The Call of Wild 'n Stinky Cheeses

I’m sure you feel it, too. The craving. When you catch a whiff of musty leaves on your walk to work, or when pull on a wool sweater that still smells a little sheepy -- those earthy, beasty smells make you want one thing: stinky cheese.

No? Seriously? Okay, I’m alone here, or maybe you just don’t want to admit it. There is something about November weather – all this dampness and decay – that makes yeasty, feisty cheeses kind of appealing. 

That’s why I’m excited to tell you about Stinky Føttene (pictured above), a new beefy champ from Hook’s Cheese Company out of Mineral Point, Wisconsin. I am especially proud of Tony and Julie Hook for calling this cheese what it is. The name literally meets “stinky feet.”

In the cheese world, people shy away from using the word “stinky” or “whiffy.” Most mongers and makers will use the term “pungent,” as if this is a kindler, gentler way to refer to certain “interesting” cheeses with “aromatic” qualities.

I prefer not to tiptoe. Stinky cheese has always been all right with me. I like to eat it with dark bread and dark beer, preferably in a darkish kitchen with maybe a little Hüsker Dü playing in the background.

Gateway Stinkers

Stinky Føttene is a good gateway stinker. “For a stinky cheese, it’s pretty palatable,” my friend Austin said, when I served him a wedge at a recent harvest party. My friend Tracy deemed it “the IPA of cheese.” I’d have to agree. Our wedge – airdropped in from a Wisconsin source – didn’t necessitate any nose plugs.

Still, it had all the qualities I like in a stinky washed-rind cheese: a gooey orange rind (from a good wash with saline or booze), a creamy texture, and a toothsome beef-stewy quality that is characteristic of stinky cheese.

What makes a cheese stinktastic? Most are washed-rind cheeses, which is a style of cheese that developed out of monastic cultures. Many early monasteries produced beer or spirits alongside cheese, and some sweet bald Man Of The Cloth finally put the two together. Think of Epoisses, a famous Googoo Cluster from the Trappists.

Washed-rind cheeses are literally bathed in a solution – brandy, beer, etc. – that adds flavor and moisture. No surprise, eating these stinkers alongside Trappist ales and dark liquor makes for a very merry pairing.

Must-Try Whiffies: From Mild to Wild

If you are sensitive to stink, ask a cheesemonger to help you find the right round for you. Stinky cheeses tend to get whiffier as they age, so ask for a young buck. In the store, the cheese might hit you like a herd of rowdy bulls, but at home – with the right condiments and libations – you’re going to find that it lows like a calf.

Below are some great seasonal stinkers. I like to serve these before a big meal – or as a meal – because they pair well with other strong flavors, like pickles, cured meat, dark beer,  spiced nuts, and even marmalade.

Ardrahan – Ireland’s version of a stinky cheese. It’s so gentle, it purrs.

Anton’s Red Love – It’s a stinky pillow-top, which means Not Too Stinky. The texture is silken. I could sleep on this, it’s so featherbed good.

Red Hawk – A not-too-stinky dream puff from California's Cow Girl Creamery. Rich and faintly peanutty. One of my favorites.

Hooligan – Plenty stinky but so delicious. Think of a cow barn with a tire swing -- you’ll taste both. This is one elegant but intense cheese, and it’s made by a former English teacher and his mom, in Connecticut. Oh, please. It’s cute and stinky. It’s the Hello Kitty of Stinky Cheeses.

Stinking Bishop – Need I say more?

Epoisses – The only cheese I serve on Thanksgiving Day, always with baguette rounds and celery sticks. It’s the dip du jour for stink-loving Brady Bunchettes.

Limburger – A truly repugnant smelling cheese that has the taste and texture of onion frosting, although it never tastes quite as strong to me as it smells. One man makes Limburger in the U.S., and he tells me it’s good on toast with a smear of strawberry jam. I like to make Limburger Helper.

Full Discosure: Stinky Fottene was sent to me as a sample, among other Wisconsin whiffies that I requested for a Thanksgiving Cheese Board.

Black Ledge Blue

When I launched the Blue Cheese Invitational at the beginning of March, I started with Maytag, an accessible American blue. Now, I want to take you to the outer limits, to a blue so bitey and cavey that I’m not sure what to make of it.

Black Ledge comes from Connecticut, hand-crafted by one of my favorite farmstead makers: Cato Corner. This mother-son team turns out some of the stinkiest domestic cheeses I have ever nibbled.

Hooligan, my dream cheese, comes from Cato Corner – it’s a washed-rind that looks like a moon pie and tastes like a boozy, gooey peanut cluster, minus the chocolate. Rappleree, also from Cato, looks and tastes like a really moist cheesecake that has been left to soak in a foot bath. It’s rank, deliciously so, but the locker-room quality is definitely over the top.

In keeping with Cato Corner’s strong-cheese focus, Black Ledge trumps many domestic blues in terms of its eye-popping hook, but it’s not sharp so much as it is earthy. If you’ve ever read a Seamus Heaney poem ("the cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap/ Of soggy peat…"), you understand what I mean by “earthy.”

Black Ledge tastes like something pulled from a bog. Like a cheese that has been bandaged, buried, and later pulled from a crypt. I imagine a creature with one eye carrying it home on one shoulder, then eating it between damp fingers, alongside a pint of Guinness.

And so March ends and April begins, with the scent of moss and bedrock. Thus ends the Blue Cheese Invitational. On to spring!  

A Word on Rinds

Brawling Cat, Birchrun Hills Farm

I like to say that I’ve never met a rind I didn’t like. Give me your bloomy mold, your orangey washed rinds, your funky gravel carapace around a cloth-bound cheddar. I was raised to eat those things, to fight over them, but I realize not everyone is a rind lover.

This week, par example, I got an adorable email from Cassaundra in California, who wrote:

I’m fairly new to the cheese scene and while I’m figuring out which types I really love, the rind becomes a bit of a distraction. Even after reading up and trying to decipher between bloomy, wash, wax etc…it gets a little murky as to when you should eat the rind and when you should pass.

So here is my advice: eat the rind when it calls to you. Once you start to dig cheese, once weepy wedges of Reblochon chase you in your dreams, you’ll know it’s time. I work with Jesuit priests, who often talk about callings. They’re “men of the road,” as I learned a couple years ago on a pilgrimage through Spain. “We walk until we’re called,” one Jesuit explained.

I try to adopt this come-hither spirit when I’m at the cheese counter. I stare contemplatively at the cheeses, and when one makes sad eyes at me I pick it up. Usually, it’s pretty funky looking, but that’s my taste. Don’t be embarrassed if a real beefcake like Cato Corner’s Hooligan doesn’t call out to you. It’s just not time. But soon....

Keep in mind that bloomy and washed-rind cheeses ripen from the outside in, so the area near the rind has the most flavor. When you sample cheese, try a slice that includes some edgy bits along with some innards. That way, you can taste the full range of the wheel. Some cheeses, like Gorwydd Caerphilly, taste completely different depending on which part of the wheel you sample. Near the rind, Gorwydd is pungent and firm, but closer to the center of the wheel it becomes melty and mellow.

Interestingly, Patricia Michelson speaks to rinds in her fabu book, The Cheese Room (now on my nightstand). She claims that most of the fat in bloomy cheeses gathers in the rind. Can this be true? I happen to love the baby fuzz on a good Brie or Camembert – that rind houses the zippy taste. The oozy center is lovely, too, of course, but I’d sooner blind myself than eat the gooey middle and leave the casing. That would be like eating the marshmallow fluff out of a chocolate egg. No, thanks.

If, like Cassaundra, you are rind curious, allow me to recommend a few teasers. Testun al Borollo is a hard cheese packed in grape must. Highly interesting, even crispy. This, in my book, is a rind worth eating. Cloth-bound cheddar: try toasting the rinds on bread. They soften into something bacony. For Cassaundra, who lives in the great cheese-making state of California, I have one recommendation: Red Hawk. This washed-rind cheese is a nutty cruller; imagine a glazed doughnut with triple-crème filling. Once you nibble this rind, you will receive my own personal Girl Scout Badge that reads, “I eat rinds.”

Because that’s how I roll. With the rinds. I’m just sayin’.