Bleu de Basques Brebis, France

Though Bleu de Basques Brebis is undeniably a French cheese (just look at its name), the fact that it’s made with sheep’s milk gives a hint as to which part of the country it’s produced. The Pyrenees mountain range covers both France and Spain, so it’s no surprise that a part of France so close to Spain would make a cheese using Spain’s favorite cheese-making milk.

Unlike the Bleu d’Auvergne I snacked on earlier this week, Bleu de Basques Brebis isn’t overwhelmingly creamy. While the yellowish-white paste is certainly smooth, the large pockets of blue veining give the cheese a bit of a crunch as well. It also retains some of the oiliness expected from a sheep’s-milk cheese, so Bleu de Basques Brebis is a cheese that suits a certain mood. If you just want a creamy comfort cheese, this shouldn’t be your pick, but if you’re looking for a cheese that offers an interesting contrast of textures and flavors, Bleu de Basques Brebis would be a good choice. Serve with Sauternes or Port, as suggested by Artisanal.

Note: This is one of the last cheeses I purchase at Premier Cheese Market. Sadly, Ken and Amy are closing the shop after three and a half years, and the last day of business will be this Sunday, Dec. 6. If you’re in the Twin Cities area, please visit one more time to support our friends in cheese! Best of luck on your new endeavors, Ken and Amy.

 

Fiore Sardo, Italy

While the official cheese tour may be over, I have one final cheese purchased in New York to share this week, the Italian Fiore Sardo. We purchased a hunk of this crumbly, hard cheese at Stinky Bklyn, and greeted it again at the Fancy Food Show where it was displayed in all its full-size glory.

Fiore Sardo is a pecorino hailing from the island of Sardinia, a D.O.P.-protected, raw sheeps’ milk cheese with a dark rind. It is flaky, sharp and salty, with the fragrance of a fruity olive oil and a little smokiness. It would be wonderful grated on some hot pasta — in place of the ubiquitous pecorino romano from your grocery store, perhaps — or is perfectly suited to snacking. It is yellower in color and fruitier in flavor than the Pecorino Foglie, which hails from cooler northern Italy, and the two are an interesting illustration of the variations one can find even among cheeses of the same type.

 

Pecorino Foglie de Noce, Italy

Despite our patriotic leanings, one of the good things about undertaking the Wine Spectator 100 challenge has been taking the time to meet or get reacquainted with classic European cheeses. Unfortunately, our local cheese shops tend to share our pro-American bias, so some of the Europeans on the list have been harder to come by. As Jill mentioned, Portuguese cheeses have been particularly hard to find, so we were lucky to find Nisa at Stinky Bklyn on our chzday09 adventure. This lovely Italian cheese, Pecorino Foglie de Noce, we picked up at Murray’s for that photo shoot in the park:

 

that's it, work it...

(That’s the pecorino on the right, gabietou on the left.) Incidentally, while labeled foglie de noce in the shop, online Murray’s lists this cheese as “foja de noce.” A traditional raw-sheep’s-milk pecorino, this hard cheese is crumbly but not sharp, sweet and lightly salty, with muted grassy, earthy, almost woodsy notes from the walnut leaves the cheeses are layered with to age, after being “bathed daily” for three weeks. It has just a bit of the trademark oiliness of  sheep’s-milk cheese, but smooth-flavored all around.

 

A lovely cheese for snacking, I took this one on a second picnic date with my son where we enjoyed the leftovers with some fresh-picked Virginia raspberries and blackberries. I’m thinking it would be a great dessert with some sweet wine and yes, lots of summer berries.

 

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.

 

Gabietou, France + Murray’s Cheese

The bountiful cheese selection at Murray's

The second in a series of tasting notes from our New York Summer ’09 Cheese Tour. After brunch at Artisanal, we headed downtown to do some shopping, cupcake-hunting and, of course, more cheese-eating. Our next cheese-shop stop was the one I had been looking forward to the most, not only because it is considered one of the best cheese shops in the United States, but also because it shares a name with my grandfather. Murray’s in Greenwich Village did not disappoint.

Murray’s began as a wholesale butter and egg shop in 1940, when it was owned by Murray Greenberg, who, according to Murray’s Web site, was a Spanish Civil War vet and Communist. He sold the shop to one of his clerks in the 1970s, and it is now owned by Rob Kaufelt, who has since moved the shop twice and turned it from a bodega-type shop to one specializing in artisan cheese, charcuterie and the like. Squeezed into a narrow space on Bleecker Street, Murray’s nonetheless has an impressive variety of domestic and imported cheeses, including several that neither Colleen nor I have been able to find in our local cheese shops. The cheesemongers are generous with samples (always a plus in my book!), and the one who helped us took a keen interest in our blog (hello, if you’re reading along!).

I'm like the Vanna White of cheese.

Yeah to Murray's for getting into the Pride spirit!

The cheese lover could easily spend an hour wandering through the store and browsing among the meats, breads, crackers, chocolates, olives, butters and such. We happily picked up a Murray’s insulated tote (essential because our hotel room did not have a fridge) and a brutal-looking cheese knife that I didn’t dare try to bring home on the plane. The C+C kids, O and N, proudly sport Murray’s T-shirts with the phrase “milk made” printed on the front, while Colleen and I have joint custody of the tote.

One of the cheeses we picked up at Murray’s was Gabietou, a French cheese made from a blend of raw cow and sheep mik in the Pyrenees. Being an imported raw-milk cheese, it has to be aged past 60 days, and most wheels you’ll find in the United States are aged anywhere from four to 12 months. We enjoyed the dense, creamy paste and how it melted in the mouth. We found the Gabietou to be a little gamey but sweet at the same time, typical of many washed-rind cheeses. Beaujolais is a recommended wine pairing, though in keeping with the theory of terroir, I’d be apt to sample Gabietou with some wines from the Pyrenees region.

Next stop: Casellula