
Type of Milk: cow's, pasteurized
Type: semi-soft, blue
Produced in: France, Auvergne
Date Purchased: 2/13/2007
Date Eaten: 2/15/2007
Purchased Where: United States, North Carolina, Chapel Hill, A Southern Season
Price: $16.99/lb.
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.
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.
Imagine, if you will, a school. An elite school. In the northern Italian countryside, this school takes in the children of only two families. But this school is even more exclusive than that. Not every child of these two families is invited to attend. Only the best and brightest are accepted and not all of students will make it through the rigorous process to graduation. The school is G. Cravero in the town of Bra in Piedmont and the students belong to the cheese families Parmigiano Reggiano and Grana Padano. (No jokes about the milk products that come from Bra or I will keep you after class.) G. Cravero was named in 1855 after the founder Giorgio Cravero whose descendants keep the "G" in the family by naming a son Giorgio or Giacomo, alternating with each generation. They do not produce the cheese; they select the best and mature it in ideal surroundings until it has reached its height.
I have written about Parmigiano Reggiano twice before (cheese no. 1 and 53). How does Cravero's Parmigiano Reggiano compare to others I've tasted? First the texture is the perfect texture for PR. Not too dry so that it still has a great mouth feel but still aged enough so that it shreads well over pasta. The taste was not like other PRs I've encountered. To say it tasted a little like pineapple may sound pretentious, like a wine snob comparing a glass to a everything but grapes, but that was the first word that popped in my head at first bite. Slightly sweet with a detectablt level of acidity. Pineapple. One of my favorite fruits and a welcome flavor here. Pineapple is a symbol of hospitality afterall. For a price between the average PR and the top-of the-chart PR Vacche Rosse, Cravero was my favorite of the three.
Name: Parmigiano Reggiano, Cravero or Cravero Parmigiano Reggiano
Type of Milk: cow's, pasteurized
Type: hard
Produced in: Italy
Date Purchased: 9/28/07
Date Eaten: 10/01/07
Purchased Where: online, www.artisanalcheese.com
Price: $20.00/lb.
Montgomery's Cheddar is a tradtional farmhouse cheese from southwest England's Somerset, home of the town of Cheddar. The Montgomery family are one of the last producers to still use calf's rennet to separate the curd from whey of the unpasteurized milk. Aged over 14 months the cheese has a brittle texture producing shards instead of clean slices.
This is an amazing cheddar. Fleming said this is one of her favorite cow's milk cheeses. Because of the active cultures the flavors can vary greatly from cheese to cheese and from tasting to tasting of the same cheese. Worth finding and keeping and tasting over and over again.
Name: Montgomery's Cheddar
Type of Milk: cow's, unpasteurized
Type: semi-hard
Produced in: England, Somerset, North Cadbury, Manor Farm
Date Purchased: 10/1/07
Date Eaten: 10/4/07
Purchased Where: online, www.artisanalcheese.com
Price: $30.00/lb.
If I had paid for it I would like it just as much. Bartlett Blue came as a free extra in my last order from Artisanal Cheese and I cannot thank them enough. It is one of the best blue cheeses I've had this year. The texture is semi-soft, slightly crumbly but not brittle. The cheese is modeled after Wensleydale and captures the charm of that cheese at its finest. The producers of Bartlett Blue are Jasper Hill Farms of Vermont and they know how to craft complex and delicious cheese.
Name: Bartlett Blue
Type of Milk: cow's, unpasteurized
Type: semi-soft, blue
Produced in: United States of America, Vermont, Greensboro, Jasper Hill Farms
Date Purchased: 10/09/2007
Date Eaten: 10/11/2007
Purchased Where: online, www.artisanalcheese.com
Price: $22.00/lb.
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