Comté

Quick blog of cheese for you now, weblings. I have ate Comté, a cheese that come with an accent. It are French, like the most successful Reblochon from last blog.

General Details (formerly Brigadier Details)

Comté is an unpasteurised cheese, what Americans would call dirty cheese. This attitude are why most Yank cheese is shitter than a barbed wire hammock.

It are made in the Franche-Comté region of France, though the one I ate professes to be from the Jura mountains, which are all foresty. The cheese were matured for fifteen months, to give all that filthy milk time to make the dairy miracle that supports the very foundations of our civilisation.

Comté is put through a non-Australian points based system to decide its identity. Really good Comté gets more than 15 points in totals and can be spaked Comté Extra, whereas very crap Comté is simply called Gruyère and are sold to peasants and the Dutch.

Observed in Natural Habitat

The Comté are a semi-hard, pale yellow cheese with a dusty-brown coloured rind. It are sold in discs, then cut into wedges for smaller budgets, suchlike mine. The smell are distinctly cheesy, though less tang, a low hum. Overall it are not very pungent, yet neither are it as bland and soulless as commercial burger "cheese".

The Munch 
  
In consistency, the Comté are much like Edam, perhaps a touch less bendy. It cuts in compact, slightly bouncy curves, with zero crumbling and not quite enough moists to stick to an upturned knife. In flavour, Comté are mostly describing as nutty and sweet, though it are in fact more complicated than this.

The nutty flavour is real. It is like halfway between a hazelnut and a brazilnut for I, with a slight aftertaste of dryness, sitting with the sweetness. This ain't sugar-sweet though, tis a subtle, restrained sweet, like nut-sweet. It are mainly sweet by virtue of not being tanged, like a mature cheddar, or piquant, like a blue cheese.

The taste are slightly dirty, in a good way, which is the depth of overlapping savoury and sweet notes, and the barest sense of dry smoke in the spaces of your munch-hole after the cheese are swallowed.

Generally pretty pleasant, I think this cheese are probably a good test of the palate of a cheese novice, prepping them for more robust tongue-spankers in the future. The taste are better than Gruyère, which I find is only good when melted, though Comté would melt well an' all.


Do With

Dried dark fruits and sweet, plain biscuits would go well. Poachers Choice, a dark ale by Badger, would suit also.

Aurally, I would pair this cheese with The Wave Pictures album City Forgiveness. For the watching, I recommend Kevin Spacey, in whatever role you most prefer.

Do not accompany this cheese with psychotropic or other mind-altering substances.

Reblochon - A Cheese What is French and Also Quite Nice

My last blog post were many moons ago, when we were all younger and wiser. Forgive me, weblings, I has been busy with real life and proper grammar - oh the wickedry of such constraints! But once again, after long months in the wilderness, like a cheese loving Jesus, I has returned.

Firstly, another apology. For I has let you down, internotional folk of the great information superhighwave, I has Clegged on my promise to you.

I did say that I would review more of the budget cheese what I got from ASDA. Alas, Alack and Alan, I did not. I did not eat more of it neither. I eschewed that what I might otherwise have spewed. I turned my dairy-lovin' back on the god-forsaken cow-muck.


Nevermind! I killed that series of blog posts In Utero, as if it are wiped from existence with vast quantities of Bleach. Tis gone forever. Instead HAVE THIS UP YOUR MODEM.

Reblochon-ehon-ehon-ehon
I has consulted with lawyers and confirmed that the above are not racist.

Reblochon are a creamy cheese from the Aravis range in alpine France, that bit where France starts to give Italy a conjugal rub, with Switzerland watching like the filthy, neutral, gold-harbouring utopia it are. Additionally, Reblochon is unpasteurised, which be often the mark of a speciality cheese.

Aravis range in France

For the looks it of
My one of Reblochon came from Tesco, an item from that failing behemoth's finest* range. There's no pot of gold at the end of that there asterisk, by the way, it are just how Tesco brand their posher nosh. Weirdos.

My packet was a half-wheel of a bit heftier than 200 grams, with a washed rind of palest gold. The internals of the cheese are very similar to Brie; pale creamy colour, not quite as tight looking but very similar.


LICKED, NIBBLED AND MASTICATED
To the taste, Reblochon strike me at first like Brie, probs cos of the looks. Being struck by Brie is humiliating but pretty gentle, a soft assurance that it are easey-peasey stuff what even a lactose intolerant serval could find delicious.

This are apparently what comes up when you google lactose intolerant serval

On the other hand, Reblochon has a slightly bigger fist, though it fists you not all that much harder than Brie. Here, use your imagines to think of a taste somewhere between a decent Cheddar and Brie. You sees, there are more tang and oomphh thanks to the richness of them not having put the pasteur in it, but the overwhelming flavour are not overwhelming, dissolving off into creamy ecstasy like a soluble goth in a nineties rave.

In conclusion about flavour it are very approachable and I recommend that you approach it as fast as you can.

As with all cheese and especially creamy near-soft cheese, let it warm through in room temperature for a while before you gorge.


SUPPORT ACTS FOR CHEESE
Definitely has your wine with it. A dry red from France with a lush finish, not tannin much, like the Bordeaux Supérieur from Lidl is a good pick. It's a banging good bottle for under six of your British fucking pounds, and wouldn't overspeak this cheese.

I reckon this are pretty flexy. I had some with some wholemeal pitta bread, toasty warm, topped with coriander and lemon infused hummus, because I are a middle-class cliché Waitrose type poster child OH GOD WHY WHAT HAPPENED I LOVE MARX I SWEAR DON'T LEAVE ME BECAUSE I LIKE NICE THINGS and that combination was really pleasant.

Musically, I go off-beat though not literally, when having some of the Reblochon. Duke Special goes nicely with it in a rambly, sweet and punchy kind of way. ALWAYS consume cheese to music. It are good for your soul and better than yoga.


OTHER BUSINESS
SIT DOWN! We are not finished yet, and your numbers is down, Clive, you should be the last one leaving early, you skiving buttock.

Anyway. Did you brain that eating lots and lots of cheese is how you basically live forever? A new Danish study out of Aarhus seems to suggest a less exaggerating version of this. Here's a link as proof (of the study's existence, not its indications) 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/foodanddrinknews/11567702/The-secret-to-a-longer-life-and-faster-metabolism-Eating-cheese.html

I know. It's the Telegraph. I are sorry. But it's in a cheesy cause. Remember, as Niccolo Machiavelli nearly said: "Never was anything great accomplished without dairy."