Cirrus - 18 June 2006- Cirrus is a camembert like cheese, so it is milder than a brie and wonderful with strawberries. Since this was strawberry season, we cut open our mini-disk (5 ounces) and tried it plain and with a few strawberries we had picked. It was a good camembert, with a good white outer layer, and that rich, creamy golden interior, but we found it a touch salty, and there was a bit more moldy mustiness than we would have liked. To be fair, we ate the entire first disk, with a fair number of strawberries in a single sitting, then we made a camembert cheese souffle using the second disk, and we ate that with strawberry preserves. We have saved the third disk to let it mellow a bit, so we will update this report in a week or so when we try it.

We'll give this one a solid B B+. The French have been making camembert for ages. Mount Townsend has been making cheese for months. This is an excellent version 1.0, and we are looking forward to the various updates and upgrades that are likely.

UPDATE - 28 June 2006 - We have to move this up to a B+ now that we've tasted it after a bit of aging. The salt is much better integrated with the overall flavor.

Trailhead - 18 June 2006 - Trailhead is a muenster like cheese, with a light rind, and firm, but not hard, texture. We liked this one right off. Not only was it delicious, but it was awfully familiar. Mount Townsend Trailhead tastes incredibly similar to Sharpham Rustic, a Devon cheese which is also made from raw Jersey cow milk. We've been buying our Sharpham Rustic from Murray's Cheese on Bleecker Street in New York City, but now we have a cheese that is just as good, and it is made right in our neck of the woods.

We have been to Devon, and we have to admit that Devon has the most amazing and wonderful dairy products ever squeezed out of a cow. Devon clotted cream is world famous, and with scones and preserves, it is the basis of those delightful cream teas. The grass is rich and lush, and Devon gets a lot of rain. In many ways, especially for dairy cattle, it is a lot like our part of the coastal Northwest.

We'll give this one a solid A. Maybe we'll even give it an A+, but we have to try it with our home made ham to be sure.

UPDATE - 05 August 2007 - Well, we've tried it with our home made ham. We've tried it with wine. We'll give this cheese a solid A+, and others seem to agree. You can find it at Delaurenti's at Pike's Place Market in Seattle and it was written up in the Seattle Times.

Seastack - 20 July 2006 - We finally managed to try the third Mount Townsend Creamery cheese, their Seastack cheese, and we were impressed. Apparently, a batch of their cirrus had failed and gone to mold, so all we could get was Seastack. That was some tragedy. Seastack is a superlative cheese, much like a San Andre or Explorateur. This is high praise. These are all both creme cheeses, and rank among the best on cheese trays around the world.

The rind was thick, but soft, and the center of the cheese was rich and creamy with a bit of that bite to the flavor, without an ammonia note. Take a look at the cross section. We went from a closed package to a cross section to a sliver in a ridiculously short time. The cheese is now strictly an internal matter, and once again, that is high praise.

We'll give this one a solid A, maybe even an A+.

Fromage Blanc - 30 October 2007 - This is a newer addition to Mount Townsend Creamery's line. It's an excellent, creamy fromage blanc. Fromage blanc is a simple, white farm cheese, and generally served fresh. This cheese was fresh, with a light, bright milky flavor, and it has a light creamy texture perfect for dipping dates or other dried fruit.

Perhaps twenty years agao, we tasted a fresh cottage cheese, called Big Z, and it had a wonderful fresh milk flavor, and a creamy texture. We haven't tasted anything quite so good in a while. Fromage blanc is not a cottage cheese. It has much finer curds making it closer to a cream cheese than a cottage cheese, but it has the same wonderful farm fresh milk flavor, and a delightful texture of its own. If anything, it tastes better than Big Z, which is saying a lot.

We'll give this one a solid A, right on the money.

CIRRUS CHEESE SOUFFLE

Ingredients

• 3 tablespoons of butter, plus some extra for the souffle pan
• 3 tablespoons of flour, plus some extra for the souffle pan
• 2 cups of Dungeness Valley Creamery raw Jersey milk
• 5 ounce disk Mount Townsend Cirrus cheese
• 1/4 tsp nutmeg
• 1/4 tsp pepper
• 8 egg yolks
• 8 egg whites

Serving Suggestions

Serve with strawberry preserves or fresh strawberries. They are the perfect fruit for Cirrus camembert.

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F.
2. Coat the interior of the souffle dish with butter, then dust it with flour.
3. Heat the butter in a frying pan over medium heat. When it melts, whisk in the flour to form a semi-solid mixture known as a roux.
4. Add the milk a half cup at a time, whisking it together with the roux so that it forms a paler mixture. Continue until all the milk has been added.
5. Break up the disk of cheese and melt it in to the mixture, stirring to form a smooth mixture. When all the cheese has been melted in, remove the pan from the heat.
6. Add the nutmeg and pepper to the mixture. Pour the entire mixture into the prepared souffle dish.
7. Beat the egg whites until they form soft peaks.
8. Lightly beat the egg yolks, then take a large spoonful of the white sauce mixture and fold it into the egg yolks. You need to do this so that you do not suddenly cook the egg yolks when you add them to the hot cheese mixture.
9. Once you have mixed a little of the white sauce in with the egg yolks, pour all of the egg yolks into the white sauce and fold them together thoroughly. Folding is more gentle than stirring. Use a large spoon and lift up and out of the mixture and then back down into the mixture elsewhere. Folding is important when making a souffle; stirring eliminates air from a mixture, folding incorporates it.
10. When the egg yolks have been folded in, gently but thoroughly, fold in the egg whites. DO NOT OVERMIX or the souffle will not rise well.
11. Put the souffle mixture straight into the oven for 25 to 30 minutes. Try not to open the oven for at least 20 minutes. You can watch the souffle rise through the oven door window.