My husband just came home with two blocks of cheese.
The first is called paittone valtellina and goes for $24.99/lb. It's a soft quarter of a round. At that price
The second is called caciotta di capra pepe e olio and goes for $33.99. Really? Is this made out of virgin milk? Maybe the milk of a fetus sheep, extracted with a syringe from in utero?
Please help me enjoy these cheeses rather than thinking about how much they cost.
You are lucky, it could have been Casu marzu.
Ew.
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In the past 24 hours... Polly-O!
Perhaps it would help to think of them more like a fine wine. You can buy cheap plonk at the supermarket for $3 a bottle, or you can buy some special vintage something-or-other for $300 a bottle. Or something in between! Your husband just brought home the cheese equivalent of a $30 bottle of wine I suppose. Think about how it tastes rather than how much it costs, or you are doing it a disservice. Look it up on the internet and learn about its origin and what to eat it with. Be sure to eat it at room temperature and not straight out of the fridge.
I don't remember the most I've paid for cheese, but I'm pretty sure I've paid more than $20 for some really amazing cheeses sold at a local cheese shop, run by a slightly intimidating Frenchman (Beverly Hills Cheese Shop for anyone local who likes cheese). I tasted some amazing cheeses at a local fine dining establishment, and had to have some more. Amazing, imported cheese can be shockingly expensive :) There's some great domestic stuff too though, sort of the cheese equivalents of microbreweries. I don't remember any names but I will try and look it up later if I remember.
I really shouldn't post here, the answer is way too much.
Blue's:
Roquefort Papillon Black Label
Royal Blue Stilton
Roaring Fourties Blue
Non Blue's:
Parmigiano Reggiano Vacche Rosse
Mozzarella di Bufala
If you really want to enjoy a good cheese, remember some tips:
- room temp, always
- match a wine to what you're having
- get good quality cheese if possible, fresh if it's required by the type
- try a little bit of multiple cheeses instead of going overboard with one
- if you are prone to migraines or lactose intolerant, go easy
Don't be such a cheapskate, fire. I'm sure I've paid at least $35 a pound for cheese before. Just enjoy the damn stuff already.
Oh yeah, the cheese was excellent. An aged, grass-fed, organic gouda. Small diary out of Wisconsin. Outstanding.
Fire if you want to try some and can't find a good local shop, I've had success getting new cheeses to try from this site:
http://www.igourmet.com/
I've never, ever looked at the per-pound price of cheese. It's CHEESE. No price is too high. If an individual piece is too $$, ask them to cut it smaller. I have gotten embarrassingly small pieces of cheese to try fancypants stuff. The cheese must go in the mouth at whatever cost.
How do you feed a cheese?Originally Posted by Ed Solomon
I'm weird about cheese. I love cheddar and a few other traditional varieties, and don't really bother with anything else. The most expensive stuff I ever buy is Tillamook cheese, which runs about a $1-2 more for a 2 lb loaf then the store brands around here.
You'd think that since I love cheese I'd want to try all the varieties. Nope.
I honestly don't remember... but that's because I never buy any remarkably expensive cheese. In fact I don't think I've ever seen such a thing. "Expensive" French or Italian cheese from the local delicatessen experts is a few euros per 100g which is probably less than US$10 per pound.
Then again, I'm practically living within walking distance of the major cheese producing countries, and the aforementioned experts literally just drive over to the local producers to get their cheese. In America I would expect that a lot of the price for European cheese goes into shipping costs (and possibly import duties?).
Gorgonzola that was only a month old. God, it was heavenly.
There's this Norwegian cheese, Ski Queen Gjetost, that I am crazy about. It's not really expensive or anything, I just love the taste. I once ate half a pound in one sitting, with crackers at first and then in small slivers, savoring the taste of each one as long as possible. I highly recommend this cheese.
Other than that, I eat ordinary cheese from the supermarket ( NOT processed cheese, yechh).
Chris: 1 euro is about 1.39 US dollars currently
454 grams per pound, so about 1/5 pound of cheese.
so you're talking 35$/pound cheese without shipping costs. That's rather high end.
My guess was low, but you also made some mistake in your calculation. Let's take €3 per 100 g. That's $4.17 using your conversion rate, and multiplying by 4.54 to get one pound gives $18.93 per pound. But most cheese I buy is cheaper than €3/100g, more like around €2.
dwolfe, I don't take "a few" to mean 5 Euro.
With cheese food, of course!
And what Leah said, price isn't relevant with good cheese.
I lived in Wisconsin for 4 years and developed a taste for quality aged cheddars. The most I've spent was on buying 12-year aged cheddar that went for $25/lb, although I regularly bought 6 to 9 year cheddars that were $10-15/lb.
If anyone is interested, I'd recommend giving the Cheddar Flight they have here a try. It will let you sample aged cheddars from 1 through 9 years so you can get a feel of how the flavors mature over time.
http://www.wisconsincheesemart.com/i.../cPath/121_100
Loaves? You don't like cheese. You like the weird shit that American supermarkets sell as cheese.
I'm a filthy troglodyte, poly-o string cheese FTW...
We don't really buy expensive or odd cheeses. However, we recently picked up some fantastic Amish cheeses, since we live about an hour away from one of the major Amish settlements in the U.S. I think one was goat cheese; that may have been a butter, though. In any case, it was all fantastic! I need to get some more.
I went into a cheese shop in Aarhus a few years ago, you could smell it from the street. We descended a short flight of stairs to be confronted with the most incredible smell / selection of cheese imaginable. I asked for the stinkiest, strongest cheese they had and indeed I was provided with some - it was pretty pricey stuff. I later discovered I'd bought "THE CHEESE", the local nemesis that no tourist ever touches for fear of lingering cheesy death. It was delicious (if you didn't inhale) but boy did it stink the fridge up something rotten (I mean seriously, decaying flesh had nothing on this thing). I can't for the life of me remember what it was called though - it was white, runny and a Danish specialty.
YES. Although I don't care for the stinky cheeses, I have done the same.
My dad used to keep stinky Danish cheeses in the fridge, and I still dread the smell.
I'm curious what this was Krok. Most of the Danish cheeses I've had were either the solid but soft nutty type or the blue type. Their blues were relatively tame compared to others, not nearly as strong in the smell, although as far as Danish cheeses go, I'm wagering that was a blue cheese. And I have only had one runny brie type from Denmark, it was fairly mild.
Many years ago I was very put off by the smell of any cheese. I had a friend who forced me to try a few and suddenly it was like someone flipped a switch, I realized the wonderful flavors hiding behind most of them. I can definitely understand folks who can't get past the initial smell though.
I'll ask the person whose fridge it was for the name. I also remember another one we had, although I didn't buy it, that was essentially caramel based. The first bite seemed to agree with me, but after that I couldn't take any more. It just seemed... wrong.
We regularly sample all kinds of cheeses from Zingerman's in Ann Arbor. We actually tried to stop in there today but we were running late and got there after they closed. (these things happen when you have infants). I know we've sampled stuff in the $30+/lb. range though. Stiltons to Cheddars to Parm Reggiano and about anything else we can get our hands on to sample. :)
I was hoping someone else would mention this cheese. I'm not a huge cheese guy, but this is my exception, and I think I was lucky I got it as a child, because anyone else I've given it to had a large dislike of it on fist taste and wouldn't go further. Love the stuff!
Damn, I missed it where 'a few' is exactly three! Please send me the memo next time.
So no, Chris, I calculated just fine, no mistake, given 'a few' as the only thing to go on. But thank you for clarifying, I did make a wrong assumption given limited information.
Back to cheeses:
Local grocery chain Giant Eagle has installed a cheese cave in one of their higher end grocery stores in Pittsburgh. It is awesome. I want to live in a cheese cave someday!
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