Mmmm... Mimolette!

We had some special guests at cheese tasting tonight! Please welcome Andrew and Kelli to the CCC for some yummy cheese-centered play-by-play.

So, after a day of a disappointing strawberry festival (who has a STRAWBERRY festival with ONE strawberry vendor? And nearly 100 other vendors? Arroyo Grande, CA, that's who. Schmucks.), we picked up some more cheese at Trader Joe's and sat around our dining room table trying out a group-style cheese tasting! Meet our friends Andrew and Kelli:  Andrew is camping out in our spare bedroom for a few months until he leaves to become a drill instructor for the Air Force, so he will probably frequent the Shteinberg-Botts Tasting Room until then. And Kelli is Alan's life raft at work, providing much needed comic relief when the world caves in on their office... which is nearly every day. Poor Alan.  

Now, Kelli and Andrew are just as new to cheese as we are, so we conned them into trying the new stuff we bought, as well as the Gruyere we tried the other day.  Our featured cheeses of the night: French Mimolette and Aged Gouda (we'll cover the Gouda in Part 2 of this post, because Alan's having a fit over here about putting 2 cheeses in the same entry... ahhh love).  We haven't made it very far into our book yet, so we still didn't know what we were buying when we bought it. But I convinced Alan to put down the really stinky moldy nasty ones he wanted to buy, and get some that looked a little bit safer. It's only a matter of time until that trick stops working...

Let's get down to the cheese! 

The Cheese: Isigny Sainte-Mere Mimolette (And, yes,  you must say it with a french accent at all times).  Hohn-hohn-hohn Baguette!!

We got lucky AGAIN. Isigny Sainte-Mere is one of the few brands of Mimolette that The Cheese Primer recommends in both France and the US! And it doesn't stop there- on the Isigny-Sainte-Mere website (posted below, and yes, the website is in French, so you might want to recruit someone who can speak the language... or at least muddle through it like I did) you can find the types of Mimolette they sell, organized by how long they have been aged. We managed to get our hands on their "Extra-Vieille" variety, which, directly translated means "Extra Old" (yum) and is guaranteed to be aged at least 18 months. In Cheeseland, older is usually better, so go us! We got the oldest cheese we could, on accident!

Mimolette is a hard bright orange cheese. It's nearly fluorescent! It has a waxy texture and it looks like orange-flavored hard candy.  That plays weird tricks on your brain, let me tell you. 

Mimolette is made in Normandy, in northern France. It is famous for being Charles De Gaulle's favorite cheese, but Steven Jenkins doesn't seem to love it very much. He says "Mimolette is one of the blandest cheeses you'll ever taste" - poor Mimolette!

I didn't think it was bland at all. It was very sharp and salty, and I definitely taste a sour milk flavor that (and I'm shocking myself even as I write this) wasn't entirely unenjoyable.  It's pretty much how I always wish my macaroni and cheese tasted, full of cheesy flavor! 

Alan said he could taste a tangy sourness like yogurt, and that it's sharp like Cheddar.  Kelli didn't like this one much, and Andrew thought everything tasted like Cheddar.  Now, Andrew is a wine connoisseur, and is really good at picking out the complex flavors in wine. Don't be fooled, all you wine tasters -  it looks like having a palette for wine doesn't prepare you for cheese!

The Verdict:

Alan: Mimolette is  a good substitute for Cheddar, if you feel like trying something different.

Ashleigh: I might grate some onto my macaroni and cheese...

Keep in mind, it's probably going to be a few bucks more than Cheddar. 

We also learned a valuable cheese lesson tonight. Don't eat cold cheese. It might sound weird, since it needs to be refrigerated. But, it is advised, and we now know from personal experience, to let your cheese come to room temperature before sinking your teeth into it. When cheese is cold, it has very little flavor, but coming to room temperature allows it to "wake up" in a sense... We revisited the Gruyere with Kelli and Andrew, and we tasted it as soon as we took it out of the refrigerator. I actually liked it then... I didn't taste any of the nail polish remover taste, and I thought maybe I was already seeing my palette develop. But, after 20 minutes, I tried it again, and yup, it was all acetone. YUCK. So, the moral of the story is don't munch on the cheese as soon as you take it out. Show some restraint, and wait for the flavor to come back. Also, your palette won't mature overnight. It's apparently going to take time for that... maybe I can stretch out putting off the stinky bleu cheeses for a while longer after all ;-)


Click Here to check out Isigny Sainte-Mere Mimolette

We would love you to try some of these cheeses with us and post what you think of them! And feel free to send us any requests and or suggestions!

Stay tuned for Part 2 of tonight's tasting, featuring Aged Gouda!


-Ashleigh