Amarelo da Beira Baixa, Portugal

Amarelo da Beira Baixa has been one of the more elusive cheeses on the “100 Great Cheeses” list. Unfortunately, Portuguese cheeses are hard to come by here in the DC area, and we didn’t spot this one on our cheese tour of NYC this past summer either. It was listed on Artisanal’s website, but hadn’t been in stock on previous searches. When I checked two months ago it appeared available to order, so I did — only to get a phone call that it was on back order. I declined the option to replace it with another cheese and waited … and waited … and waited. Finally I got the call that it had arrived and would be shipping out. And I have to say it was worth the wait.

Amarelo is a D.O.P. cheese from central Portugal. A raw sheep/goat milk blend, it has a firm, spongy paste that softens to a spreadable consistency as it warms to room temperature. It has the sour, yeasty taste of a washed rind but still preserves that fresh goats-milk flavor at the same time. It is lighter than I expected, as the goats’ milk cuts some of the traditional oiliness of sheeps-milk cheese, but still delightfully creamy and full-flavored. Artisanal suggests pairing Amarelo with Pinot Noir, which sounds heavenly. I can only hope Amarelo will still be in stock when I can drink wine again!

 

Nisa, Portugal + Stinky Brooklyn

The third in a series of tasting notes from our New York Summer ’09 Cheese Tour. Though chzday09 actually took place on Sunday, June 28, Colleen and I did a practice run, so to speak, in Brooklyn the previous day. After spending some time at the Brooklyn Children’s Museum with the extended dccheese family and feasting on pastrami at Junior’s Deli, we made a quick stop at Stinky Brooklyn before I headed into Manhattan and Colleen went to the No Doubt concert at Jones Beach (lucky!).

A slip of a shop in the Carroll Gardens neighborhood, Stinky Brooklyn nonetheless packs in a large variety of cheeses, meats (you can’t miss the selection of hams with hooves still attached) and all the classic accompaniments into its four walls. While the bus of visiting cheesemongers in town for the Fancy Food Show made the shop very crowded, we managed to squeeze our way in to pick out a couple of cheeses from the Wine Spectator list that we had yet to sample. Colleen and I usually like to take time to chat with the cheesemongers, taste a few (or several) cheeses and poke around the non-cheese items, but the volume of hungry customers made it impossible this time. Hopefully, we’ll make it back another time for a more leisurely visit and tasting session.

We were excited to see one of the two Portuguese cheeses on the list at Stinky Brooklyn – Nisa, a raw sheep’s-milk cheese made in the country’s Alentejo region. A creamy, yeasty cheese, Nisa seemed lighter than the Gabietou, though it had a similar consistency. We noticed a less pronounced “sheepiness” (i.e. oiliness) to the cheese but still enjoyed its drier texture and herbaceous flavor. Being Portuguese, Nisa is a can’t-miss match for Port or a light-bodied red wine.