Monday, March 7, 2011

Day 4: Blaue Geiss Bliss


IMG_2835

Meet Kisha. On Friday, she drove over from Trenton to bring me her new favorite blue. That’s right, uh huh, she is that cool.

Kisha and I are cheese friends -- she comes to tastings, drops me notes on Facebook, and comments on this blog. When she heard I was launching a Blue Cheese Invitational in March, she was one of the first to say, Count me in.

Then she dropped me a line: “Ever tried Blaue Geiss?”

I hadn’t. Now, I am proud of the fact that I eat a lot of blue cheese, and to be honest, I sit can get a little smug about the fact that I have eaten most, if not all, of the realllly good ones.

Stichelton, check.

Then along came Kisha with her Blaue Geiss. The girl delivered!

IMG_2844

“I read about it in Max McCalman’s book, page 300,” Kisha said when she walked in the door. She handed me a cheese wrapped in paper and sat down at the cutting board I had set out on my table.

“Page 300?” I raised a brow.

“Yup,” she grinned. “It’s rare.”

I retrieved Mastering Cheese from my bookshelf and opened it. There it was, right on p. 300: “…this is an amazing cheese, highly atypical and distinct….”

We dug in.

Blaue Geiss tastes like lightly smoked white chocolate with a crank of white pepper. It’s a raw goat blue with a snow-white paste that is pocked with islands of bluing. The texture is clayey; the mouthfeel, densely fudgy – smooth, bright, crisp, achingly balanced. I was blown away.

I should mention that the rind of this cheese looks like a charred marshmallow. Put it in your “fright wig” category of cheeses, but don’t dwell on the surface. Below that craggy black rind: manna.  

IMG_2863

Internet sleuthing reveals little: Blaue Geiss is made by Swiss cheesemaker Willi Schmid and aged by the rockstar affineur Rolf Beeler. Seekers on Chowhound give it a mention, but all other references are in German.

Where can you find this little truffle? Kisha foraged it in Princeton, NJ at Bon Appetit. I wonder if the store owner knows that he’s got rapture in his cheese case.

5 comments:

  1. It was so much fun Tenaya! So glad I could be a part of the Blue Cheese Invitational.

    ReplyDelete
  2. You should try all of Willi Schmid's cheese. They are really exceptional and he is such a cheese genius!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Most excellent description. I can almost taste it.
    Rock on, Lakisha!

    ReplyDelete
  4. I would love to get my hands on that! I haven't yet found a goat blue I like, but this one sounds intriguing.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Meredith, you might be able to find Cremifacto -- also know as Verde Capra, a beautifully mellow goat blue from Italy. I will be writing about it later this month.

    ReplyDelete