Week 7 - V(Gal)lentine's Day!

As a totally separte piece from what I wrote out about cheese night, I date my blogs on the day the 'cheese night' occured. This website will very specifically NOT LET ME POST AN ENTRY ON VALENTINE'S DAY. The messed up thing is I'm sure there is a toally good reason for this. Someone messed it up for the rest of us. This is why we can't have nice things.

Does eating a disgusting amount of pizza count as a cheese? If so, I did a lot of in-depth research this weekend. Jill, Chris, Jenny, and Ryan were down from Seattle for the annual The One Motorcycle Show, so in addition to brunching hard we spent Galentine’s Day (What is Galentine’s Day you ask? Oh, it's only the best day of the year. February 13th, ladies celebrating ladies.) drinking, playing Cards Against Humanity, and eating pizza. Heart-shaped pizza. Which Hammy’s will do if you request it (for all you pizza-loving romantics out there).

Valentine’s Day I spent at Reina’s, watching chick flicks (The Sweetest Thing, Paper Towns, and Honey), eating chocolate, and again, eating our body weight in pizza. I am totally bummed at the missed opportunity of eating that slice into the shape of a heart.

Cheese night with Dom and Byron!

*Side note-People are kind of digging this cheese thing. I’ve had a couple people suggest cheeses to try and I have a little list going. Feel free to give me suggestions, I’ll eat my way through them all eventually!

Dom provided the wine and cheese this week, picking up an Ubriaco Al Vino cheese and a bottle of Ponsalet Monastrell Joven (which Dominic described as ‘leaving a distinct taste of salt water in your mouth’).

Ubriaco Al Vino (literally translated to ‘drunk on wine’) is a semi-soft cow’s milk cheese and aged for roughly three months from the Friuli region of Italy. The beautiful purple rind is created by soaking the cheese in the skins of Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot grape skins leftover from wine making process. This method was created as a way to preserve the cheese before modern methods came around, and is well known for being the first cheese to use this process.

Our thoughts: The wine flavor was much more mild than I would have thought throughout the cheese, even in the areas stained purple, however, the rind was another story. That is where this cheese shines. The cheese itself is mild and fruity, the rind packs the wine punch. It pairs best with a Cab or Merlot (I have no idea what kind of wine the Ponsalet Monastrell Joven was, even after Googling it) and I would have liked to try it with some green grapes to round out the flavors. I think this would be a really nice cheese to bring on a picnic for an afternoon wine tasting.

I have to circle back to the Italian Truffle Cheese from girl’s night (week 5). It wasn’t the fan favorite of the night, the strong smell putting us off, so I had a lot leftover. Dominic and Byron however, loved the cheese. Couldn’t get enough. Byron had the idea of saving some to melt over eggs for breakfast in the morning, and from what I was told it was very good. That, with re-trying the Gruyere, I am reminded just how much taste is subjective, changing with age (yourself and the cheese), but also from day to day, or even mood to mood.

Also, Byron asked me what makes a cheddar cheese a cheddar. And with all the cheesing and research I’ve done so far I didn’t know. So, for anyone else out there that may be curious, ‘cheddaring’ is an additional step in the cheese making process where, after heating, the curd is kneaded with salt, cut into cubes, drained of whey, and then stacked and turned. The difference between mild, medium, and sharp cheddar is the length of time the cheese is aged. The more you know!