i'm cheesey, yes i know

andrew's cheese shop in santa monica opened fairly recently and they offer a basic cheese class. i like cheese. so, i went.

as much as i like cheese, i know some things about it but not so much. andrew talked while two employees passed around cheeses to try with bread and wine. for $25, it was well worth it.

so what did i glean from cheese 101?
1. i have a new favorite cheese. it is called zamorano. this is a hard cheese from the castile-leon region of spain. think manchengo. but better.
2. a good brie-like cheese is called fougerus. it's nice and creamy but it is not made in the brie region of france so it can't be called brie. but, it is still yummy.
3. gouda is pronounced "how-duh" not "goo-duh."
4. for the most part, soft cheeses are probably less fatty than hard cheeses. apparently, fat is measure in dry mass. a pound of soft cheese has lots of water and could be 50% butterfat. a pound of hard cheese doesn't have a lot of water and could be 30% butterfat. once one squeezes out all the water in the soft cheese, however, that cheese becomes say 1/10 of a pound. can't really squeeze any more water from hard cheese so it stays a pound in weight. thus, that 1/10 of a pound of cheese with 50% buterfat ends up being less fatty than a pound of cheese with 30% butterfat.
5. triple cream is not cheese. it is a cheese product. there is cheese in it but it is mostly buttermilk.
6. that white stuff on the rind of brie and brie like products is called "bloomy rind" because the mold is blooming. eiw!
7. blue cheese uses mold formed from rye bread. (at least the roquefort kind.)
8. the us imports and produces unpasteurized (raw) milk. the difference is that the cheese is aged. that way, the bad bacteria is killed.
9. the best way to store cheese is to tightly wrap the cut part of the cheese in plastic but leave part of the rind unwrapped so it can breath. put it in the cheese shelf of the fridge, or towards the bottom of the fridge assuming that the cool air comes from the top and not the bottom. also, one can store the cheese inside tupperware with a wet sponge near (but not touching) the cheese to keep it humid. then put the tupperware in the fridge.
10. andrew likes montgomery cheddar from england. he buys it from neal's yard. i thought it was just ok.

so that's what i remember from the class. i really want me some zamorano. mmmmmm.