This week for our cheese tasting we selected a duo of cheeses to pair with fresh-baked Pain de Campagne bread.
Our first cheese was an English cheese from Neal Doddington, and it attracted our attention with its gorgeous red-bronze rind. The cheese is made by the award-winning Doddington creamery from raw cow milk and aged for 15 months. The Doddington is mild and dry, with a subtle but very pleasant nutty taste and perhaps the slightest hint of buttery sweetness. In flavor and structure, it is somewhere between Gouda and Cheddar. Like the best of both of these, the cheese is sufficiently complex to reward the palate with satisfying intensity while hinting suggestively of other more subtle flavors. Nestled in warm Pain de Campagne, Doddington tasted seductively of tantalizing farm flavors, fresh and buttery, the slightly salty and nutty tones pronounced in a mouthful of English countryside.
The second cheese was equally surprising and pleasant. Selun is a semi-soft cow's milk cheese from Switzerland that is reminiscent of St. Nectaire, creamy with suggestive flavors of wild flowers and native mountain grasses. Though a creamy, rich and supple cheese, Selun kept its structure even when spread voluptously on Pain de Campagne. Like the Doddington, it's best feature is its mild nature, hinting of flavors like the meadow flowers and wild herbs rather than overpowering with intensity. Less pungent than St. Nectaire and with similar strengths, Selun is highly recommended.
Both these cheeses were extremely satisfying and suggestive of their elemental origins. These selections are more restrained than many cheeses in their respective categories, and rely largely on tantalizing suggestions of their wild meadow flavors. Warm Pain de Campagne of course made these morsels even more delightful. Overall, a very fine winter lunch!
