This Cheese Doesn't Suck: Meule de Savoie

    Today is all about another French cheese, the raw cow's milk Meule de Savoie by Herve Mons.  Meaning (also literally) "Windmill of Savoie", it is made high up in mountainous Savoie in the Rhone-Alpes region.  I have to say one of the many things I love about French cheese is that delightful, conversational way they name their cheeses.  Not content to name cheese simply after where they're made, oh no.  

    This cheese has all the great hallmarks of a good alpine style.  Creamy uniform paste, pale almond color, thick woodsy natural rind, and made in wheels the size of a coffee table.  Granted by the time we receive them at the shop the Meule has been cut down for us into a more manageable wedge (I know, I know, losing serious cred for receiving a pre-cut wheel).  

    The Board and Wire has already discussed some of the magic of Meule de Savoie in an earlier post in which I concocted a fabulous grilled cheese with it and various "leavin's" in my fridge.  Which shows that if you have a lump of some delicious cheese you can probably make just about anything from stuff hanging about near your crisper.  This time Meule de Savoie is just shining away, all on its own, on my cheese board today.  It's almost meditative to break out a single piece of cheese, let it come to room temperature, and slowly, carefully taste it.  Catching all of its flavor profiles and intricacies of texture. 

    The Meule, like I said above, already has the visual earmarks of an alpine cheese.  It does not disappoint once it goes in your face.  The flavor is subtle, but punchy, with that high singing acidity reminiscent of a young Gruyere.  Compound butter, raw hazelnut, and a good dose of toasted hay round out the palate.  The texture has a classically creamy, toothsome grit to it.  Very much what I would expect from a lightly aged high mountain cheese.  Meule de Savoie really is ideal for slapping onto a Raclette grill and greedily scraping off ribbons of molten cheese onto new potatoes.  Pair this all up with a great I.P.A. or go nuts and try it with Gewurztraminer.  

     

Grilled Cheese with Meule de Savoie, Roast Potato, + Bacon

    I'll just get this off my chest.  It's.  Cold.  As in really, really cold by Denver standards.  As I write this the outdoors gets to enjoy one single balmy degree on the Fahrenheit scale (that's -18C to the rest of the rational world).  
    My only solution to ever feeling warm on the inside ever again is to make something with hot melted cheese.  But really, isn't that everyone's solution?  What I present to you is a glorious sandwich of the refined French alpine-style cheese, Meule de Savoie, and stuff I scrounged in my fridge.  

    What happened was a layering of cheese onto sour dough with leftover thin sliced roast potatoes (from yesterdays dinner), and the last two pieces of apple wood smoked bacon.

  The crispy gooey result was the subtle mineral-y, earth, and astringent cream flavors of the cheese blending nicely with the salty smoke of bacon and potato.  
    So put some of this in your face and feel warmer.  I hear this winter thing keeps on being cold... 

This Cheese Doesn't Suck: Pleasant Ridge Reserve

 

     Apparently the cheeses I'm most fascinated with this Autumn are all from Wisconsin.  Perhaps it's my minor snobbery about cheese that keeps me mystified when Wisconsin produces such amazing artisanal dairy.  Yet, there it is.  I have to say (and I know this is a big endorsement) that Pleasant Ridge Reserve is one of my favorite cheeses.

Continued after the jump...

This Cheese Doesn't Suck: Emmi Kaltbach Extra

    I am always game to try a new cheese.  Especially if it's one I have never heard of.  Regardless of type or apparent putrification I will dig in and thoughtfully pass my judgement.  So when I spotted that 1.5 kilo black rinded gothic-y looking wheel I had to know what it was (i'm often a sucker for packaging).  My Specialist told me that this Emmi Kaltbach Extra had actually been languishing in our cheese cooler for some weeks and had just that day made it to the sales floor.  Understandable, I figured, since working in specialty foods during the Christmas season means your life and shelves are not your own as a Specialist until after the New Year.  She had not tried it yet herself and expressed some misgivings since the promo flyer that came with the Extra indicated it was the first original cheese to come out of that region of Switzerland in over 900 years.  Pretty ballsy statement, no?  In turn I offered to do a bit of light internet sleuthing to find out if this claim was in fact factual.  Plus I would also consume said cheese as part of my research.  It seemed only right.

Sadly, this one never made it off the editors desk

    A few days later I sat down with my proverbial Nancy Drew  hat on and started my investigation.  I found numerous interesting factoids about Emmi.  They are based out of the city of Lucerne, Switzerland, their sandstone cheese caves that extend a total of 2 kilometers and can hold up to 156, 000 wheels.  Plus other info snacks of similar nature.  What I did not find is any indication of age claims about the Kaltbach Extra.  Oh sure, it was lauded as a fine flavored cheese.  But no wild claims about its uniqueness were thrown about.  Kaltbach Extra seems to be a  variant on the classic Gruyere (that Emmi's Kaltbach line does so very very well).
    Once I pulled the plastic wrap off my little slice of the Extra I was hit by the wonderful grassy damp soil smell of a good cave aged alpine style cheese.  One of my favorite things about this style of cheese is the immediate aromatic punch when I eat the very first piece.  It's like a nose full of  heavenly pepper, moist earth, and animal.  More subtly, and then growing as the piece is slowly consumed, notes of molding hay and a low acidity cut in.  This I find to not be a terribly salty cheese, nor does it have much sweetness, hence I think it would be an interesting alternative to the ol' fondue stand by of classic Gruyere.
    The texture of Kaltbach Extra is more forgiving than its Gruyere cousin.  It initially has a dense supple pack like cool fudge, then breaks down as it's eaten into a delicate fine graininess that is pleasing in it's texture.  I find this kind of  mouth-feel to be common in high alpine cheese.  Though this cheese if not quite as hard as the a fore mentioned Gruyere.
    Miraculously I didn't inhale the entire piece in one go.  There was enough left to share with friends later that day and it was met with exclamations of  "I don't just want cheddar anymore!". 

I love my job.