Category: Food

Hold onto your faces: Midnight Moon cheese is lick-your-cutting-board delicious.

On Saturday we visited Fromage to try yet another cheese. We asked our server what her favorite was and she pointed us in the direction of Midnight Moon.

Midnight Moon is a hard aged goat cheese and, while the official website of the cheesemaker (Cypress Grove) does not explicitly say it, I’m pretty certain that prior to being milked each goat is dipped by a cherub into a pool of shimmering dew collected from the mountains of Valhalla.

Midnight Moon headquarters is based out of Humboldt county California, but unexpectedly this cheese is made in Holland and then provided exclusively to the cheesemaker Cypress Grove Chevre. I’m not sure how this business arrangement works, but it doesn’t matter; the cheese is ambrosial.

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With stark contrast between the shadowy casing and the brilliant white flesh, Midnight Moon almost looks like it was inked in a graphic novel. The texture is a buttery creamy softness and the taste is quiet and comforting. The cheesemaker reports flavorful undertones of nuts and caramel, but I won’t pretend that my unschooled pallet can find these flavors without cliff’s notes.

Midnight Moon won third place in the 2014 World Champion Cheese for Hard Aged Goat Cheese and I completely understand why. This cheese is my favorite so far from the Cheese Files. Shockingly, it’s not the highest rated cheese from Cypress Grove! Their website describes another cheese, The Humbert Fog, as their flagship cheese. We will make sure to try this in the coming weeks.

Taste: 4/4
Price: $$ (25/lb)
Independence: High

Verdict: Buy this cheese.

This week we have two cheeses. The first is Piave Vecchio the second is a Camembert. First, let’s talk Piave. This one is a dense cows milk cheese from Northern Italy. We were suspecting Florence what with the Ponte Vecchio… but we were guessing the origin off the wrong word. Our focus shouldn’t have been the ‘vecchio’ as much as the ‘piave’. Piave is a river in Northeast Italy. The cheese is named after this river. The ‘vecchio’ is a clue that this particular cheese was aged for more than 6 months. In our case with our red label there is further definition of this cheese’s age. Ours is considered a Piave Vecchio Seleziono Oro (Italian for “I choose Gold”) which was aged for over a year.

The cheese itself is hard and has a very pleasant sweetness. For this cheese we tried our our new cheese plane. Perfect for hard cheeses, the plane shaves a thin slice of cheese off a block. I recommend this tool to all cheese fans. Let’s rate the cheese!

Worthwhile for the price, this one is fun and independent. It also gets a bonus for having a long shelf life. That is always appreciated.
Taste 3/4
Price $$
Independence: High

The other cheese in that picture is a basic French Camembert. Camembert is a soft milk cheese. Creamy deliciousness in every sense. Fromage’s Camembert has a favorable nutty flavor.

Completely delicious but for me it requires a carrier.
Taste 4/4
Price $$
Independence: Low

Long live Cheese!

We continue with our second edition of the Cheese Files as we explore the offerings of Fromage in Old Saybrook.

This week’s cheese? Pratomagno.

Pratomagno is a mountainous region in Italy southeast of Florence so calling a cheese ‘Pratomagno’ by itself is probably uncouth. My uneducated pallet would compare this particular cheese to a parmesan or a romano. This fact with a little internet searching results in my guessing that perhaps this is actually some variety of Pecorino Pratomagno.

As a firm Italian cheese, this Pratomagno cheese is decent. It’s firm and fragrant and a pleasure to grate. Our primary method of consumption thus far has been via the grater on bruschetta or pasta. That said, I don’t think it’s anything overly special.

Taste 2/4
Price $$
Independence: Low

Enjoyable but not overly memorable.