This year the winner of the gold medal at the 2009 World Cheese Awards in the Canary Islands was a Quebec chevre called Le Cendrillon. The previous year’s winner was also a goat cheese entry, one from the Canary Islands that was covered in paprika. (Does that mean Canada gets to host next year’s competition? Sign me up as a judge!)
Being a lover of goat cheese, I had spent the last month looking for this cheese around town… with no luck. Something about the small batch production and the words “world’s best” attached to its name made it hard to come by for some reason. On my fourth week of searching, I was successful in finding it and quickly picked up a couple logs.
Now, saying that a cheese is “the best in the world” is a totally loaded statement. It’s a lot like saying “best wine in the world” or “best vegetable in the world” – there is going to be a lot of variation. Even saying “this is the best goat cheese in the world” is kind of hard to authenticate, but Le Cendrillon still won over the judges’ palates and beat out 2,440 entries, so it has to have something going for it.
With that said, the cheese is actually fairly similar to another Alexis de Portneuf goat cheese that I buy on occasion, only Le Cendrillon’s surface is covered in vegetable ash. While this might sound kind of weird, it really does add something to the cheese. It also kind of tingles my tongue like that numbness you get from Schzewan peppercorns. The flavor isn’t like the creamy and mild goat cheese you usually find in the average supermarket, but a more boldly flavored cousin. The surface is ripened, which gives it another dimension of flavor, a strong ‘blue’ flavor from the outer layer and then the soft and sour tang of the center. It’s nice, and we’ve used it as an excuse to increase our cracker consumption this weekend.
This is the first time a Canadian cheese has won the award, and with the quality of cheeses available in Quebec alone, I’m pretty certain it won’t be the last. The “world’s best” cheese can (hopefully) be found more readily soon as they produce more to meet the demands. We picked ours up at Le Vieille Europe, 3855 Boulevard St-Laurent, at $6.99 for 125 grams.
Post a Comment