Compared to my coauthors here at Cheese Diaries, I cannot offer much. I do not have worldly travel experience, a well-honed nose for ripened curd, or a smartly-indexed mental catalog of French dairies. Nor does my writing rise to the descriptive standards we've come to expect from Anne and Connie.
In fact, I don't even have that most basic resource of the investigative cheese reporter—time. Time to let the cheese warm to room temperature. Time to eat slowly and take notes. Time, most importantly, to get to the Cheese Board before it closes.
The quintessential trips to the Cheese Board, for me, came during my last couple of semesters of college. I had already completed my senior year, and then my super senior year, and then had decided it was perhaps time to get serious about school. I quit the student paper, and although I picked up some freelance writing elsewhere, I had plenty of time on my hands to study and mill about.
It was in this context I would make thrice-weekly pilgrimages to the Cheese Board, noshing their Zampano bread on the way to Black Oak Books, eating their pizza and drinking their beer and listening to NPR in my car, and picking out some nice fromage and a baguette to help digest political science readers.
There was something of a reprise of these days during a two-month period of unemployment last year. But these days, thanks to work, I arrive in Berkeley after the Board's 7 p.m./6:30 p.m. closing time. Sunday they are closed. Which leaves but one day a week to select cheese, and sadly I am otherwise engaged some Saturdays.
So in the spirit of making the best of my disadvantages, I will take a look at what is left; that is, those cheeses I can buy in the wearier hours of the day, after work, usually at the obscenely overpriced Andronico's market on Shattuck Avenue. While bountiful by the standards of, say, Humble, Texas, the Andronico's cheese section is a small fraction of what one would find at a specialty cheese store. And the prices are by my reckoning roughly double what one would pay at the Cheese Board, a cooperative.
Once I have exhausted the Shattuck Andy's – the Telegraph, University and other smaller locations are right out – I shall endeavor to find other shopping options for those evening cheese runs I have come to enjoy.
It has been two weeks since I brought this cubic little rindpot home from the Shattuck Andronico's. I was in the same store less than 20 minutes ago and could no longer find it, so this review is written with the sort of sharpened and longful memory induced only by leche lost. That is just as well because I haven't the energy to find my notes from the original tasting.
Pave d'Affinois was one of three cheeses I assembled for my first "On The Run" sampling. We need not concern ourselves with the others, although for the record one claimed to be the first Crème Fraiche Brie, and was disappointing, gummy and blah, even on fruit. The other was a delightful little Camembert that I truly liked, but I honestly couldn't come up with any adjectives beside "buttery" and "really, really buttery, in a good way, honestly," so I decided against writing on it.
On to the Pave. The card at Andy's said something like, "A fabulous cow's-milk cheese with a delicate but luscious flavor. It is almost liquid at room temperature."
Andronico's cheese description cards are created by gluing together some combination of the words "creamy," "buttery," "delicate," "luscious," "mild," and "artisanal" with the location of the dairy and the type of milk. The words "fabulous" and "delicious" are used more sparingly, to indicate a clump of cheese costing no less than $10.
What got me in the Pave description was the "almost liquid" part. The cheese is of the sort with a thick rind and shaped into a boxy pyramid, and I envisioned a gusher of cheese ready to burst forth like gold from the tomb of Tutankhamen.
I was not disappointed. After letting it sit for an hour at room temperature, I sliced into the Pave diagonally, leaving two triangular cuts. The resulting visual was of mostly-melted vanilla ice cream in a cup, with a golfball-sized soft cheese solid floating in the middle of like-colored goo. The taste was ripe and, yes, a bit buttery. But this was no triple-cream lard fest; the fat content seemed reasonable, in fact the Pave, labeled in French, was marked with a large "45", which I interpreted to be a fat percentage. This helped produced a truly viscous liquid and a truly flavorful product.
This is a cheese for big wines, red meat and hearty bread. I did not enjoy it particularly on pears or melon, although I cannot say I ever disliked a bite in the least. My crusty sourdough seemed perfect.
The joy of a liquid cheese is partly that it spreads more widely on your tongue and coats your mouth, helping you fully taste it. There were nutty overtones, and a clean, even, controlled feel to the ripeness, almost friendly, never bitter, never rindy, never harsh but cloying and mysterious far beyond what one would expect from the supermarket pimping it.
It may have been a mere tryst, but my affair with Pave was rich enough to leave me sentimental, and I think that says something.
Posted by ryan at August 12, 2003 08:50 PM | TrackBack