Moscow Food Co-op Food Review
Cheese
by Vicki Reich, from the October 2000 Newsletter
Cheese, glorious cheese. God, how I love it. Umm, runny brie or better yet some Saint Andre on Ak-maks and a nice glass of wine….
So when someone suggested we taste test cheese, I jumped all over the idea. I wanted to try all the cheeses we carry, but I wasn't sure how comparing the taste of our wonderful Montengola Blue to our delicious Smoked Gouda would really tell us anything.
So I decided on the basic cheese: cheddar.
Do you realize how many different kinds of cheddar we carry? Lots. Seventeen, to be exact. We have 5 organic cheddars, 3 soy cheddars, 1 almond cheddar, 1 rice cheddar, 1 goat milk cheddar, 1 fat-free cheddar, and 5 cow milk cheddars. That is a lot of cheddar, and I couldn't imagine tasting all 17 at one sitting, so I kept it to just 8.
The Hog Heaven Handspinners gathered, as usual, on Tuesday night for the tasting. We did a blind taste test, of course, and after spending 20 minutes in the kitchen cutting all that cheese into little chunks, we were ready to begin. Everyone was very eager to dig in, and when the wine began to pour (to cleanse our palates, of course) the tasting began.
There were several clear favorites in the group, but the goat cheddar and the Tofurella didn't go over too well (although Sugar, the only vegan of the bunch, swears the Soya Kaas Cheddar style is a much better alternative cheese).
I thought the goat cheddar might have fared better with other goat cheeses rather than comparing it to cow's milk cheese since it has a very goaty flavor.
Of the cow's milk cheeses, the real winner was the Vintage Irish Cheddar. It has a wonderful sharp fruity flavor with a beautiful buttery coloring. It was by far the most flavorful and can stand alone as a cheese-and-crackers cheese.
Another favorite was the Horizon Organic Low-Fat Sharp Cheddar. No one even guessed it was low-fat while we were tasting. It has a dry mild flavor and a creamy consistency. The low-fat version was actually preferred to the full fat variety. As an every-day-grate-it-on-your-burrito kind of cheddar, our medium cheddar took the tortilla, so to speak. It is a fairly mild, salty, and dense cheddar. If you prefer a sharper cheese than our sharp cheddar would also make a good everyday cheese.
By the end of the sampling, all of us were stuffed but happy. We couldn't even fit in dessert (a mainstay of spinning night), but we were all looking forward to our next shopping trip to the Co-op to pick up a hunk of our favorite cheese.
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