12 Days of Cheesemas--Day 5

(photo from Formaggio Kitchen)



The mental image of blue cheese is a stark white canvas with a smattering of blue-green pock marks across, and through, its surface.

Monte Enebro is not that kind of blue cheese. 

This pasteurized Spanish goat's milk cheese is not inoculated with peniciullium roqueforti and then pierced with a hollow needle, leaving room for the air to bloom it's molds. This cheese is enrobed in it, leaving it's spicy blue profile to linger at the end, rather than attack the senses on first taste.  The bright paste, when young, is tart and tangy. As the cheese ages, the milk turns bolder and more pungent--the grass traded off for that barnyard 'goatiness' that can alienate people to any goats milk cheese.