Cheese post

Gam and I walked to Indooroopilly today to look for some running shoes for Gam (a fruitless exercise- he's a size 14, so he can rarely get the shoes he wants in the size he needs) and perhaps a terrarium for Quaddro. We didn't buy a terrarium because we figured we can make one for less than the ~$40 they were selling for and besides, it's not like Quaddro is a permanent visitor to our home.

Instead, I got to treat myself to a crusty loaf of caraway rye bread from the Bread of France stall, and some cheese from Jones the Grocer. I haven't bought any fancy cheese in ages... at some point when Gam was doing his placement I picked up a couple of brie or camembert that were $1.50 on clearance at Coles (those cheeses are at their best right on the 'use by' date anyway), but that's it since Christmas.

I settled on a cheese I'd never heard of- Fourme D'Ambert. I'd been tossing up between a blue and something creamy, like a camembert, but Jones the Grocer didn't have anything that looked particularly exciting in its range of camembert and brie. Gam also insisted I pick up a tiny chunk of something called 'Cambozola' which I'd eyed off mainly because it was from Germany and looked like a compromise between a camembert and a blue. The only drawback of the Cambozola was the cost... the tiny chunk must have been around 80g, because it cost roughly $6, and the price/kg was $85! Yikes. Probably the most expensive cheese I've ever bought...

Cambozola

Still, the Cambozola turned out to be my favourite of the two- it has a nice strong flavour (I think the specimen in the shop was a good age), and according to Wikipedia it pretty much is a cross between a blue (gorgonzola) and camembert.

The Fourme D'Ambert was bloody good too, mind, as well as being cheaper (but still not really in my budget). Despite all that blue it actually had a milder flavour than the Cambozola. It had an interesting texture- not sticky or crumbly, like some blue cheeses, but slightly slippery... not in the sense that it's slimy, but it breaks into segments easily without falling apart or sticking to my fingers. And yeah, I'm a heathen and I like to eat with my fingers! One of the small pleasures of buying my own food is that there's no-one to rouse on me when I'm in the mood to break chunks off my bread rather than slice it! I did slice the cheese with a knife though- it's simply the more practical thing to do.

Fourme D'Ambert