Garrotxa - Tasty and a Weapon?

Hello everyone! I hope you all are having a wonderful weekend.

Today I've decided to write about a tasty Spanish cheese called Garrotxa...

Cheese: Garrotxa
Producer: Various
Region: Catalonia, Spain
Milk: Pasteurized goat's milk
Rennet: Traditional (animal)

It's always been a bit of a challenge to find really tasty, harder goat's milk cheese and I often have customers looking for something different from the fresh chevres with which most of us are familiar. In these scenarios, Garrotxa is the cheese I recommend.

 

 

 

The cheese is aged for 3 to 4 weeks in caves and develops a really fun rind with plenty of good flavor producing molds. The paste is ivory white (as all goat's milk cheeses are) with a few tiny eyes. When you take a bite of this cheese, you are aware that it is made of goat's milk by the subtle tang and gaminess of the cheese, but it is super mellow compared to the fresher goat's milk cheeses because of its age. It is deliciously creamy, clean and slightly nutty. Be sure to let this cheese come to room temperature... the flavors really open up.

I passed pieces of this cheese around the office the other day and I heard no complaints. Even those who were not necessarily goat's milk fans liked this cheese. I definitely recommend having this cheese on your next cheese plate. Try pairing an Albarino with this cheese... the crisp acidity and touch of sweetness works really well with this cheese.

One other fun fact that I like to mention is that this cheese could have been used as a cannonball! If you watch Mythbusters, you probably remember the cheese cannonball episode. They found that Garrotxa (or cheeses like it) was the cheese that was most likely used in the myth of the Uruguayan captain who used cheese to defeat the Argentinian navy. Fun right? My team and I referred to it as the "cannonball cheese".

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend! Until next time, eat, drink and be happy!