Mi-mo-lette

How do you call for Mimolette? It is not ordinary cheese, resting there upon your table like another slice of cheddar or a wedge of Comté. Mystifying, subtly surprising, this old world cheese's name slips across the lips so delicately, Mi - Mo - Lette.  Mi - Mo, pause, embrace, release into its Lette. To its neighbours it's Boule de Lille, Lille's Ball aux visitors, historians leaf it as vieux Holland, eternal strangers try commissiekaas, hypochondriacs and American hygienists' Outlaw, Mitey Mimo. But to its friends it rolls so lightly, three syllables: ope, breathe in… there, the petal of it is upon your tongue dissolving in a touch of Light - Sweet - Fruit, Mimolette, released.

A Dutch mercantile empire, an impoverished French Monarchy, trade embargoes, a thrifty creative Minister and always the French hunger for a good thing; source for epics and epic cheeses. 

          "It is simply, and solely, the abundance of 

    money within a state [which] makes the difference 

in its grandeur and power",

 (aforementioned, Minister, Jean Baptiste Colbert)

Between the 14th and 18th centuries Dutch Edam was a hugely popular and widely exported cheese.  Rather than abstain from a luxury, the impoverished and embattled government of Louis XIV (1638 - 1715) commissioned cheese makers in the the town of Lille in Northern France near the Belgium border, to make its own version of this sweet round Dutch cheese.  Perhaps in a slight wag at people of the House of Orange-Nassau it was to be coloured an intense rich shade of... orange. 

Mimolette looks striking, it could be mistaken for a piece of corral reef, a cannonball or, a slice of it, as cantaloupe.  This appearance is misleading for it is quite delicate in flavor.  The younger Mimolette is to be eaten or cooked with - slipped upon a salad or into sauces (even, I am going to type it, transformative macaroni and cheese). The older mimolette, drier and harder, is better offered on a cheese board with a sharp knife. For the parched, a couple of different wine pairing tacks can be taken, at the end of day with a late harvest rieslings or dessert wines to easier and more informal afternoons passed with Beaujolais (Saint-Amour) or a good Chianti or Pinot Noir. 

Mimolette is often accused of being mild or bland but there, I suspect that the flavours are being read in the wrong language; think aroma of toasted hazelnuts and that sweetness that linger upon the fingers after having eaten a cake. It is not the toasted hazelnut or the caramelized cake it is delicacy of them. Subtle and light for a cannonball of history. Meet Mitey Mimolette.

Assistance in eating inspirations: 
http://www.greatfood.ie/item_display.asp?cde=2&id=1412
http://genevalunch.com/2010/02/03/recipe-parsnip-veloute-with-aged-mimolette-cheese/

For macaroni and cheese, most of the recipes suggested a combination of mimolette with other cheese (from gruyere and emmental to cheddar and parmesan); combinations often work well.

Let's Begin with Durrus

Durrus, the cheese that endures.

From www.cellartours.com

I don’t know why this is my first post, perhaps it is because it is the first cheese that dumbfounded me. A person I perfectly respected loved it and I wanted to continue respecting him. Me, I tasted it… boring, tried it upside down, dull, tried it tipsy, missed it. Three years on, I realise that boring is like calling the sky boring. Does it need to pour sun and storm down in order to declare that it is there? Watch the clouds, enjoy shades of blue, or see gradations of light as the sun sets.  Durrus is subtle.

I recall a young Parisian visitor coming to Ireland. We took him to the National Gallery and he noted, "We have the Louvre", we went to the Cliffs of Moher and he said, "We have more Cliff in the South of France", Dublin, "eh…Paris". We finally won ground with a battered sausage and frites avec du sel et du vinaigre from George’s Street Arcade.

Durrus is not a big cheese but then neither is Ireland. When ripe, Durrus is buttery, sweet and the taste rolls on if you stay with it. It is fresh. When terrific Durrus is quietly nutty, creamy and there are hints of oven-baked fruits. Dumbfounded. Give it time, wait for a good one and try it again and again.

from www.IrishFarmsteadCheese.com

What to look for: A good round of Durrus will have an apricot orange rind, the paste will be a buttery yellow (indicative of the flavour) and sprayed with small holes throughout. Honeycomb comes to mind but this cheese will bounce back like loamy soil when pressed. If the rind is dark and the cheese is not yet open – wait! It is still young and needs to ripen.

For this post we will not include recipes or pairing. Eating it is straight up is a good place to begin….and I need something for future posts, no?

The Basics:

Durrus is a washed rind soft cheese from the Beara Peninsula in Co. Cork, it is one of the three cheese coming from the Durrus farmhouse and the hands of Jeffa Gill and her assistants. The smaller Durrus round has a more buoyant texture than cheese from the larger round.

http://www.durruscheese.com