Do Androids Dream of Eclectic Cheese?

In light of recent, shall we say, “disappointments” in the blue cheese arena*, I have hunted down a blue that I’m happy to say is multo-delish.

Yes, I’ve discovered the Simon Johnson store (with its gourmet cheese room) is a short walk from my work. Yes, I often leave work with the kind of hunger-crazies that cause me to make rash decisions. And yes, when I’m in a cheese room, I experience a kind of mild excitement-stroke that results in leaving with much cheese.

But that’s neither here nor there.

Just like on my previous trip to Si-Jo’s, I asked the lovely cheese attendant to offer advice on a blue, and she recommended the Bleu de Lacqueuille.

It’s delightful, it’s delicious, it’s de-lovely. And seriously, the makers must have had a field day buying vowels. 

Ms. Si-Jo (I know, I really should have made a note of her name) conceded the cheese was a little salty on the palate, but that it did not have the cloying aftertastes of many blues, thus making it perfect for pre-dinner nibbling.

Or pre-dinner “horfing down the gullet like a cheese-starved albatross” – as was the case with me. But don’t worry, I totes savoured it!

The thing I loved most about this cheese was the fact that it not only offered a complexity of flavour but also, within the actual slice taken from the wheel, there were different notes in different sections.

Creamy in parts, with sharp bites along the tantalising fault-lines of mould, this cheese reached its apogee along the crusty edges. It was as though I’d travelled forward in time, and the cheese had aged a few years into something one might find hidden in the darkened cloisters of a French monastery.

And so, in this delightful time-travelled induced coma of mine, I urge you try Bleu de Lacqueuille. From my nightmarishly dystopic vision of the future, I may even send someone back to tell you to try it, and you, like the John Connor that you are, will take heed lest you melt into a molten pool of cheese.

At least that’s what I think that movie was about. I don’t know – I’m too busy blissing out on Bleu.

---

* In the vein of the post-apocalyptic mood I seem to have conjured in my writing, I like to think that the Blue Cheese Arena is a cross between Rollerball, Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, and Pride and Prejudice – where cheese lovers fight it out in a death cage to see who most recently acquired a wheel of delightful Stilton from Netherfield.