Some cheese I have eaten recently

I have headed out to the supermarket in the last week or so to pickup some different cheeses to try, the goal before our time is up here is to get through and try every single cheese from the book "French Cheeses" that I have recently acquired.

With this goal in mind, I came home from the supermarket with four different cheeses recently.

MUNSTER - First of all I came home with this very tasty looking Munster cheese. Munster cheese comes from the far east of France and apparently has a very high fat content. (45%, great for those arteries) It comes with a slightly reddish rind and a fairly strong odor. Munster is an AOC cheese and thus production is strictly controlled, according to the AOC, "a limited area of milk production, including major part of département of Vosges, a large part mountainous or in front of the range in Alsace, départements Haut-Rhin and Bas-Rhin, a few communes in

département Haute-Saône and Belfort Territory, cantons of départements Moselle and Meurthe-et-Moselle."

Most importantly, the taste. Munster has a very strong odor, and this is the first thing to hit

your senses. It has quite a creamy texture although is a little firm, a little bit like a thickshake. The taste is not quite as strong as you would expect from the smell, but has quite a sweet milky taste, which is left lingering in your mouth after you have swallowed it.

SAINT-NECTAIRE - I also picked up a very interesting cheese called "Saint Nectaire". The first thing that struck me about this cheese was the colour of the rind, which was ashen, almost black. This cheese comes from central France, almost smack bang right in the middle of the hexagon. I am going to turn to my favourite wikipedia for a bit about the history of this cheese. "It is made in the Auvergne region of central France. The cheese has been made in Auvergne since at least the 17th century. Its name comes from the Marshal of Sennecterre (a linguistic corruption of "Saint-Nectaire"), who served it at the table of Louis XIV. The Marshal of Sennecterre is also responsible for the introduction of Cantal and Salers."

The smell of this cheese is a little bit like old mouldy socks that have been left out in the rain for a while. However lets face it, some cheeses aren't exactly rosy smelling to the nose, and I was hoping it would taste a little better than it smelled. This is one of the more firmer cheeses that I have purchased, it has a similar consistency to something like Colby that you might have back home, however slightly more silky. The taste is a little acidic and a bit spicy and certainly sticks in your mouth for a while after woods, (probably due to the acid)

PICODON - A goats cheese again from central France. It comes in a nice little round nugget, and has a very typical goats cheese type taste but a little more on the spicy side. The reason for this spice is apparently the goats that it comes from devour anything and everything on the mountains on which they live around central France. This diet of theirs is reflected in the taste of their milk.

The cheese book I have suggests that you suck on this cheese a little bit before eating in order to get all of the taste out, I didn't really try this, but it tasted good enough to me without doing so.

BRIE DE MEAUX- Brie is actually a speciality from a region not far to the east of Paris. There are so many varieties of Brie that you can buy at the supermarket or a fromagerie. The one that we picked up was an aged brie. It was a lot darker in colour than a regular Brie that you might find in Australia and was a lot firmer in texture. When I unwrapped it the smell was almost smokey and you could smell the mould (Probably because it was aged a little longer than normal Brie).

Once in the mouth, the taste was strong and rich and tasted quite sweet. There are still quite a few different varieties of Brie I am keen to try, but this one was a good place to start and whet my appetite for some other varieties of Brie.