[Sca-cooks] Fw: Cheese Type?

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Karen O wrote:

 >> Alys Katharine asked:
 >>
 >>> What other type of soft cheese might have been available rather
 >>> than
 >>>
 > using
 >
 >> cream cheese?   What about ricotta?  <
 >>
 >
 > earlier I wrote: I don't know.  "Good, soft cheese, not too old"
 > I had thought curd type cheese as being too "new" so cottage,
 > farmers & ricotta is too new.  And as I had said, I was thinking of
 >  a soft smooth blandish cheese.<
 >
 > Well I spent the afternon reading through the Flori-thingy.  {not
 > just for cheese}  Commericially, there doesn't seem to be anything
 > akin to  the cheese wanted for this recipe.  I didn't recognize any
 >  thing mentioned in a list someone had done for "medieval cheeses"
 >  that was soft, bland, "not too old."    So, unless I get some
 > homemade "cream" cheese, I guess my best options are Neufetchel
 > /cream cheese.
 >
 > This is not to say I'm finished looking for a better alternative.
 > BTW what is Master A using  -- or anyone else who is participating
 > in the Redaction Challenge?


I'll be using cream cheese, for budgetary and prep-time considerations,
and also to distinguish from the tourtes parmerienne, for which I'll be
using Brie and ricotta, mixed. Fresh Brie would be just too much, I
think, for the meat filling.

On the other hand, new Brie, with its clean cream flavor, might be
perfect. Another possibility to explore would be to use _very_ fresh,
new chevre (nobody said this needs to be cow's milk cheese, Anglo-Norman
or not), which is fresh enough to not have had the casein-curd breakdown
(in other words, it's not a perfectly smooth goo like ripe Brie), but
its curds are so tiny as to be hard to notice, while something like
cottage cheese would ruin the dish, IMO.

I hate to say this, but as Pont l'Eveque has been suggested as one of
the the cheeses imitated in England as Cheese Ruayn, one could probably
do considerably worse than that...

Adamantius
--
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com

"It was so blatant that Roger threw at him.  Clemens gets away with
things that get other people thrown out of games.  As long as they
let him get away with it, it's going  to continue." -- Joe Torre, 9/98