Before April comes to a close, we’d like to bring you two Cheese of the Month Club posts.
First up was March’s delivery, the Second Most Popular Requested Cheeses. This one crosses countries and styles and includes Spanish aged manchego, Italian piave, Canadian black diamond, and Italian dolce gorgonzola.
The manchego is a firm, buttery sheep’s milk cheese. We loved the nuttiness of this cheese and found it an easy pairing for most of our dips.
The piave was also a firm cheese, with a slightly gritty texture. This is a cow’s milk cheese with a grassy, nutty flavor (so nutty, in fact, that Michael exclaimed, ‘this is a full nut experience!’ while sampling the first piece). This one was a great pair with honey.
The Canadian black diamond is a white cheddar cheese. While the cheese is considered to be ‘extra sharp’ (aged for 2 years, in this case), it was still relatively soft and had a creamy flavor to it.
Finally, the Italian dolce gorgonzola was a pleasantly stinky and soft blue cheese that, despite being very difficult to eat, was well worth the effort.
These cheeses provided a nice amount of variety. Some members of the household felt this variety was delightful enough to beg for.
All four of the cheeses were agreeable to our selection of dips and jellies. Favorite pairings for this month were the champagne raspberry honey mustard from Castoro Cellars and our January Jelly of the Month Club selection, Los Gatos black currant and wild raspberry jam.
Basically, once the board was assembled and we were able to dig in, it became very clear why these are some of the most commonly requested cheeses from Penn Mac. Every bite was delicious!
Om nom nom!