Stinky Cheese Tuesday, October 7th, 2014

Image/photo

Good grief!  Two days between SCT and the post.  I’m slacking.  But you have a macro photo, taken with a real camera and even edited a little bit to remove dust spots.  I’m trying to make up for it.

This week saw three hard cheeses, all of which were mighty tasty and well received.

Going from left to right, we start with Pecorino Ginepro which did not have a creamery of origin, but simply said “Italy”.  This was the day’s clear favorite.  It is similar to a Romano cheese but is soaked in Balsamic vinegar and crusted with juniper berries.  It has a mildly nutty flavor with a bit of the savory vinegar on the front end, while the juniper berry after taste left several people exclaiming, “There’s the gin!”

In the middle is my favorite, the Piave Vecchio.  This one also just cryptically said “Italy”, but being P.D.O. we can at least narrow it down to the Belluno area.  This particular variety of Piave was “Oro del Tempo” or “Golden Time” meaning that it had been aged fro at least twelve months.  This is a very hard cheese.  I worked up a sweat cutting this one.  It was so very worth it, though.  It has a flavor that is quite similar to Parmigiana, but lower in salt content and with a slightly less nutty taste to it.  A very mild and fresh tasting cheese, this would have been wonderful drizzled with a touch of honey.

Lastly we have Appleby’s Cheshire.  This is the last of the traditionally made Cheshires.  Cheshire cheese is similar to Cheddar in texture due to them both going through a cheddaring process, but Cheshire is made using a low acid rennet as a starter.  This gives it a much milder flavor, without nearly as much of the tang and bite that Cheddar has.  Factory produced Cheshire is typically made with a high acid rennet which makes it taste much more like a Cheddar than it should.  Appleby’s Cheshire is still made in the traditional manner and wrapped in cloth for aging.  That was one thing about this particular cheese that I had to warn people about.  There were errant threads still stuck to some of the pieces that had rind on them.  An absolutely delightful cheese.