Grilled Cheese Month: Grilled Goat Gouda Bagels w/Sautéed Onions and Apples

Alrighty, I promised more grilled cheese goodness and here it is!  This "recipe" is one of my own devising cobbled together from various ideas I go whilst surfing the 'net.  I've been watching reruns of "Good Eats" lately and Alton Brown inspired me to get more experimental, plus I didn't really pick a recipe before hand and thus had to make do with ingredients already in the house.

Snow Peak

The Udder Way Artisan Cheese Co. is based in Hamilton, ON and manufactures Snow Peak.  Snow Peak is a semi-soft goat's milk cheese with added bacterial cultures to give it a taste akin to raw milk cheeses.  Snow Peak is aged up to six weeks to allow the strong flavours to fully develop, and strong is the word.  Upon trying this cheese Mrs. ISMOTU asked if I was sure it was supposed to taste that way.

Borgonzola

A new month, a new cheese box in the mail. We've been enjoying the Cheese of the Month Club so much that we've decided to sign up for 3 more months of delicious postal cheese.

Grilled Cheese Month

Apparently April is grilled cheese month which a friend of mine said I needed to feature on this blog. So here we are.

Emmi Le Gruyère

Emmi Le Gruyère is a delicious example of a fine firm Swiss cheese. It has a sharp flavour that doesn't cut your tongue out.  I started this post months ago but was stuck because this cheese really is so good I had a hard time thinking of ways to describe it. Then I ate the last of my gruyere and couldn't possibly just finish the post from memory. So now I've bought another block of gruyere and after grating some into a spinach-mushroom quiche last weekend and into my omelette this morning I decided it was high time I gave gruyère its due.

Bauer Bayrischer Alpen Tilsit

Now I finally finish the reviews of our first cheese-of-the-month box before I start on the second.

Bauer Bayrischer Alpen Tilsit from Bavaria, Germany is a semi-firm cheese with a slightly spicy taste. Made in the style of Emmental, the Swiss migrants found the local environmental conditions and differences in the ingredients resulted in a cheese with smaller holes and a stronger fragrance.  So it's a cheese from the Baltic lowlands made with the procedures from the Swiss Alps. Apparently it is also lactose free which is interesting.

This cheese had a more rubbery texture but was still tasty. I wouldn't have called it pungent like the newsletter did but perhaps it was in comparison to a traditional Emmental. The Alpen Tilsit is a versatile cheese perfect for snacking with bread or crackers.
Recommended.

Vital Stats:
Moisture ?
M.F. 45%

For more info follow the link (but it's in German): http://www.bauer-milch.de/bayerischer-alpen-tilsiter-natur/info

Formaggio Authentic Hand Rolled Prosciutto with Mozzarella Cheese & Basil

This was a supplement to our cheese meal with the first set of cheese of the month.  It claims to have been pre-sliced but the slices do not look as nice as on the package. The prosciutto tended to slide off the cheese rather than slice. But looks aren't as important as taste in my book and this was a pretty yummy discovery. The mozzarella and basil flavours compliment each other well but I felt the ratio of prosciutto to the rest of the ingredients was too small and its flavour was overwhelmed.
Overall this was a nice thing to try but didn't leave a huge impression on me.

Moderately Recommended.

For more info follow the link: http://formaggiocheese.com/live/hand-rolled