h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

As I remember it, from living in Maryland for a while; finding cheese for my breakfast sandwich wasn't easy. But in restaurants, and when people were talking about food, lots of people just loved cheese, on mexican and italian food, in desserts, in all sort s of foods, as a snack... and not standard American Cheese either, all kinds. Hard, soft, cream cheese, you name it.

oh my - those cheese slices are American cheese? I never knew that.

Mr X, what these people are calling 'American cheese' is indeed nasty.

As is that stuff in the spray can. I believe that stuff is Cheez Whiz, which is used on philly cheesesteaks. It is evil.

Neither of those things is really cheese. Mostly, it's properly labelled as 'cheese food', a sort of science-fiction term.

There is, however, a kind of cheese you can buy at a deli counter called 'American cheese'. It's perfectly edible, a bit like Muenster, and good for making grilled cheese sandwiches and cheeseburgers.

If you want decent cheddar in this country, you have to find the right brand of 'extra sharp New York cheddar'. Nothing else has any taste to it. Noticeably, the 'extra sharp' sells out first in every supermarket I visit.

Ugh, another abomination is Velveta TM. That is cheese food as well.

Re: bland cheddar, there's plenty of that to be had in the UK as well. Mild cheddar - what's the point? It's all texture and no flavour.

Half-fat cheese, incidentally, makes a fab cheese on toast because it goes slightly crusty on top and you can burn it a bit Otherwise I would agree, just have a bit less of the full-fat stuff. I go to a diet club (dust? dust anyone?*) and I can have either 30g full-fat or 45g half-fat. On top of my baked potato with beans, taste & texture are more important than quantity.

Of course at the moment it's christmas so sod the diet - I've just remembered the punnet of mushrooms in the fridge which will go wonderfully well with the pot of mature stilton on the shelf above.

Deb

* uk-centric, from a TV show called Little Britain

Ireland isn't that well off for cheese, and a corner shop might well have only cheddar (it will, though, have mild cheddar, mature cheddar, strong cheddar, extra-mature cheddar, and perhaps one or two others, at a minimum (each of those in red and white varieties)). Larger shops will have brie, stilton, and a few others. Supermarkets will have more variety, but not many sub-types. (I was once in a supermarket in France which had an entire counter of different types of brie: wouldn't see that in Ireland.)

But what you mention as your staples interest me:
> cheddar, mozzarella, and colby

I've never heard of colby, and I wouldn't think of mozzarella as a staple (except for pizzas). I suspect most cheese aisles in Ireland would lack both of those.

TRiG.

Similar cheese slices exist over here. I call them "plastic cheese", a name I came up with as a kid. Some people actually eat the things.

Deli counters selling rolls and sandwiches will always have two types of cheese: one is a mix of grated red and white cheddar (this is "cheese"); the other is sliced emental (this is "Swiss cheese").

Posh deli counters, such as don't exist in this town, may have more.

Does anyone else remember that there used to be a character on h2g2 called "Megachedda", who was fond of cheddar?

TRiG.

Five years ago my choral group went on a concert tour in Italy. As a preparation for the trip, a singer who also works as a cheese importer gave a cheese-tasting program at a friend's house. All the cheeses we tasted were Italian cheeses: hard, soft, goat cheese, sheep cheese, the whole gamut. I enjoyed that cheese tasting immensely.

We're planning our next trip.Next July we're going to Latvia, Estonia, and Saint Petersburg. I hope that our cheese expert knows of some Baltic cheeses.

Whenever I'm at a party and there's a bit of brie with crackers nearby, I gravitate to it and stay there.

I can usually find a reasonable selection of cheese, but I'm a big cheese fan so I look harder than most. The stores I shop at have around 10 different types of cheese and that's actually different types of actual cheese. Not just sharp verse mild cheddar or different types of "cheese" products.

Forgot to mention. I shop at Costco and big suburban supermarkets. Really rural and really urban shops probably have less variety in general.

Swiss cheeses are led by Appenzeller, Emmentaler and Gruyere or Greyertzer. These are the staples for fondues*. In Switzerland you go to the Senner (cheesemaker) and order your cheese for your own personalised fondue flavour - it all depends on the proportions, especially between those three. In German cheese shops and supermarkets with a good cheese counter you can do that, too, they will grate it for you and make up your mixture. In Switzerland, there will be dozens of other kinds of cheese, but those three are the most famous exports.

On reading this thread, I am wondering that the good citizens of the Cheddar area and their Cheese Board allow the name to be bandied across the globe for a generic sort of cheese. This would never happen in France! Now I think about it, here in Germany, one of the better cheddars is "Irish cheddar" - again, a contradiction in terms, surely.

Recently I heard that there are now more types of cheese made in Britain than in France. Probably the French, being very conservative about their food, have not developed and evolved cheeses, but stick to the ones they know, which, throughout the 20th century at least, were probably the most famous and favoured and the most varied. Either way, I would wager that both countries can count more sorts of cheeses per capita, or per square mile, than the US, by the sounds of things in this thread.

* The Gruyere gives the best taste, IMHO. It is also essential for the consistency of the fondue and its "stringiness".

I remember Megachedda too. Seems he rejoined as Ceba: U14481640, but hasn't posted since May 2011.

That's interesting, Icy - he can't access his original space ... so where did those Guide entries come from ( as far back as 2002)

Ah, I see. His entries have been credited.


Wee apologise for this interruption to your reading.

Cheerse

Monterey Jack was a rather nice cheese I came across in the States and its cousin Jalopena Jack

TC I buy the Irish Cheddar (ready packed) or Cathedral city (yaayyy a new addition in my local supermarket) for all my cheddary needs as the Elizabethan cheddar (orange) on the deli counters tastes like soap.

The Real near my office also generally has (pre-packed) Cheshire which is what I buy in place of (although there is no replacement for the King of Cheeses) Wensleydale.

When the craving for Wensleydale gets too much I drive to Köln and buy Shepherd's Purse Wensleydale if they have it, or the generic stuff if they don't. And then I guard it so the Gruesome Twosome don't just open it and forget to tell me.

Ahem. For Irish cheeselovers, a true story about Kerrygold. Cross my heart, this really happened.

Back in the mid-1980s, we lived in Athens. We wanted to make grilled cheese sandwiches, which is not easy if you live in Athens. There's the bread problem, and the cheese issue, and the cooking on a propane stove to contend with...

Aha! To our delight, Kerrygold started exporting sliced cheese. They did it like Kraft - individually wrapped slices. Must have got a new machine for same.

Must not have read the instructions, either...

Each slice was individually wrapped. With no discernible means of OPENING it. Hermetically sealed cheese slices.

We had to use scissors.

Availability of cheese in stores doesn't tell the whole story. People in the U.S. eat out roughly five times a week. If they eat breakfast, that's 5 out of 21, or about 25% of the time. If they don't eat breakfast, that's 5 out of 14, or about a third of the time.

When Americans *do* eat at home, they don't always cook those meals from scratch. They might open a can of soup, throw a Weight Watchers frozen dinner in the microwave, or pick up a selection of cold cuts and cheeses at the deli.

What I'm trying to get at is that looking at the range of cheese varieties in American stores doesn't tell the whole story. A shopper might never buy cheese, but might eat cheeseburgers or pizzas regularly, and/or heat up chicken parmegian frozen dinners.

I believe that "cheddar" is now a verb describing a certain action in the cheesemaking process, and it's been divorced from the actual town of Cheddar for too long to be reclaimed.

TRiG.

Genuine Mozzarella is made in Italy from buffalo milk. You can make it in other countries, of course, but you can't call it mozzarella.

How dare those Italians steal our buffalo and make milk? And then copyright it? The nerve!