Review: Great Midwest Apple Cinnamon Cheddar Cheese

In theory, this should be a delicious cheddar cheese. Apples and cheddar just go together so well, as many old New Englanders will tell you as they enjoy a piece of apple pie topped with a thick slice of Vermont cheddar cheese.

Unfortunately, theory and practice don't quite meet up in Great Midwest's Apple Cinnamon Cheddar. It's a little weird-tasting, like there's something not quite right about the combination of cheese, apple, and sweet spices. The apple tasted artificial, and the of cheese they used is very mild, almost as bland as boring old American cheese and a bit on the squishy side like a processed Jack. If only Great Midwest had chosen a good, aged, hard, sharp cheddar instead this could possibly have been great.

Wanna give it a try for yourself? Right now, Great Midwest is offering a 75-cent coupon for any of their cheeses on their website.  Links:

Get the coupon here - This coupon expires on 1/31/2013

Visit Great Midwest's website here.

Great Midwest cheese can be found at Price Chopper stores.

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Review: Sonoma Jack Extra Hot Habanero Cheese

Do you like Pepper Jack cheese? Have you found that your usual brands of Pepper Jack just don't seem to have the kick they used to? That's not the cheese's fault, you know - the more hot peppers you eat, the more your tolerance for chile-induced heat increases. Eat enough capsaicin-laced foods, and what used to set your entire face on fire will barely give you a glow.

When run-of-the-mill Jalapeno Jack cheese no longer gives you the fiery thrill you crave, try this Sonoma Jack Extra Hot Habanero Jack cheese. It's far and away the hottest Pepper Jack I've tried, even hotter than most other habanero cheeses.

Lynnafred has an admirable tolerance for chile heat. The first time she tried this stuff, she came into the room holding a slice with a bite taken out of it and asked me, "Am I losing my heat tolerance? I just took a bite of this cheese and it's kicking my ass."  I assured her that her reputation as a chilehead was safe - that cheese was born to kick ass.

The only thing I kind of don't like about it is the stickiness. I know that Jack cheese isn't as hard and dry as cheddar, but this stuff is almost as sticky as Velveeta. But damn! Dat burn! It's great stuff.

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Review: Herr's Deep Dish Pizza Cheese Curls

Looks like we're on a roll with the Herr's cheese curls - seeing as I bought a number of varieties last week, I figured I might as well make a series out of the reviews.

Deep Dish Pizza curls are truly worthy of inclusion in the series. Like the Jalapeno Poppers flavor, they capture the essence of the food they are imitating, and do it in a crazy simple way: coating the surface with different blends of powdered cheeses and spices.

Thanks to noticeable notes of romano cheese and oregano,  the curls have a very authentic taste. Herr's even manages to fool our tastebuds into thinking there might be some kind of tomato involved in the charade, but I checked the ingredients panel and found that there were no tomato-based ingredients (like tomato powder, for example) used - although maybe that came under the umbrella heading of "spices" or "flavors."

Regardless of tomato inclusion status, Herr's Deep Dish Pizza cheese curls accomplish what they set out to do: Delivering a crunchy and addicting pizza flavor while simultaneously coloring your fingers orange.

Review: Herr's Jalapeno Poppers Cheese Curls

Have you ever tried to eat just a single cheese curl? It can't be done. As a matter of fact, I'm pretty sure that the basic unit of cheese curl measurement isn't the single curl, but rather the handful.

And so it is, I guess, with reviews of cheese curls - specifically, Herr's cheese curls. You see, I found this huge variety of Herr's curls over at Ocean State Job Lot one afternoon, and I could not make up my mind which one or two to buy. So I just said "the hell with it," and bought a bag of every flavor they had. Yesterday I reviewed the authentically-flavored but parchingly over-salted Nacho Cheese; today we take a handful of the Jalapeno Poppers variety.

As I pointed out before, all cheese curls share a common structure - the differences between flavors are usually larger than the differences between brands (not always, though - I'm sure you've tasted really cheap curls that leave your mouth feeling greasy.)  While Herr's Nacho Cheese flavor was totally dominated by the saltiness, Herr's Jalapeno Poppers curls are dominated by awesomeness.

As soon as you open the bag, you know you are in for jalapenal delight. You can actually smell the roasted jalapeno pepper aroma.  Taking a bite just confims it: Full-bodied pepper flavor, a mild fire on the tongue that builds steadily as you dig into the bag, and delicious cheese backing up the whole thing. These cheese curls fully deliver on the flavor experience of eating jalapeno poppers.

Well played, Herr's.  Well played indeed.

Ricotta Cheese Overview

What do you look for when you buy ricotta cheese in the supermarket?  Do you go for a national brand? A smaller regional or local brand? Or do you buy the supermarket's "generic" label? A 48-ounce tub of ricotta (enough to do a large pan of lasagna) can run up to ten dollars or so for a national brand, and even having a coupon doesn't always knock the price down to the level of a store brand. So what do you do?

Personally, I look at two things when I'm shopping for ricotta cheese.  The first is the ingredient panel. There is no reason for ricotta cheese to contain anything except milk (whole or skim or a combination of both) a curdling agent such as lemon juice or vinegar, and salt. After all, if you were going to make it yourself, that's what you'd use.

After checking the ingredients, I look at the price tag. Given identical ingredients, I don't see a reason to pay a lot more for one brand over another.  Most of the time, that leads me to buy the supermarket's house brand.  Stop & Shop, for example, sells excellent ricotta much cheaper than most of the big brands.  And at ShopRite, the difference can be even more startling - Sorrento brand ricotta cheese is double the price of ShopRite's private label.

This is a typical supermarket ricotta cheese display - in this case, at ShopRite in Enfield CT. There are several varieties to choose from: Sorrento, Biazzo, ShopRite's house brand, Polly-O, and Sam Malucci & Sons (a local brand made in Hartford CT.)  Every one of these brands except one are made with the same ingredients: Milk, vinegar, and salt. The one brand that uses other ingredients? Polly-O, a product of the Kraft company. I never buy it - even when a coupon is involved - because I don't like the looks of the ingredient panel (pasteurized milk, whey, milkfat, salt, vinegar, guar gum, carrageenan, and xanthan gum.) The label says "all natural," and it's true that guar gum, carrageenan, and xanthan gum are indeed "natural" products. I just don't happen to agree with Kraft that they belong in cheese.

So...when you buy ricotta, are you brand-loyal or price-loyal?

Stuffed Cherry Pepper Appetizers

Looking for a something a little different to serve at your Labor Day end-of-summer party?  How about a traditional Italian antipasto treat: stuffed cherry peppers?  You can make them with either sweet or hot cherry peppers and they're easy to put together.

Here's what you'll need:

• A jar or two of cherry peppers, sweet or hot or both as you prefer
• A block of mild cheese: I prefer fontina for stuffing peppers, but provolone is traditional and monterey jack is good, too.
• Thinly-sliced prosciutto

And the method:

• With the point of a sharp knife, cut around the stem of the pepper to remove it. Pull the stem out so the seed cluster comes out with it. Use the rounded end of a butter knife to scoop out any remaining seeds.
• Take a chunk of cheese small enough to fit inside the cavity of the pepper and wrap it in a strip of prosciutto (not a whole slice of prosciutto, just a strip torn from the slice.)
• Stuff the wrapped cheese into the pepper, tucking any loose ends of prosciutto inside the edge of the pepper.
• Repeat until you have made the desired number of stuffed peppers (or until you run out of one of the ingredients!)

I make stuffed cherry peppers a few times a year - whenever we're having a big family get together - as part of a veggie dip platter, but you can put a bowl of them out all by themselves. Keep the jar of pickle juice from the peppers, because if you have leftovers, the stuffed peppers can be dropped back into the jar and, in the pickle juice and kept in the fridge, they'll stay edible for a few more weeks.

Cheap Parmesan

Since they're mixing it with "cheese whey" I suspect that the Imported Parmesan Laubscher is selling might not be imported from Italy.

Le Delice de Bourgogne Cheese from Trader Joe's

I'm a big fan of St. Angel cheese (a triple-cream soft-ripened variety of brie which is gorgeously buttery, but my local ShopRite, where I used to buy it, seems to have taken it off The List.  I guess it just wasn't selling well enough to keep it on the Gourmet Cheese Island.  So I've been doing some sampling and searching. It would be great if I could find St. Angel again, but if I can't maybe I can find another triple-cream cheese that is (nearly) as good.

At first glance,  Le Delice de Bourgogne cheese, an exclusive Trader Joe import from France, seemed to be what I was looking for. The appearance was right - rich, soft innards surrounded by a thin edible crust with a subtle bloom of white mold. 

Le Delice is an excellent cheese.  Typical of a triple cream cheese, it's rich and buttery, spreads velvety smooth on warm, crusty bread, and has that slightly nutty-earthy flavor that sets it apart from other brie-like cheeses. But it also has a distinct roquefort flavor, one which runs through the entirety of the cheese. Not at all unpleasant, but  not something I had expected. I really enjoyed the Le Delice we bought, and it would make a great and unusual addition to a cheese plate, but alas, it is no substitute for the missing St. Angel.

Even Paula Deen Can't Take Paula Deen Seriously Sometimes

When you click onto Paula Deen's Food Network page, there is a video montage that starts playing when the page loads.  The video leads off with a segment where Paula shows how to prepare deep-fried macaroni and cheese - squares of mac-and-cheese wrapped with bacon, then coated with crumbs and deep fried.  It's a simple-to-make yet ridiculously over-the-top recipe.

The video is available on YouTube; I've embedded it here so you can watch it.  Pay close attention as Paula prepares this snack - when Lynnafred and I watched it, we had to wonder whether she actually wanted to film it or whether someone put her up to it.  There are a couple places where she can't even keep a straight face:

• Watch at 0:11 when she first says she's going wrap squares of mac and cheese in bacon and deep fry it. She has to cover her face with her hand to keep from laughing.
• At 0:47, she glances over at the cameraman and almost starts laughing again as she peels off a strip of bacon to wrap the square.
• And finally, at 3:01, watch as she takes a bite of her handiwork.  Despite saying that "This is really, really good," she makes an unmistakable DO NOT WANT face when she takes that first mouthful (hit the pause button on the playback to see her candid reaction.  It's priceless.)

Bon appetit, y'all.

Saint Angel Brie

Here's a fast review of Saint Angel brie, made in France by Fromagerie Guilloteau:

Soft-ripened cheese with a gorgeous and decadent velvety smoothness; it's like eating a cheese made from cured butter. The white edible rind has that typical mushroomy-like flavor, but it's much less pronounced than on other brands.

I really loved it and would certainly buy it again.

Laughing Cow Light Queso Fresco & Chipotle Cheese

No one could miss the huge trendiness of chipotle peppers over the past couple of years - the term "chipotle" has become a marketing buzzword, and while a true chipotle is a smoke-dried ripe jalapeno pepper, the flavor has been pretty thoroughly hijacked by marketers who seem to use it for anything with a bit of chile heat and a touch of smokiness.

But you can really tell when a flavoring has jumped the shark when it starts showing up in inoffensively bland triangles of sticky cheese. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you Light Queso Fresco & Chipotle Laughing Cow cheese wedges.

I'm kind of apathetic about Laughing Cow cheese.  Kind of wet, kind of sticky-soft, kind of plastic-y, they're okay for stuffing celery or making some cheap and lulzy appetizers, but I'd never just unwrap one of the triangles and chomp on it because the texture is just not to my taste.  There always seems to be some in the house though, because Maryanne and Lynnafred enjoy it. And so it was that a container of this chipotle variety found it's way into the Cheese Drawer of the fridge (what, you don't have an entire section of your fridge devoted to cheese? Whyever not?) assisted by coupons in the Sunday paper and Lynnafred's delight at spotting something with chipotle as an ingredient.

If you already like Laughing Cow cheeses, you will probably like this one.  The texture, consistency, and mouthfeel is identical to all the other varieties. If the label didn't specifically mention queso fresco, you'd never know it was there.  The chipotle is detectable in a vague, hmm-I-think-there-might-be-some-kind-of-spice-in-here way, but it certainly adds nothing in the way of spicy excitement - there is barely enough there to tinge the flavor and I guarantee you won't be dipping your tongue in icewater and crying for momma.

No, I won't be actively seeking this out any too soon.  But I bet that a few days after the pictured box of cheese is gone, there will be other one in the Cheese Drawer when either Lynnafred or Maryanne buys a replacement.

Fruit and cheese - an age-old combination that never seems to grow old.  Recently at Price Chopper I saw a kind of new take on it:  Cheese with the fruit built right in.  And - while not the most elegant or fancy of the cheeses I've enjoyed - they're good, solid products great for snacking.

Maple Leaf Brand Apple Harvest Cheddar Cheese with Cinnamon - in the top portion of the photo at left - is a medium-sharp orange cheddar with cinnamon and chunks of apple added.  The flavor was very good; the sweet-tart apple bits complimented the cheese and reminded me of the old New England tradition of having cheddar cheese and apple pie for breakfast.  Apple flavoring permeated the cheese in a good way, giving just a hint of the fruit in the background.  Great snackfodder.

We also liked the Rhapsody White Stilton with Rum and Raisins. Pressed into the cheese and imbuing it with flavor, the rum and the raisins both went really well with this very mild Stilton.  Unfortunately, the cheese itself was a bit "grainy" in texture.  Still a good choice for casual snacking with friends around an early fall evening fire.

Links:

Maple Leaf Cheese - An interesting and unobtrusive website telling the story of Maple Leaf Cheese, a farmer-owned Wisconsin dairy co-op since 1910.

I'd provide a link for Rhapsody, but there just isn't any info out there on the web, other than a couple of sales sites.  Sorry.
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Tasty Toasty Appetizers

My brother-in-law Walter Massa made these appetizers for a party at my sister's place a couple weeks ago.  They're completely delicious and will make your guests think you're a culinary badass even though they're pretty easy to make.  I don't know what he calls them...I'm going to call them "Margherita Toasts"  because that sounds better than "Those Toast Thingies Walter Made."

Margherita Toasts

1 crusty baguette, sliced into rounds (well, "ovals" really)

Extra virgin olive oil

Fresh basil leaves

Sun-dried tomatoes, cut in strips

Fresh mozzarella, sliced

Arrange the sliced bread on a cookie sheet and brush each slice with a bit of olive oil.  Top each slice with a fresh large basil leaf (the leaf should just about cover the entire slice of bread) then top that with a couple slices of sun-dried tomatoes.  Finally, add a slice of fresh mozzarella cheese to each.  Run the appetizers under a broiler just long enough to make the cheese bubbly with occasional spots of toasty brown.

Slide the toasts immediately to a serving platter and place in front of your guests, who will eat them ravenously.

By the way, I should mention that Walter is an accomplished and talented baker.  If I were ever sentenced to death, my last wish would be half an hour alone with a loaf of his rye bread and a quart of milk, I kid you not.

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Quesadilla Margherita

A late summer heat wave is keeping my kitchen too hot to do any real cooking, so I did a little culinary mashup and made "quesadillas margherita" for supper last night.  They were fast, easy, and satisfying, and I had everything I needed on hand:

Quesadilla Margherita

Makes 4

8 burrito-sized flour tortillas

Shredded mozzarella cheese

Freshly grated Romano cheese

4 fresh plum tomatoes

Fresh basil leaves

1 lb fresh mozzarella, cut into 12 slices

Dried Italian seasoning (optional)

Anchovy fillets (optional)

Preheat a 12- or 14-inch skillet over medium heat.  When the skillet is hot, add a tortilla and sprinkle it lightly with shredded mozzarella and grated Romano cheeses.  Slice a plum tomato, knock the seeds out of it, and arrange the slices on top of the cheeses.  Add fresh basil leaves to taste and add three slices of fresh mozzarella.  Sprinkle liberally with dried Italian seasoning if you wish, then top with a second tortilla.

Give the quesadilla a few minutes to toast on the bottom, pressing down occasionally on the top with your spatula, and then flip it over to toast on the other side.  When the tortillas are toasted and the cheeses are meltylicious, your quesadilla margherita is ready!

Repeat as necessary until you've made 4 quesadillas.

If you like, you can add anchovies right after the basil but before the fresh mozzarella.  I like mine with anchovies, but Maryanne and Lynnafred prefer theirs without.

The quesadillas were made even more awesome because the plum tomatoes were freshly picked out of our garden, and the fresh mozzarella was the amazing stuff that ShopRite makes in-store.

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Liederkranz Cheese.

About a week ago, blog reader Alan mentioned in a comment that Liederkranz cheese had been rescued from the brink of extinction by DCI Cheese Company.  I decided I would try to find some - the only thing I knew about it was that it was an American variation of Limburger, and that the last batch had been made by the Fisher Cheese Company in 1985.  Because of a bacterial contamination of the cheese culture that year, Fisher recalled all of that year's Liederkranz production, later selling the factory and remaining cultures to Beatrice Foods (which was later purchased by ConAgra.)

I was surprised to hear that the cheese was back in production, because for at least ten years, the Liederkranz culture was thought to have been allowed to go extinct.  I was pleased and surprised to find small 6-ounce squares of Liederkranz for sale in my local ShopRite supermarket. I picked one up and gave it a sniff. I was half expecting to get knocked out of my shoes, having grown up watching cartoons where "Limburger cheese" was shorthand for "horrible stench."

Sealed inside the package, the distinctive aroma of the cheese is heavily muted, and while I admit that the smell was somewhat flatulent, through the wrapper it wasn't overwhelming or strongly unpleasant.  So I bought it.

That night, I sat at the dining room table and carefully unwrapped it.  Everyone in the house knew as soon as that stinking bastard cheese saw the light of day.  Lynnafred gagged, "Damn it, Dad, this time your food shenanigans have gone too far."  "Pungent" isn't the word for it.  Truly, it smelled like someone squatted over the table and took a steaming dump.  Yet, for all the stench, it was an unremarkable-looking chunk of cheese.  Pale yellow inside with an orangey-tan rind.  But damn is that stuff nasty-smelling. And it didn't get better as the cheese stood out in the air, either.  All it did was attract the dogs.

Seriously.  Within seconds of having the cheese unwrapped, Iris and Zim were by my side looking for a handout.  This should come as no surprise since they are dogs, an animal which actively seeks out the most unpleasant and disgusting things it can find, in order to roll around in them.  I cut off a small piece of the cheese for each of the critters and they joyfully nosed the samples for a minute before gobbling them up.  

Since the sample didn't kill either of the dogs, I cut off another slice, this one for me.  Liederkranz is a semi-soft cheese, and it likes to stick to the knife; it would probably be best cut with a wire rather than a blade.  Ignoring the smell, I popped the slice in my mouth.  It's creamy and surprisingly mild, with a taste profile remarkably similar to an ordinary American cheese.  As everyone knows, though, the senses of smell and taste are intimately entwined, and unfortunately there was no way to prevent the smell of shit from wafting up the back of my mouth into my nose.  So fr, this was not the most pleasant of experiences.

Finally, I tried the cheese in the time-honored traditional way, on a hearty rye bread with sliced onion.  Unfortunately, the onion did nothing to kill the odor, which I still found to be just too overwhelming.  Maybe I should serve it with a spritz of Febreze.

I still have something like 99% of the cheese in the fridge, safely sealed within a plastic deli container so it doesn't make my fridge smell like an outhouse.  I'll probably try it a couple more times at least, to see if there is something - anything - about this scheißkäse I can learn to like.

If you, like Alan, dearly miss your beloved Liederkranz, you have reason to rejoice - it's back and pungent as ever.  As for me, I'll just wish you well and hope you can find a chunk during this initial  rollout period - supplies and distribution of the cheese seem to be somewhat limited right now.

Link:

DCI Cheese Company's website.
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Cambozola Cheese

Lately, the ShopRite in my town has been making their own fresh mozzarella cheese, displaying it on ice by the specialty cheese display near the deli.  I went to pick some up at the beginning of the week and was disappointed to find that, because they were having a sale on some nationally-distributed mass-market fresh mozz, they hadn't made any of their own.  Bummer.

But I was hell-bent on buying cheese anyway, so I started poking around the display to see if there was anything interesting.  And that's when I found a lovely wedge of Cambozola; it was mad ripe and just this side of runny, and I guess the ripeness was a little too scary for the deli guys, who had it marked down at half off.  Pretty awesome, because Cambozola is an excellent cheese when it hits the shelves, but I swear it gets even better as it approaches and sometimes exceeds the cautiously-labeled "sell by" date stamped on the wrap.

Cambozola has a relatively short history as cheeses go. It was originally invented in the early 1900's, and since 1970 has been made by huge German cheesemaker Champignon.  It's a soft-ripened triple-cream cheese made with the same Penicillin roqueforti mold also used in Gorgonzola, the taste profile is very complex:  imagine a good Italian Gorgonzola with the sharp edges filed off, combined with a decent triple-cream Brie.  The nutty characteristics of Brie are there, and the mild "mushroomy" flavor of the rind, but they're well-balanced with the blue.

It was great served with sliced peaches and salty smoked almonds for lunch.  Also, because I'm a damned cheese heathen, I mashed up some fresh wild blueberries and blended them into a chunk of Cambozola to make a blueberry/blue cheese spread which was also very good despite what you might think.

Link:

Champignon Cheese's US website.
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Lynnafred's Who Let YOU Cook?! Volume Two

So, what do you get when you have nothing appealing in your fridge, a handful of eggs, and some leftover cheese and bacon from cheeseburgers the night before? If you answered "Who Let You Cook?" you were right!

With the aforementioned eggs, cheese, and bacon, as well as about a half teaspoon of milk, I made myself a bacon and cheese omelette. For most people, this wouldn't be really "Who Let You Cook" worthy, but it definitely is for me. For as long as I've been making simple things in the kitchen, I've never once successfully made either a fried egg or an omelet. My fried eggs always come out busted and vastly overcooked; my omelets come out either vastly undercooked and crumbled to bits, or vastly overcooked and crumbled to bits. Either way, it's never been successful.

How did I make it?:  So after preparing my egg and milk mixture (I used no salt, figuring that the bacon and cheese would have more than enough) or pepper (because I forgot about it), I started to heat up a small amount of butter in a pan over low heat. When it was just starting to bubble at the edges, I poured in my eggs and let it start to set. When the bottom layer was fully cooked, I used a spatula to push some of it over and let the top layer of uncooked egg take its place. Then I did the same thing on the opposite side. When there was nothing but a thin layer of sticky egg inside, I dumped in my roughly cut bacon and cheese mixture, carefully folded it over, and let it finish cooking, flipping it once. It never split apart on me. I added a little bit of extra cheese on top before I ate it, because I love cheese.

So how was it?: Very good, actually. I've always enjoyed the flavors of bacon, egg, and cheese together, so this was definitely something I'd try making again. It needed a bit of pepper, but that was easily added afterwards, so it was nothing that was a meal destroyer. I'll do this again, for sure, but maybe I'll experiment with different cheeses next time.

Hormel Kid's Kitchen Cheezy Mac 'n Cheese

If a handful of these Hormel heat-and-eat lunch tubs hadn't been on markdown over at Stop & Shop last week, I never would have tried them.  But they were priced to move at 50 cents each, so I tossed a couple into the cart on impulse as I went past.

I guess the packaging is designed so that kids with little kitchen experience can heat it up themselves in the microwave.  Pop the metal top off, give it a stir, put the plastic lid on and nuke it for a minute. Then stir again and eat.  Pretty basic.  

The ingredients are pretty basic as well, mostly macaroni and cheese (well, pasteurized processed American cheese but it still counts) with other stuff like butter, cream cheese, milk, and water.  And salt and flavorings.  I give Hormel props for bucking the usual practice in processed foods, however:  this product contains no high-fructose corn syrup.  It's fairly light in calories (230 for the tub) but there's a heavy sodium load at 750 mg.

So, enough of this nutritional jibber jabber.  Let's get to the important stuff:  Taste.

The sauce is decidedly Velveeta-like: orange, mild, with actual cheese flavoring more predominant than saltiness.  Although it was smooth and creamy, it's strong processed-cheese flavor actually worked against it for me (I would have preferred a more complex cheese sauce flavor with perhaps a bit of blue cheese or even a couple of dashes of Worcestershire sauce in the pot to liven it up) but this is a common mistake with big food conglomerates - they assume that kids have wooden palates and deliver kind of bland food to them, training them to continue having wooden palates.

Also, there's a ton of it.  Stir the pot after taking it out of the microwave, and you reveal a huge amount of cheesy orange lava below the top surface of macaroni.  The little macaroni tubes are swimming in a seemingly vast amount of it.  I know that when Lynnafred was about 10 years old, this would have been like a meal from Paradise to her, but I got ahold of a spoon and ladled some of that stuff right out.   Once the surplus cheese was removed and I got to douse it in ketchup like I do with all macaroni and cheese, it wasn't all that bad.  I might even give it to a kid for a snack, as long as I kept an eye on how much salt they were going to take in for the rest of the day.

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SPAM with Cheese

It was the last one left on the shelf.

Years ago – early 1990’s, so we’re talking almost twenty years gone – I used to kind of like SPAM, served in certain contexts. It was pretty decent, for example, cut into slices and fried for breakfast alongside eggs. And it was okay for omelets: cut it up into little cubes and sizzle the bits with onion and green pepper, and then use it for the omelet filling.

And then something happened. I never saw any announcement, or news item, or note on the web, but it seems to me that Hormel changed the recipe for SPAM. It seemed to taste different than it used to - a bit fattier, maybe? - and I kind of grew away from it.  And Hormel started introducing a whole bunch of new varieties. SPAM with bacon. Hickory smoked SPAM. SPAM with garlic. SPAM Lite. Turkey SPAM, for cryin’ out loud. Single-Serving SPAM. And this stuff: SPAM with cheese.

No, I didn’t buy it. But if anyone out there has tried it, leave me a comment and let me know what you think of it. 

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Salemville Amish Gorgonzola Cheese

I really enjoy blue cheese, and Salemville Amish Gorgonzola, a brand of the DCI Cheese Company of Wisconsin, is a good blue cheese.  Firm and a bit crumbly right out of the package, it melts in your mouth into a buttery creaminess with a somewhat mild blue flavor.  It's quite enjoyable, and relatively inexpensive.  I would unreservedly recommend it to anyone looking for a high-quality blue cheese.

The thing is, it's not a real Gorgonzola.  Real Gorgonzola is produced within a very specific Denominazione di Origine Controllata (DOC) within Italy.  And because of that, other cheeses that call themselves Gorgonzola...well...aren't.  And they don't quite taste like it, either.  I've had imported Italian Gorgonzolas that were velvety soft and shot through with unholy-looking lacy green veins that tasted like they were handed down from Cheese Paradise.

The reason countries around the world adopt designations of origin has nothing to do with protectionism.  It has to do with quality assurance.  Champagne isn't just some sort of light fizzy white wine - it can't bear the name unless it comes from the Champagne region of France.  Same thing with cheese.  An American company shouldn't be allowed to label their Wisconsin-made blue cheese as "Gorgonzola" without some kind of qualifier.  "Gorgonzola Style" maybe.

Enough ranting.  Are you looking for a better-lhan-decent domestic bleu cheese?  Try the Salemville stuff - I bet you'll be pleased.
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