Cheese for Dinner

Earlier this week, Rob splurged by ordering some cheeses from Murray's Cheese down in The City. They arrived yesterday via FedEx in a fancy cooler pack. Rob and I are not cheese connoisseurs by any stretch of the imagination, but Murray's may have started us down an expensive and expansive path.

Tonight, we dined on cheese and bread, accompanied by carrot-daikon salad, which made an effective palate cleanser. The bread was a freshly-baked tortano from Ithaca Bakery; this is a giant Italian doughnut-shaped potato loaf. It had a firm crust, chewy center, and neutral taste, perfect for hobnobbing with cheese.

And as for the cheese, well, it was eye-opening. Here's what we had:

Malvarosa: (top left in the photo) Save the Guirra sheep by eating this cheese! Apart from being environmentally friendly, made as it is from the milk of a (formerly?) endangered species, this cheese has a remarkable hint of butterscotch on the uptake and a faint garlicky finish that lingers. The center is mild and smooth, and the rind is a bit more pungent with spots of mold. All in all, this cheese is quite subtle and goes beautifully with bread, but I found that the softer notes got eclipsed by the other two stronger cheeses on our menu.

Manouri, Mt. Vikos: (top right in the photo) Described as a "sheep chevre", this milky-white cheese is fresh and luxurious and intense and pure. Imagine taking a barrel of raw whole milk and condensing its creamy goodness into a cylinder the size of a hockey puck. The texture is dense like mozzarella but not as elastic, so when you take a bite, there is a momentary resistance before whole thing melts in your mouth and transports you to dairy heaven. This one was Rob's favorite.

Crottin de Chavignol: (bottom in the photo) To me, this was the best of the lot. Whereas the previous two are undeniably eating cheeses, this one is meant to be savored. Incredibly rich and complex, this cheese starts out in the mouth with a champagne-like tang, which slowly morphs into a salty earthiness and finishes with a floral bloom as it is swallowed. It comes in a nugget barely two inches wide, but this is more than enough; this cheese is best experienced in small portions, lest one's taste buds go into sensory overload. However, that didn't stop us from scavenging for the fragments that were dislodged when cutting into this slightly crumbly cheese. A real treasure.