Cheese!!!!!

I love cheese!!!! The stinkier the better!!! Last week I went to another cheese class at Murray's, this time with Jimmy and Heather. This one was pairing cheeses with beer and cider.

In case you didn't know, cheese pairs much better with beer than it does with wine. And, as I discovered, with hard cider. My favorite pairing was an Etienne Dupont Cider from Normandy with one of my favorite cheeses, Camembert. Even in it's pasteurized form (the real stuff's illegal here) one bite of this cheese brings me back to the 2 weeks I spent in Normandy, where every single night with dinner Camembert was served with the salad course. Sooo grassy and earthy and delicious; and for those of you who are afraid of rind (I'm lookin at you mom and Siobhan), a bite with this bloomy rind adds another layer of complexity. As I exclaimed in the class, "it tastes like a steak!" ...that good. Anyway, it was so good with the cider, which arguably makes sense because they come from the same region. So we took home a little wheel of this Le Chatelain Camembert, and although the stench it has created knocks us over every time we open the fridge, the taste is worth it.

Our other favorite was the Prairie Fruits Farm Black Sheep - another creamy, gooey wheel of deliciousness. I don't always love sheep's milk cheese, but oh man this one was divine. SO yummy!!!!