Cheese Glorious Cheese!

Just for Lori Lynn (wherever she might be) - cheese pre-porn!

First, how would you like to have this as your fridge!? This is our store walk-in, and its a mess from receiving a ton of cheese and meats. This is actually after I did one pass on cleaning it. If you look on the far left shelf, you'll see all sorts of wheels of cheese and on the floor a couple of barrels of kalamatas. I also see a couple of Stiltons on the near floor - just in time for the holidays.

Of the 30 cheese, we brought in some standards. Here's an 18-month Comtè quarter cut. This is one of my all-time favorites. Semi-firm with a nutty, almost sweet taste that has just enough pungency for my liking, but not too much for Tyler's. Great for the table with a glass of wine, or grated on anything.

I only bring Cabrales in during the holidays because its a bit pricey for our town. An aged blue from Spain that, I believe, puts all other blues to shame. We have quite a few blues, and once you've tried them all side-by-side, you quickly realize that they have different purposes, different tastes, and different temperments. I showed some Ambert a week or so ago, and that's the best "cheap" blue, but next to a Cabrales, Ambert seems like an adolescent in the boardroom.

Fleur Verte is a beautiful, herb coated goat from France. I originally picked this because it was a reasonably priced French goat, but then started to find all sorts of uses for it. If you remember back to the salmon tart from a month ago, this was the cheese that I tucked under the salmon. Its very traditional in its taste and texture, but has never let me down when I needed a good goat cheese.

Tomme du Levezou is a special request and may not make it to the shelves. I bought this for an event last year and people fell in love with it.

From SFGate: Many of France's finest sheep's milk cheeses come from the Pyrenees, but I've recently fallen for one from the Aveyron, a department in south-central France. Cahors is the region's most famous wine, Roquefort and Rocamadour its best-known cheeses. But my new love is Tomme du Levezou (Tohm dyoo Lay-vay- ZOO), a farmstead cheese made on a handful of small farms and distributed in the United States for only about the last five years.

The Levezou is a high limestone plateau with a few picturesque lakes that draw tourists. But mostly it is a wild, underpopulated landscape with a hard climate, useful only to shepherds. To earn the farmstead label, Tomme du Levezou must be made on the farm from the raw milk of only one herd; the shepherds can combine the evening and morning milk, but then they have to process it. They can't store the milk longer.

The wheels, which weigh 5 to 6 pounds, are pressed to make them drier and improve their ageability. They're matured for two to four months. During that time, they develop a rustic natural rind richly coated with mold. The paste becomes butter-colored, semifirm, smooth and moist on the palate, with a few small eyes. At room temperature, drops of fat glisten on the surface.

The aroma suggests grass, juniper and wildflowers. The flavor is mellow, nutty, even brown-buttery without the aggressive, sharp or salty notes that characterize some mature sheep's milk cheeses.

So what do you say mysterious Lori Lynn from whoknowswhere? A good start? I'll get the cheese porn pics as I start cutting these and many others early next week.