Cheese Fest

Archive for the ‘4 Stars – Very Good’ Category

Pecorino Con Tartufo

Sheep’s milk cheese with truffle.

A pale yellow, soap bar shaped cheese dotted with bits of black truffle.

This is fairly young, soft and creamy compared with unflavoured pecorino. The flavour is also quite mild, but this is a good thing. Too strong and it would overpower the flavour of the truffle. It is delightfully creamy with a wonderful truffle flavour.

Delicious! A delightful and different addition to any cheese board.

Purchased from Cheese Please, Lewes.

Reviewed by Nick & Olympia, 2011.

(4/5)

Norfolk White Lady

With its sticky, goopy, pale ivory paste and dusty white rind, this looks very much like a traditional French Camembert. Norfolk White Lady Indeed, the the similarities go beyond, the visual. Taste wise, it has a very strong Camembert like flavour, with one major distinction, the presence of a slight goatiness that gives away its origins as a sheep’s cheese. Another difference is its lack of the unmistakable Camembert “knock you over when you open the fridge door” smell. Instead, there is little smell, with only a slight hint of ammonia from the rind.

Purchased from Bakers and Larners, Holt.

Reviewed by Nick & Olympia, 2012.

(4/5)

Pié d’Angloys

Gourmet cheeses from the supermarket can often be disappointing. The fridges they use are set at temperatures dictated by store policy rather than cheese storage ideals. Sell by dates are set way before necessary, just to be on the safe side. The result is that often supermarket cheese won’t ripen.

Pié d’Angloys seems to be immune to this supermarket abuse and ripens at around the sell by date regardless of how it’s kept.

Typical of Cistercian methods, this is wine washed cheese. The rind is sticky, a pale orange colour and dusted in flour. The inner paste is a soft ivory colour and deliciously gooey when ripe.

Like a good Camembert, it becomes very smelly as it approaches ripeness (even through unopened packaging), but the flavour is not as strong. It has a decadent, but delicate creaminess, with Camembert like pungent overtones. A truly enjoyable and reliable alternative to supermarket Camembert. Additionally, like most washed rind cheeses, it produces the wonderful perfumed flavours when eaten with wine.

Purchased from Tesco.

Reviewed by Nick & Olympia 2012.

(4/5)

 

Sussex Mansion

Mmmmm tasty!

Though nothing outstanding in its own right, this Cheddar like cheese, tastes at least as good as the proper Cheddar cheese made in the gorge. Having said that, it’s not actually a Cheddar (by definition). It does, however, taste remarkably similar.

A delicious cheese, strong flavour that has substance, but with no acidity, yet tangy with milky overtones.

Purchased from Cheese Please, Lewes.

Reviewed by Nick & Olympia 2012.

(4/5)

Tommes De Savoie

A smallish round wheel with a hard white and grey mouldy rind. According to our sources  ”Tommes de Savoie” is made by a wide variety of producers covering a large area of France close to the Italian border. It varies considerably depending upon where it is made and what time of year.

Tommes, is a generic name for a cheese made from the skimmed milk left after the cream has been removed to make butter. As a result, they are relatively low in fat.
Its pale yellow paste is rubbery in texture with small amorphous holes in it.

It has quite a pungent aroma with a strong ammonia smell on the rind. Reminiscent of other alpine cheeses with satisfying farmyard flavour. Very similar to Fontina in taste, though not as strong, with a slight bitterness with creaminess of Morbier.

Purchased from Brighton Sausage Co.

Reviewed by Nick & Olympia

(4/5)

Gorgonzola

Gorgonzola is possibly the most famous of Italian blue cheeses. It is reputed to be very strong, but its reputation is ill founded even in its strongest form.There are three main varieties of gorgonzola: dolce (meaning sweet or mild); piccante (meaning strong or pungent) and stagionata (meaning seasoned or mature). The dolce is very mild indeed, subtly blue, very creamy and unoffensive to those that may not like stong cheeses. Its piccante cousin is visually greener with much more pronounced veins of mould. Taste wise, it is sharper and more acid, but with the same creamy, gooey texture. Though its name might suggest a stronger flavour, it is only slightly stonger, it’s the acidity is the main difference. Stagionata is much firmer with the same amount of mould as piccante, but it has now lost its acid bite. Instead, it has become much more flavoursome, with a good robust blueness, yet mellow.

Reviewed by Nick & Olympia

Dolce (4/5)

Piccante (3.5/5)

Stagionata (5/5)