Morbier

This is a semisoft, raw (as opposed to pasteurized) cow's milk cheese. It comes, according to my cheese book*, from the Franche-Comte region in Eastern France. Let's start with the rind.

The rind is a lovely pale terra-cotta color, and is medium-hard and thin. It has that peculiar tang that white-mold, raw milk, French cheeses all seem to have, at least in my limited experience. It reminds you that you aren't gnawing on some plasticky, processed supermarket purchase. On to the pate.

The pate (the stuff in the middle) is soft, tangy but mild, and melts beautifully. Tomorrow morning, I'm going to have a croque-monsieur with this stuff. In the middle of the pate is a thin line of vegetable ash, which at first glance looks like blue mold. It seems to add a little bite to it, but that may be my imagination. It definitely adds color to the cheese's whole presentation; you look at it and immediately know, with a certain pride, "I am about to eat a fine French cheese."

My only complaint with this cheese is its name. I haven't bothered to look it up (stay tuned, I'll probably get around to it), but any word that starts with "morb-", you look at it, and expect it to end with "-id", "-idity", or "-ibound". Not something I wish to evoke in my cheese exploration project here.

To end on a positive note, let me sum up: Bien! I haven't devised a rating system, so you'll have to settle for an unweighted French adjective for now.

*Please note that I am not endorsing the services of Amazon.com. That link is just for your reference, and I encourage you to try smaller, independent online retailers, such as alibris.com. It's just that Amazon's pages are pretty stable, and I am, certainly, endorsing this particular book.