Good news, dear reader. The cheeses are evolving. The further I delve into the pockets of the H-E-B cheese section, the more secrets I uncover. Joining me on my perilous expedition this week was Staff Writer Emma Sutton. Viewpoints Editor Tate Burchfield joined me once more. I’m definitely not on probation for my comments last beat.
Our options this time around yielded both the best and worst we’ve had (and by worst I mean the worst cheese I’ve EVERever had). We tried Explosion from Wyngaard Kaas, Merlot Bellavitano from Sartori and Royal Mahout’s paneer. As I’ve mentioned before, please take all my advice with a grain of salt and a pinch of context.
Our trio began with Explosion. From the get-go, the name of the cheese is an attention grabber. The Dutch like to turn heads, I suppose. This cheese is a gouda, so the cheese itself is creamy and soft. However, the block is covered with a layer of Spanish chili peppers. I was only able to enjoy the taste of the cheese for a few chews before the peppers kicked in.
“I like gouda, I love gouda,” Sutton said. “It would go well with a slice of apple on a cracker. I’d give this a four out of five goats. I’d try it again, I liked it; it’s a fun thing to put on a cheese board.”
I wanted to find a spicy cheese at the request of Student Government Association President Mikayla Pastrano. Thanks for the pain, madame president. For those of you who don’t know me personally, I don’t do spice very well. It was also $8.30 for 4.4 ounces: a real kicker in more ways than one. I’ll give this a 2.5 out of five goats. Please don’t fight me, Emma.
Our next cheese was the Merlot. Reader, you might think, “Merlot is a wine though, right?” Wrong. It’s wine that belongs in cheese. Particularly, this Wisconsin variety (that will not divulge what variety that might be). It has surprising crunchy bits inside that added a fascinating contrast to the otherwise malleable cheese. It was incredibly creamy, and almost seemed to overtake my taste buds.
“Classic,” Sutton said. “I have no complaints. The wine is definitely on the aftertaste; it was probably aged in a barrel that used to be a Merlot barrel. It would do good on a cracker, and I think it would do well with a fruit, like apricot or peach.”
Rich and explosive, this cheese was by far my favorite in this series. The creaminess was offset by the crunchy portions, and the rich flavor was overtaken by the Merlot aftertaste so as to not linger too dramatically. We thought it would do well in a mac and cheese (or, as Editor-in-Chief Lola Claire says now, Max and cheese), particularly a three-cheese or lobster mac. Emma and I both gave this a four out of five goats on first taste, but after I ate the whole block I bumped it up to a 4.5. Truly a great cheese.
Finally, true to my foreshadowing, the paneer.
“It smells like White-Out,” Sutton said. “It could be good, but it really just smells like chemicals.”
By itself, this was the worst cheese I’ve ever tasted. It had the texture of chalk, and I felt the spit in my mouth dry up. I could barely taste it, but what I could taste was sour and dry.
“It feels like eating rubber,” Burchfield said.
I agree with my editor this time around (please let me keep writing these, Tate). All three of us yelled out as we tried it, in the excruciating pain of having to consume this odd cheese. This was, without a doubt and in full consensus, a zero out of five goats.
However, I would like to add a disclaimer.
Paneer is a variety of cheese from the Indian subcontinent, and is often used as the main ingredient in many traditional Indian dishes. Thus, I don’t think we consumed it in the proper way. I would like to give this cheese a second chance one day, and cook it properly instead of as a raw cheese like its European-derived cousins. Despite this, I do not recommend this cheese.
Thank you for continuing to read these reviews, my lovely audience. Please look forward to more reviews, and a special edition of a paneer dish coming at some point in the future.
Is there as ‘gouda’ cheese as these?
