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Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Chèvre is French for Goat (revised)

Greek Feta cheese has a distinctive salty, tangy flavor and crumbly texture. The world of cheeses have many similar cheeses yet newspaper foodies exult only feta. This cheese is made from sheeps milk, or from a mixture of sheep and goats’ milk There are thousands of alternative cheeses.

For topping pizza or making a salad, there are endless alternatives that are worth trying. Many of these have less salt, which in the case of salt restrictive diets make the healthier choices:

Teleme (smooth-tart flavor without the salt), Bryndza (one of the softest crumbly type of cheese, Queso fresco (less slat), Queso cotija, fresh Mizithra (contains less salt), Montrachet (texture is softer, moister and it contains less salt).

Many French cheeses simply blow my socks off. Buche de Chevre (La Buchêtte chèvre) is a cheese that is sharp and tangy near the rind becoming successively richer and creamier towards its center. From salad to pizza, to stuffed quail or chicken breast, there is little time to try all the cheese possibilities. When our family visited France, we found every single town made their own wonderful cheeses.

Often we seem to get stuck in a rut. Should we always use cream cheese for cheese blintzes? How about a variation on the ricotta in lasanga? Should all cannoli made with mascarpone? Why not a goat cheese cheesecake? I am wondering what a cheese blintze would be like made with a rich and creamy French Reblochon cheese?

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