Tomme Du Berger

I'm not sure who took this photo – I found it on a blog in Swedish and since my Swedish is limited to the alphabet, tongue twisters (Knut knöt en knut bakom knuten, och när Knut hade knutit knuten så var knuten knuten...anyone? Sex kvistfria kvastskaft?) and uh.."green hedgehog" (grön igelkott)...I am not sure who it belongs to. Anyway, it is a lovely photo, but it is not mine.

I've been eating increasingly stinkier and stinkier cheese. In college I used to wander into Murrays and make all sorts of timid cheese choices. Tasty, but timid. I'd munch on Felino Salami and Pyrenees Brebis (which is a delightful combination, btw) and buy all sorts of interesting cheddar with nettles. Then I started my extreme obsession with Monte Enebro (Spanish goat's milk cheese with a blue ash rind) that I used to have with Grayson or Adrahan. They were wash rind cheeses but they were still pretty civilized, meaty and beefy. I finally hit my Monte Enebro peak when I was in London and had some deep fried and decided that I almost died and went to heaven and subconsciously decided that my imaginary mission of Monte Enebro was complete.

On my birthday this year one of my friends gave me a little piece of Hooligan by Cato Farms...a super stinky cheese that smelled like the insides of boots on a spring day. It was a little nutty and a little sweet but really...pungent, in a dainty way. After that, nothing was ever quite the same. Because then I had some Gres des Vosges. And I was so enthralled, I brought a whole slab of it to my friend's apartment who was put off by it immediately and was quite visibly offended, saying that she loved me but she really could not understand me and stinky cheese...until she tried it. It's a little yeasty and nutty and seems like it would be a good idea to wash it down with some beer.

Then, one day when I was waiting half dazed at the Murray's Cheese counter, the cheesemonger called my number and asked me what I wanted and I pointed to the Tomme du Berger and said I wanted a quarter of a wheel. As well as a staple slab of Monte Enebro and a third of a pound of the strongest Stilton so I could make some roasted pear salad. I'd never had any Tomme du Berger before and I don't even remember the description on the label, but it seemed compelling enough. It's a raw sheep and goat's milk cheese, I think the goat's milk is from Provence. It a bit of a finicky cheese because it goes in and out of season....right now supply is dwindling because there was a drought in Provence, so I recently purchased...quite a lot of it.

It is..........LOVELY.

It is my new favourite cheese of the moment, ousting Monte Enebro. So if you are not in New York (because I kinda want to hoard this cheese for myself), get thee to a cheese shop and buy some Tomme Du Berger before it disappears for the rest of the year.