How come there are so many different types of cheeses, what is the difference between them and why are they all so delicious?
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Why is cheese so good? Because it’s fully that wonderful stuff called fat! Yum. I love cheese the fattier the better (my favorite is a cheese is a rather modern invention called Cambozola , kind of a cross between Camembert and Gorgonzola, hence the name).
Why so many kinds of cheeses? Because humans have been making cheese for a about 6000 years, at least, and that’s a lot of time to get creative with it, and human beings excel, as species, in being very creative with food and cuisines. Domesticating milk producing animals like cows, goats and sheep, etc. gave our ancestral cheese makers a stable and steady supply of milks to work their magic with. God bless ‘em.
All I know is that I mean to try them all in my lifetime. Yum!
@Kardamom Good for you. I am not so ambitious, but here’s list of cheeses from cheese.com – there are 670 cheeses on that list and I can’t imagine that is really all of them. It’s quite doable. One cheese a day and you could be done in less than two years but that seems like it wouldn’t be a very good way to enjoy the glories of cheese. A more relaxed pace would be more enjoyable.
I think cheese is evil but in a deliciously, irresistable way. It was created in its various forms to tempt us and break down our will to resist.
Long live the cheesemakers of the world.
Liz
beware…some of them are quite rank/ripe! i think it was a chimay that nearly sent me + a friend straight to the commode. literally it smelled just like that.
A lot of the difference involved includes different ways to prepare the cheese, such as using different cultures/fungi to innoculate it.
@crisw I was going to mention that the cheese “bucket list” is even more doable since there are some cheeses that are just plain nasty, and that is the nastiest of them. I was reading something funny about it recently; someone on the web was commenting that it is illegal even in the only place where people actually want to eat the stuff and that should give everyone pause.
@crisw This casu marzu sounds truly delightful, il be sure to try it when im in the region. Mmm!
@crisw LOL. At first I thought: “What kind of sadistic teacher would give her kids a quiz on terrible cheeses”? Then I clicked the link. I did very badly on it, your quiz, 3 out of 10… good thing I’m not majoring in disgusting cheeses, but it was a lot of fun taking the quiz. Guessing was half the fun, you had some great alternative answers. So lark vomit isn’t really an ingredient in any of the world’s most disgusting cheeses? You learn something new every day. :-)
Don’t get me started on Brie! I received several marriage proposals (or at least offers for sex).after I described it one time.
It’s my favorite.
@crisw I am amending my list. No cheese that is made with maggots or other icky things. That made me shiver when I saw that picture!
I do like a lot of the regular garden variety “stinky” cheeses though. So far, the only cheese I’ve tasted that I didn’t like was one particular kind of bleu (which I wish I knew the name) because it literally tasted like sweat socks. It had big chunks of the mold, that looked like big pieces of herbs, rather than mold. The chunks were kind of gray green in color with a regular white cheese background. It didn’t even smell particularly bad, but the flavor was just vile. Any ideas what type it might have been, so I can avoid it?
I’ve even had Limburger, which didn’t have much of a flavor at all and didn’t smell half as bad as I thought it would.
One of the most interesting cheeses I’ve tasted is gjetost which is made with caramelized milk. I love the name of the brand, Ski Queen.
If you want to try something yummy (which I had at a restaurant recently) grill a quesadilla with brie cheese and fresh chunks of mango!
Blessed are the Cheesemakers!
@Kardamom
I am not a fan of any moldy cheeses, personally. You might try looking for your offender here – this is the cheese shop I frequent, and they have lots of pictures of cheese. Piave veccio and vlaskaas are two of my favorites.
@crisw I will look, but now I’m afraid. I don’t want to see any more maggots.
But in the name of cheese, I will look. : )
I love that white cheese (is it queso blanco?) that they grate on the top of Mexican food. It has kind of a squeeky texture to it when you chew biggers pieces of it and it’s slightly salty. Yum!
I saw some cheese at Trader Joe’s that was a light cheddar color, but had bright green streaks going through it that looked really tempting. And there was one called beer cheese that sounded pretty good. Anything like gouda is always fabulous.
I’ve brought a cheese sampling platter to the last few potlucks I’ve gone to. I try to pick out 4 completely different kinds of cheese and serve it with a big bowl of baguette slices. It always goes over pretty well.
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