Week 12 – Easter! Hosted by Reina and the Bluth family

At this point, let’s just say the week number is more of a guideline and a way to keep track, as opposed to the actual corresponding week of the year. I’m still committed to doing 52 posts before year end, but getting these out in a timely fashion has proven to be a difficult task. Taking baths and Netflix are pretty time consuming. In fact, I’d get a lot more writing done if I could take my laptop in for a soak. Electrocution be damned. Also, starting on April 1st I am participating in an 8 week weight loss challenge, but fear not! Cheese nights won’t suffer. Only I will suffer. I am the April fool.

Easter is one of those holidays where if you’re an adult without kids the magic is kind of lost (I’d say that applies to Halloween, except no one loves candy and an excuse to dress up more than I do, but even Christmas falls into that weird holiday limbo). So this year, like many before it, I totally forgot. Thankfully, Reina, the hostess with the mostess, had me over to participate in her families festivities, which included an Easter egg hunt, puzzles, and of course baskets. The Easter bunny even left a basket for me (which I failed to take a photo of, guess I was too busy tearing into my candy and swag).

Someone had a waffle ala Leslie Knope

For our Easter cheese plate we had four cheeses, a Tillamook Cheddar, a Blarney Castle mild Gouda, a Denmark’s cream Havarti, and a goat cheese mixed with marmalade. I’m only going to write about the Gouda and Havarti; I plan on making a field trip out to the Tillamook cheese factory this summer and will do a whole post on that, and the goat cheese was the same from week 9.

Havarti hails from Denmark, named after Havarthigaard, the farm where it was first produced. It’s a semi-soft cow’s milk cheese aged for three months. It’s made like most cheeses; adding the rennet to the cheese to curdle, then pressed into cheese molds, and drained for aging. Havarti is a washed-curd cheese, something the Dutch are famous for, which is a process used for bringing out the sweetness of a cheese. How you ask? Adding water pulls lactose out of the curd, and since the bacteria in the cheese no longer has ‘food’ (lactose), it stops producing acid. In addition, a cream Havarti (as opposed to a regular Havarti), has extra cream infused.

Havarti is an 'interior-ripened' cheese with small holes called eyes (think Swiss cheese). Soft cheeses fall into two categories based on the rind: surface-ripened cheeses, and interior-ripened cheeses. Surface-ripened cheeses and covered with a thin layer of a white down or mold (like a Brie), while interior-ripened cheeses are washed in brine to keep the moisture and softness of the cheese (like Muenster). Eyes are caused by bubbles of carbon dioxide gas produced by bacteria in the cheese.

The Havarti was probably my favorite on the plate (although the goat cheese and marmalade is still pretty winner) which is surprising because I thought of Havarti as one of those cheeses you've had a million times and know what to expect. But the buttery taste and the melt in your mouth quality had me not wanting to pair it with anything to savor the delicate flavor.

I've reviewed a few different Gouda's now, a 'regular', an extra aged, and a 1,000 day Gouda, and the Blarney Castle mild Gouda isn't like any one of them. I was actually surprised to find out it was a Gouda after trying it. Unsurprisingly, this is an Irish cheese, from the Blarney region, made from grass fed cows milk. Using no additives or flavoring, this cheese is 100% natural. There's not as much history on this cheese on the Internet as I would like, their official webpage says (in regards to their grasslands), "To protect one of the richest herds and most prosperous pastures of the time, Blarney Castle was built." A lofty statement with zero evidence to corroborate it on the web.

All of the other Gouda's I've reviewed so far have had similar qualities, sharp, salty, crumbly, a little nutty. This one was soft (in texture and in taste) and subtle. This cheese pairs well with a full-bodied wine, such as a Cabernet Sauvignon.