Mrs Temple's Cheesy Trio

Here I are once again, primates of the interweb!

Today I bring you gifts of three, a trilogy in cheese. I went to the Cromer, what are a seaside town on the North Norfolk coast. It rained. I bought cheese.

Mrs Temple's Alpine Cheese
Well, here the first one are. An alpine style non-pasteurised cheese with an unusual rind, bespackled with brown and darker blooms. Fetching, it be. The cheese are made from the milk of Mrs Temple's herd of brown Swiss cows. Swiss brown milk. It are proper Norfolk, except the bit what is Swiss.

LOOK
Pale gold, with a slight sheen at room temperature, without its rind this particular cow-squeezing could be a soupymarket cheddar, of the looking at it.

Mrs Temple's Alpine Cheese in some kind of cheese hutch

TASTE
There are a mellow, cheddary tang at first; enough that I was prepped for disappointment, fearing another middle-of-the-road clone of the Lord Mayor of British cheese. Very quick like, the taste bends into an applewood type smoke, a touch dirty like you can really taste the woodfire. 

It are not a bland, overbonked smoke flavour like what they force into them 'orrible "Austrian" smoked-cheese condom packets they sell in the big shops. It sits into the other cheesy flavours quite nice. There's not much in the nuttiness of expectation, and it don't resemble so close the alpine cheeses what I have ate before. But it ARE nice, cheesy, and good. There's a punchy fruityness that sings under the lingering smoke. Do you try it if you get a chance.

EATS
Do this 'un with oatcakes. They make a nice shelf for that smoky, tangy sweetness to perch on, without hiding none of that flavour. I also reckons this would go lovely in a salad, cubed, or grated on certain products. So long as the smoke don't worry youse, it'll be flexibubble enough to experiment with.

The best film to watch while you gorge on this Swiss-inspired cow fudge, are Shenandoah, the civil-war film starring James Stewart. Don't ask me why, I ain't got a clue. It just are right. I feels it in me bones.

"I don't give a damn about your war, as long as it stays away from my goddamn cheese!"

Mrs Temple's Norfolk Dapple
The cheese of Norfolk! The most Norfolkest of bovine-extracted dairy lump! At last, I have ate of the Dapple, and the Dapple have been ate by me. Mrs Temple knocks this one out of her cattle-filled park with this traditional recipe.

LOOK
This cheese are a darker gold than the Alpine, with a tight, slightly bouncy touch to it. It come in a good chunky wheel or wedge, and I reckon getting more is better than less with this beauty.

TASTE 
I were told to expect cheddaryness. I reckon this are true in the way that we is supposed to expect chickenyness of any meat what we have not et yet. Cheddar are the anchor from which young cheese-hounds make their questing gestures into lactose-drenched enlightenment.

It were not cheddar that assailed my willing tongue with flavour. It are there a bit, I suppose, but my overwhelming feeling are that this cheese are more like Edam than Cheddar. Maybe it are something to do with Norfolk's historic links to the Low Countries. Anyway, the texture in my mouth were very Edam, perhaps a teensy bit looser, and the mellow flavour was there, though it deepens then, beyond the reach of all Edam I have ate. There's a nuttiness holding the light tang together, sweetening it through into mellow after-flave. I are convinced that there be a rightful king of Edamkind, and Norfolk Dapple are it.

Dapple!

 Nonetheless, interweblings, do not mistake me. The Dapple has it's own flavour, without needing comparison with other dairy labels. It be a joy to settle slices of the beauty on me tongue.

EATS
Fresh, multi-seeded white bread are your friend. This cheese would make a banging sandwich, or accompany cold cuts of meat and pears very good too. Wine (mellow red) and whisky (unpeated Scotch) would not go amiss alongside this blissful sample.

Listen you to the sounds of the Byrds, and please, not just "Mr Tambourine Man" though you might start there if you wish. Mid to late '60s rock groups just fit somehow, so explore outward from that point, by all means.

I chose to listen to Fifth Dimension (1966)

Do not watch Ben Stiller movies while eating this cheese. Or ever.


Gurney's Gold
Rather appropriately, this cheese done won a Gold Award. Well done cheese, well done.
Gurney's gold is made from the milk of both the Brown Swiss herd what Mrs Temple has, and her Holstein Friesians. It are a tip-of-the-hat to the oozy cheezes of Northern France.

LOOK
This cheese don't so much lounge as it do drape. It are very soft, not cream-cheese, yet without the stiffness of even a Brie. It wear a kind of skirt that are its rind, though the rind here are even more oozy than the cheese itself, and clings to the golden-yellow centre slab, a palest orange fringe. You could spread the rind bit as easy as margarine, though the cheese itself might resist a little.

This slice are straight out of the fridge, I reckon. Wait for it to sag into dairy comfort.

TASTE
This cheese have two flavour moves, really. The luiquidous rind are a sheer, top of the mouth, sharp tang that dissolves away quickly without delivering on the acid threat hinted at by its first taste.

The main body of the cheese are subtle, mellow-upon-mellow, like a creamy pillow-meadow. When eaten together the two flavour profiles build on each other in a clever balancing act of strengths. Peculiarly, the harder-punching taste of the wet rind is more fragile than the soft drubbing offered by the cheese, which roundly pushes on through the brief bitterness of its competitor, fading last.

It are a very different cheese to the normal hard, semi-hard and soft cheeses on offer. It's on the softer end of soft, but ain't no cream-cheese. It are both mild and strong, yet neither, yet both, yet also not confusing, yet mildly perplexing, yet straightforwardly paradoxical. And delicious too.

EATS
Do you treat this cheese right. Else I'll come and get you, beating you with the cursed milk-churner of Heidi herself. That's more goats, thinking about it. Never mind. The threat is made!

By which I mean you must not overwhelm this-un. A light, sparkling cordial to cleanse your palate is fine. A light, summery white wine with notes of grass and melon. No reds. No spirits. Wholegrain bread, if possible, warmed through but not toasted. No country music. Maybe a little Porcupine Tree.

Go on. Challenge the tastebuds...IN YOUR MIND!

You're probably safe with both Radio and BBC Four television. 
    

Until next time, my dearest dairy dumplings, my alliterative allies against the constraints of Babybel-fucking-Lunchable-Strings and "standard" grammar, fare thee well! Carry a knife (for cheese) and look to the horizon (in case there's a deli that way). Fear not, for tomorrow, there is hope! (of cheese)
    
  

God Bless You, Mrs Temple!

  
    

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.