I have a longer post in the works, but I just had to stop after lunch to remind you all to pick up goat cheese on your next trip to the supermarket. Then, crumble it over salad with toasted nuts, smear it on your sandwich for lunch, along with lettuce, tomato, mayo and grilled smoked tofu (like I just did), and top a casserole or pasta bake with little dabs and let it turn golden in the oven. Omelettes are made transcendent by a few pockets of warm melting goat cheese. Its perfect partners are silky, earthy beetroot or tender green beans. Add some toasted sliced nuts and you have the perfect trifecta.
Goat cheese comes in several forms. My favourite is widely known as chèvre, which is a soft cheese; almost a cross between feta and cream cheese, but so much more. I often buy Meredith Dairy‘s vacuum sealed chèvre or their marinated goat cheese. They are readily available in my local supermarket and grocer’s, and are both delicious.
If you’re lucky you might find the big sister of chèvre, which is a white mould or even washed rind soft cheese. Earthy like camembert on the outside, salty and crumbly like feta on the inside, and often shaped into a log, it is often slice into rings and melted or grilled. It becomes warm, melty, crumbly and slightly sweet. What more could you want?
You can also buy a hard goat cheese, which is the most sliceable of the goat cheeses. If you’re unlucky it can be prone to a slightly waxy texture, but a good firm goat cheese shaved onto salads or pasta will be a revelation in taste. Cheese based on cows milk can often (but not always!) be described and salty and creamy and…. that’s about it. Goat cheese however has its own very unique and intense flavour profile. Compare cow’s milk to goat’s milk, and you can begin to understand the difference between cow and goat cheese. While I don’t always want my glass of milk to taste like a farmyard (goat milk is an acquired taste), when it comes to cheese I’ll take as much grassy, tangy goodness as I can get.
And in other good news, it is much lower in fat, cholesterol and salt than most other cheeses!
Fellow Australians, keep an eye out for Meredith Dairy, Milawa Cheese Company, or the fabulous (and very local to us) Holy Goat Cheese. If you have any favourite cheesemakers from anywhere around the world, please leave a comment and a link below.
Now go! Put it on your list, or better yet, head down to your dairy section/delicatessen/farmer’s market now. You can thank me later.
Image may be NSFW.
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Image may be NSFW.Clik here to view.
