Ok, so I'm trying more and more cheese, and it's fine, but I'm realizing that a lot of the cheeses that I get...errr...taste the same. Is that because my palate sucks? Or because the folks at the shop keep recommending similar kinds of cheeses? Or that, after they give me a couple to try, I just end up buying similar ones because those are the flavours that I like?
I am only getting cow's milk cheeses if that means anything.
Anyway, so a couple cheeses to report on (no surprise here - I haven't been keeping up with my blogging).
Parmigiano Reggiano AOC - Emilie Romagne, Italy
So this past spring/summer, I had a grand ole time planting herbs and veggies out on two (of my three - ha!) balconies. My front balcony had lovely flowers everywhere. My side balcony turned into a forest with a variety of lettuces, cucumbers, green onions, cilantro, rosemary, a couple kinds of mint, and a BUNCH of basil. So, here we are, getting into the fall and my BUNCH of basil has done very well for itself.
The decision was obvious. Make pesto.
So, I neded to get some parmesan cheese. (Apparently, I had forgotten that I'd bought some before)
The cheese as good. Salty, crumbly but still shavable. I don't know what more to say. It made my pesto tasty, but was also good to eat on its own.
Comte Reservation 18 mois - Franche-Comte, France
Apparently, I've also had this cheese before.
What does it mean that I'm starting to buy the same cheeses? Is my memory fading, or we're starting to hone in on things that I like?
Gruyere Kaltback grotte AOC - Switzerland
20 years ago, I went to Gruyere. I ate their cheese. I wasn't particularly impressed (although I didn't dislike it either).
It tasted pretty great this time around. I'm really starting to think that a lot of hard cheese taste very similar (or at least, the ones that I like/buy taste similar). All sorta salty. All tasting like...errr...cheese. This one wasn't like, orange-cheese cheese taste (yes, I know, descriptive vocabulary is so sophisticated), but the hard white-ish-cheese cheese taste. I need to figure out what those two descriptors actually mean (to someone other than me). I think the former is a little bit more rubbery/plasticy. I think that's a comment on the taste, not the texture. But "rubbery/plasticy" as a flavour doesn't sound appealing, but I don't mean it to sound that way.
More info here.
14 Arpents - Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean, Quebec
A soft cheese from Quebec, this was kind of so so. Not super flavourful in any way, but also not offensive. I think maybe I like hard cheese more than soft cheeses? Or maybe that's because the flvours are typically less intense for hard cheeses so they're more palatable for me? I mean, I started my exploration with soft cheeses specifically because (in my head), I thought they were the types of cheeses that I needed to conquer. The 'real' cheeses that 'real' cheese people like. I don't know how accurate that is, but now that I've tried a couple different types of cheeses, I'm finding that I'm more excited to try different hard cheeses, than to go back to the soft ones.
More info here.
L'Hercule de Charlevoix 24mois - Baie-Saint-Paul, Quebec
A hard cheese from Quebec, I can't really recall if anything stood out about this one.
Here are some tasting notes from the shop:
Fromage a pate ferme. Croute lavee. Pressee et cuite. Lait 100% jersey. Presure animale du veau. Fin 2e. debut 3e service. Vin: Riesling. Sang ovese. (Google translation here)
Piave vieux - Venice, Italy
Another hard cheese, this time from Italy. This one was another one of those "tastes like a good white-cheese" cheeses. Nothing particularly remarkable, but nothing offensive either.
Reflecting on all of this, maybe I haven't progressed in my cheese journey. I'm still reverting back to getting 'boring' cheeses. I mean, one could see that I'm just getting the things that I like (the safe cheeses without a particularly strong flavour and are similar to the limited cheeses that I had growing up), but you could also see that my palate isn't expanding.
I think this was a good cheese, but I guess I wouldn't be clamoring to get it again.
More info here.
