Ibores Raw goat's milk from
Spain. $10.99 lb. at Central
Market, $2.42 for a small wedge. It
is dark orange on the outside with a hard, almost gratable interior that is dark
ivory-colored with some curd holes. It’s
a greasy cheese. It is salty and
tastes a little like a pet store and a little like olives mixed with mushrooms.
The rind is a thin, inedible, rust-colored wax.
The paste is semi-hard and full of weird moon-crater holes.
It is white in the middle, and grey/green towards the edges.
It tastes salty, tingly, not too goaty, herby, definitely salty, with a
tangy cheese aftertaste. This is
good. It probably tastes like
olives because it’s rubbed with olive oil and paprika. It smells much stronger than it tastes. http://cheesebymail.com/cgi-bin/SoftCart.exe/scstore/p-020103.html?E+scstore
Idiazabal
(with the stress on the ZA). Spanish
sheep’s cheese. “raw sheep’s
milk cheese with a delicate smoky herby flavor.”
$12.99 lb. at Whole Foods, $1.43 for a very small piece.
It has a brown rind that is supposed to be inedible, but guess who ate it
anyway? It tastes kind of like
olives to me. It is very hard,
light cream-colored, and greasy-looking. Parts
of it look transparent. It also has
a little bit of that weird refrigerator aftertaste, which I guess is just the
sheep taste. I don’t taste any
smoke, though I read that it is often smoked.
It does taste herby, though. It
is good. I read that it is supposed
to be a grating cheese, or a snack with bread and Spanish wine.
I left this cheese overnight on a plate with some others, and the next
day they all smelled like smoke, so yes, it is definitely smoked.
Ile
de France Double Crème HEB, France. $6.99 lb. Another decent cheap
Brie. Very mild and not too rubbery. It comes shrink-wrapped in a
wedge and the crust seems to have come down and coated the sides. I wonder
if this is how it was aged or whether it got overheated and the crust melted or
just grew down the sides.