Favorite Cheese at the Moment Thread

[Proletariat]

Brillat Savarine, for me. It's from France and is named after a political figure who liked the death penalty.




It's really creamy and goes nice with fruit and champagne.





1) What is your favorite cheese, currently?
2) What do you eat it with?
3) And most importantly, what palatable potable compliments it?

[Crazed Rabbit]

Cheddar.

On crackers, ham sandwiches, etc.

It goes smashingly well with a spot of dark, red juice, with a hint of tartness, like aroniaberry juice.

Crazed Rabbit

[Taffy_is_a_Taff]

Cambozola. Like brie but mouldy and (!Italian (I think)) nope, it's German.

Goes well on toast, very well with dry cured ham and exceptionally well on toast with sweet chili sauce. probably decent with fruit too.

don't know what to drink with it, last time I had some (for breakfast, on toast) I had a cup of milky black tea with it.

[Samurai Waki]

Guda on French Bread
Goes Excellent with a Well Aged Zinfandel preferably from Milan or surrounding regions.

[Strike For The South]

White American

[Marcellus]

My favourite cheese is, and may well always be, cheddar.

Goes well with a whole range of things: in sandwiches, on crackers, with fruit (apples and grapes especially), and so on. plus you can just have it on its own.

[Taurus]

Red Leicester (spelling?).

It is best in a sandwich or on crackers. Very nice.

[JAG]

http://www.truestarhealth.com/Notes/1888009.html

PORT SALUT!!

Just love the stuff.

[Big_John]

right now, i'd probably say the raw-milk garlic & herb cheese made by this guy:
http://www.organicvolunteers.com/far...pe=&host_type=

i like to eat it with some fresh siciliano bread from a local bakery.

to wash it down, nothing will do but some of the best beer in the world, unibroue's fin du monde.










though, most any belgian strong pale will work in a pinch.

[Taffy_is_a_Taff]

so that beer's worthwhile then? I'd been thinking about getting some for a while. Are the other beers from the same brewery any good?

[Beirut]

Hey Big John,

The guy who started that beer company lives about a mile away from me. He's a very famous Quebec singer. Not sure if he still runs the company though.

A girl I was putting the serious moves on years ago just loved the guy. I ran into him in the general store and told him he had to write me a nice personal autographed greeting for this chick for me to bring to her. He did.

I owe him big time.

Cheese?

Very old cheddar.

[Proletariat]

to wash it down, nothing will do but some of the best beer in the world, unibroue's fin du monde.

Looks good. Is it similar to other Trappist-style ales like Duvel or Chimay?

[Samurai Waki]

That guy looks like a combination of Nick Nolte and Kenny Rogers!

[Roark]

My favourite at the moment is American Jack Monterey... I had never tried it until yesterday.

[Gawain of Orkeny]

Best is Mozzerela. Next is sharp cheedar.

[Beirut]

What brand of mozzarela do you use that actually tastes like something? I find most are simply there for texture as opposed to taste.

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

Chedder is usually good for snacking. American is good on burgers.

This thread reminds me of the Wallace and Gromit movies. "Cheese, Gromit, cheese!"

[Gawain of Orkeny]

Therees only one
Grande. All the good pizza places here use it.

What classifies a company...any company, as "great"? Is it the magnificence of its headquarters? The number of people it employs? The annual profits it generates? Greatness is a relative term, but to the founder of Grande Cheese Company, Filippo Candela, it was the essence, the very heart and soul of his craft and the only benchmark by which he knew to measure his product.


In 1927, Filippo began a journey that resulted in what is today, the country's most respected Italian cheese company. Our success is a result of Filippo's passion to make cheeses of such incredible flavor and integrity that they have come to be known throughout the industry as the finest Italian cheeses money can buy!® Filippo’s commitment and determination to make great cheeses has become the very foundation and spirit of our company, dictating to this day the high standards by which we conduct every aspect of our business.

Grande makes its world• class cheeses in Wisconsin…America’s Dairyland. Our cheese making facilities here, along with our technology center and

home offices, provide employment and a secure future for more than six hundred Associates. Each Associate has a clear perspective of his or her mission and how it supports the goals of our company. We know that together, we are responsible for fulfilling the high standards that Filippo engrained in this organization.


Grande brand Mozzarella, Provo•Nello® Provolone, Aged Provolone, Romano, Parmesan, FIOR•di•LATTE and all our other fine cheeses, are sold to customers across the country. They’re served with pride in thousands of America’s finest Italian and non-Italian restaurants, pizzerias, delis and specialty shops coast to coast. This success is a result of our belief that...“making fine cheese, like making fine wine, is indeed an art…steeped in tradition and pride.“

Grande uses a precise and tested equation of time and temperature to insure a consistently great product year-round. In many ways, we continue to create our cheeses just as our founder did…refusingfor the sake of convenience or higher profit, to abandon those methods and secrets that have made our cheeses the…”finest money can buy.” Our customers deserve nothing less.




Grande cheesemakers are proud and skilled artisans, who still possess the heritage, know-how and passion needed to make these fine Italian cheeses. Watching them hand rope and delicately smoke our specialty products using apple wood from nearby orchards…then hand wax those cheeses, you realize exactly what sets Grande Cheese Company apart from all others. This heritage of care…and passion for quality, is at the very core of day-to-day operations here and our key strategy for customer satisfaction.



Grande's well-respected reputation does not begin or end with the making of our cheese. It starts with our wholly owned subsidiary, Grande Milk Marketing, LLC and the dedicated producer dairies and their families who work day-in and day-out to proudly produce milk of the highest quality standards. In return for this dedication and loyalty, Grande Milk Marketing, LLC purchases their milk and, more importantly, becomes their milk marketers...and a whole lot more. Utilizing the milk exclusively for Grande’s proprietary products assures these farmers of a strong, stable and rewarding market.

This total dedication to quality, which begins with milk procurement, extends all the way to the distribution of our cheeses as well. Each Grande distributor is selected based upon their promise and ability to deliver our products at the highest quality standards. This elite group of distribution professionals is integral to meeting the day-to-day needs of independent restaurant and pizzeria owners nationwide.


Grande understands that while remaining true to our cheese making heritage, we must be competitive and cost efficient in order to best serve our customers. We continually explore, test and embrace those advances in technology that enable us to maintain the reputation for quality our cheese has earned. From the dairy farm to the restaurant table, Grande’s customers trust and rely on the solid consistency of the Grande name.

Grande’s special niche in the marketplace is, and always will be, to make and market the finest Italian cheeses money can buy!® We enhance that strategy with innovative value-added product concepts that benefit the businesses of our loyal customers. The success of this strategy, and the enormous strength and power of our trademark, has positioned us globally as a world• class organization...now and for the future.
Our corporate culture is based upon human dignity, pride, professional excellence and mutual respect. The tremendous success of our ASE concept, Associates Striving for Excellence, is testimony to that culture at work. We cultivate and maintain an environment here where new ideas can germinate and grow. Concepts for improving our existing products are continually researched and ideas for new products to meet customers’ future needs are created and thoroughly tested in our technology center.




We also develop new ideas that are outside the traditional Grande product mix. As an example, our Grande Custom Ingredients Group serves the needs of the food processing industry with innovative whey products which are all specially derived from 100%, farm-fresh, Grade A milk. These whey protein and other dairy-based ingredient concepts are tested in our laboratories and proven in our pilot plant. They provide highly functional solutions for a wide variety of food formulation challenges in products like ice cream, baby foods, dairy dips and spreads, salad dressings, sauces, gravies, seasonings and many others.


At Grande Cheese Company “greatness” is a journey, not a destination. And it is a journey we make together. All our Associates continually work to improve and refine our cheese making processes, just as Filippo did. And we are always developing new and innovative products and value-added customer services to enhance our world•class trademark in an ever-changing and expanding marketplace.



“The fulfillment of a social purpose greater than ourselves...”

In the final analysis, our goal cannot be achieved without a profound understanding of the fact that we do not live alone. While our personal and professional objectives are accomplished within the Grande community, our collective influence extends well beyond. Relationships with customers, suppliers and the communities where we work each day, are all impacted by the moral and ethical standards by which we do business. Grande’s commitment to these standards is exemplified through investments to protect and enhance our environment, involvement with local charities and strong encouragement and support for all our Associates to positively impact each other and the world around

I like fried mozzarella sticks with marinara dip.

[ichi]

Swiss, thinly sliced and placed with shaved ham on a croissant, then nuked until the cheese melts.

mmm. . . memorable

[Big_John]

beirut, that's awesome. go to his house and thank him for me.

so that beer's worthwhile then? I'd been thinking about getting some for a while. Are the other beers from the same brewery any good?

yes. if you like real beer, unibroue should be at the top of the list. i'm sure there are "people" out there that don't understand, but they should be avoided. besides fin du monde, unibroue's strong darks are probably their best beers. their lambics (the éphémère line) are an acquired taste, probably. but most lambics are.

Looks good. Is it similar to other Trappist-style ales like Duvel or Chimay?

yes. duvel is a strong pale too.. i think it's 8.5 abv, though. i like fin du monde more, but duvel is probably more highly rated. however, my favorite belgian strong pale ale is another beer called piraat, which is 10.5 abv. ridiculous stuff, but it's quite a bit more expensive than the other two. la chouffe and delirium tremens are other great belgian strong pales, but i haven't haven't had either enough to compare to the others.

chimay (which is the only actual trappist brewery of the ones i've talked about), doesn't make a strong pale, afaik. their best (imo) is the strong dark called chimay grande réserve (blue label). unibroue makes two great strong darks called maudite and trois pistoles, the latter being my choice of the two. there's an american belgian strong dark that's pretty popular (and higly rated too) called ommegang out of cooperstown, ny. however, none of those are as good as chimay blue, imo.

[Proletariat]

yes. duvel is a strong pale too.. i think it's 8.5 abv, though. i like fin du monde more, but duvel is probably more highly rated. however, my favorite belgian strong pale ale is another beer called piraat, which is 10.5 abv. ridiculous stuff, but it's quite a bit more expensive than the other two.

More expensive? Easy there, Rockefeller.

chimay (which is the only actual trappist brewery of the ones i've talked about), doesn't make a strong pale, afaik. their best (imo) is the strong dark called chimay grande réserve (blue label). unibroue makes two great strong darks called maudite and trois pistoles, the latter being my choice of the two. there's an american belgian strong dark that's pretty popular (and higly rated too) called ommegang out of cooperstown, ny. however, none of those are as good as chimay blue, imo.

I've had Chimay Blue before and Ommegang a couple nights ago when they opened a Wegman's grocery store nearby. It was nice, but I like Duvel better (even though that's not apples to apples, I gather).

Looking forward to trying Le Fin with some Organic Garlic and Herb Cheese, but it will have to wait until I'm off my current Mimosa kick.

[Big_John]

More expensive? Easy there, Rockefeller.

ha. when talking about my beer tastes with someone else, they once said almost the same thing. i believe, "whoa there moneybags!" is what they said. but i'm not a rich man. i just have my priorities straight.

edit: a 750ml bottle of fin du monde is about $5-6, duvel about $6-7. i've never seen a 750ml bottle of piraat at less than $10.

I've had Chimay Blue before and Ommegang a couple nights ago when they opened a Wegman's grocery store nearby. It was nice, but I like Duvel better (even though that's not apples to apples, I gather).

i love chimay, but i'm not overly fond of ommegang. however, i like strong pales more than strong darks.. though strong darks are nice during the northeast ohio lake-effected winters. if you like duvel, you should like fin du monde. just be sure it's not too cold when you drink it.

[Beirut]

Big John,

I'm not sure where you live, but here in Quebec you can buy champagne sized bottles of La Fin du Monde. Even has a wired cork just like champagne.

A whole bottle of that and they'd be fishing you out of the gutter come sunrise.

More cheese?

Rockefort melted inside or over a steak. Your arteries will hate you but your taste buds will party all the way to the angioplasty.

[Big_John]

I'm not sure where you live, but here in Quebec you can buy champagne sized bottles of La Fin du Monde. Even has a wired cork just like champagne.

i'm pretty sure that's the 750ml bottle (the one the cheery man is palming in the pic i posted). but if there's a bigger one i should like to know about it.

[Fragony]

Best cheese is rijpenaar, period.

[Al Khalifah]

Mozarella at the moment and not that cheap plastic crap you get from a supermarket either.

[Sigurd]

two cheeses springs to mind:

Fløtemysost:

http://www.tine.no/bilde/5717?maxwidth=270
and
Norvegia:

http://www.tine.no/bilde/5709?maxwid...ur=0&lr=0&ll=0

[edit]: sorry about the links but the host has a link policy and I can't embed them directly into my post.

[The Blind King of Bohemia]

Two for me, either Applewood smoked cheddar or CrackerBarrel

[nokhor]

i share Gawain's passion for sharp cheddar. usually just by itself.

[edyzmedieval]

Hey Big John,

The guy who started that beer company lives about a mile away from me. He's a very famous Quebec singer. Not sure if he still runs the company though.

A girl I was putting the serious moves on years ago just loved the guy. I ran into him in the general store and told him he had to write me a nice personal autographed greeting for this chick for me to bring to her. He did.

I owe him big time.

Cheese?

Very old cheddar.

Let me guess.... The lovable girl is now your wife.

As for cheese, I like Cheddar, French Camembert and Gouda.
And also, Swiss cheese.