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Fri, 20 Jun 2003

Three Cheeses

I love cheese. I have no particular interest in gambling or the lottery, but I agree with a friend who, at dinner, brought up a particular television commercial for the California Lottery, which shows a dairy case with a wonderful assortment of cheeses, and the voice over, presumably of a winner, saying, "...And then it hit me: I could totally afford all this cheese."

So, tending as I do toward the low-carb end of the culinary world, cheese is a regular favourite around here. (I would find it very hard to comply with a diet that was cheeseless, and last Christmas my standard greeting-card quip was, "What a Friend We Have in Cheeses.")

That said, what's new in my cheese world? I dearly love aged cheddar, soft runny bries and camemberts, various blue-veined specialties like Cambozola, but three cheeses with which I had not been previously acquainted have come to the forefront this year.

Boschetto di Tartufo: This had such an unusual flavour that I wondered what it had in it. It's a combination of sheep's and cow's milk, comes from Italy, and if your Italian is up to snuff, you'd know it was flavoured with black truffles (tartufo). I happened upon some at Bryan's Market in San Francisco, and that's the only place I've seen it so far.

The cheese itself is a semisoft round with a mild, slightly sweet taste, but the truffle (white truffle, tuber albidium) lends a deep, smoky, musky, flavour that is unmistakeable. You take the first bite and look up suddenly with a "what the heck was that?" expression.

Some people recommend eating it with a crust of bread, but I just slice and eat. As with truffles themselves, a thin slice maximizes the aroma and flavour per bite. Look for this at cheese shops and groceries with serious cheese sections; it's a little obscure.

Halloumi: Here's another one with a slight offbeat flavour: Halloumi Greek Cheese. I was shopping in my neighborhood supermarket (which is actually a well-stocked Raley's) and found a bright blue-and white polybag pack from the G. & I. Keses Dairy Products company, labeled "The Authentic Gourmet Halloumi Cheese of Cyprus". Couldn't resist that!

G. & I. Keses notes halloumi's versatility, that is, as an eating cheese, a grilled cheese (it will grill up nicely, not melt and flee), and it can be baked into a cheese pie. Similarly, you can pan-fry it, with or without a coating. You can even use it for saganaki (fried cheese flambé) although kasseri is more commonly used for that.

It, too, is a blend, this one of sheep's and goat's milk, and an unusual texture: it flakes apart in tiny layers which have been folded into the cheese's semi-circular shape. I've only gotten as far as eating it at room temperature, with fruit or cold cuts, but I'm jazzed about cooking with it, too.

Pecorino Pepato: Back to Italy for today's third cheese. Pecorino is a well-known sheep's milk cheese, often aged and dried and used for grating. Most comes from Sardinia. "Pepato", of course, is "peppered", and this cheese has grains of cracked black pepper that give it a spicy taste. The pepato that makes it to export markets is usually aged 3-6 months, meaning that it's still soft enough to just slice and eat as a table cheese. Other pecorinos would probably work better for grating, since it's hard to just add the right amount of black pepper to the dish using the cheese.

I eat this alone, or with crostini. It's awesome with salads of all sorts -- caesar, leaf lettuce, chard, endive, arugula, and other greens, dressed with balsamic vinegar and plain or flavoured olive oils.

Posted at 18:06 | permanent link

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