Mimolette is a beautiful cheese, the color of poppies, with an aroma like dried apricots and dates and citrus. The flavor is slightly sweet and deeply cheesy and savory, like a cheddar grown old and slightly world-weary after a life of indulgence. It is a hard cheese, but not granular; it has a solid chew and certain presence. Its rind, which looks like crusted dirt shaken loose, has the flavor of honey with little of its sweetness. I found this distinct and fascinating, but I am no great lover of the flavor of honey.
It turns out upon research that a defining feature of mimolette is the introduction of cheese mites, which burrow into the surface of the cheese and manufacture the unique rind from their detritus. This was a disturbing thing to learn having already consumed the cheese, and I worried for days about the introduction of cheese mites, which are otherwise pestilent, into my fridge, until convincing myself that there were certainly no live cheese mites in my sample, and that mimolette is put on cheese plates all the time.
That scare past, I remember this cheese with fondness, and recommend it to you.
2 comments:
That's a cheese? It looks like a cantaloupe to me.
I thought of mentioning that it's famous for looking like a cataloupe. But then I decided to let people make that fun discovery for themselves!
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