Salt Spring Island Cheese

On our autumn vacation, Cakes and I visited the Salt Spring Island Cheese farm. They herd their own goats and have a small dairy/cheese plant on site, with a capacity of 450 litre per day, which is quite a small amount of cheese. There are windows in all sides of the cheesemaking room so you can get a good look at what's going on. The cheesemakers didn't seem all that interested in a chat, so we had to make do speaking to the woman at the counter who diodn't know much about the cheese at all, having only worked there 3 days!

Despite that, we tasted some yummy cheeses. Rather than produce a large variety of cheeses, they seem to stick to three sorts: soft chevre, a goats milk camembert and a semi-hard white mold cheese.

I really do love the way goats cheese is so white in comparison to cows or sheeps milk cheese, it just looks creamier and pure-er, and more striking. A goats milk camembert always look more inviting to me than a cows milk one. It looks pristine.

Although they also produce a sheeps milk feta, the best feature of their cheese is in what they do to the chevre. It's all packaged attractively in little clear cylinders with assorted herbs and spices pressed into the top of the cheese - we especially liked the garlic and rosemary. The sample you see above lasted about 24 hours at our house. We ate it perched on top of thick slabs of toasted French bread with a sprinkle of sea salt and pepper and, maybe, a slice of tomato. It really didn't need much at all. I probably would have eaten it with a spoon given half a chance.

We've been eating the mild white-mould semi-hard cheese (pictured behind the chevre) sliced thickly on a toasted multigrain bread and it is perfect. It's quite mild and not nearly as goat-y as some I have had, but it's only about 6 weeks old so maybe it'll et goatier given a bit of time. I reckon it'd make the perfect melted cheese sandwich.

If you'd like to know more about the guy who makes the cheese, read this great article.

Comments

[Stephanie]

Lyn...I really like the new look! Very clean, and open...