"Better than Cheddar": Goat Cheese

Above is a delicious lunch that Noah and I dined on early this July. The dish in the front was mine: potatoes, sausage and an egg, with goat cheese and pickled red onion on the top, baked until the potatoes were tender and the cheese had melted and shmoozed throughout the dish.

The egg was a delicate over medium, the sausage was sausagy, the potatoes were nice, but really, really, what made the dish was the goat cheese.
Goat cheese?
Goat cheese.


Prior to this summer, my summer of goat cheese (I'm willing to label it as such), I believed goat cheese was a boring cheese, with a taste similar to the blandness of ricotta - only useful as a filler - and with a texture creamy but not the same as, and therefore inferior to, brie.
But I have learned:

• Goat cheese is creamy, not smushy, and spreads beautifully.
• Goat cheese is not oddly grainy and incredibly unappetizing (like ricotta).
• Goat cheese has a flavor - ! - that is refined and versatile.
• Goat cheese's tartness is due to more saturated fatty acids (all with the same root, "capr-", which comes from the Latin for goat) than we find in cow's milk cheeses, with their gentler flavors.
  

In essence, I have learned the unsurpassed functional richness of the cheese of the goat.


My taste buds having been opened to the new genre of dairy, I began exploring the many applications of goat cheese, both sweet and savory:

1. On pizza: Goat cheese with pancetta and eggs, on a crust? Why, yes! In fact, the creamy tenderness of the goat cheese was a welcome change from the normal pizza cheese (whether it be mozzarella or the usual melted mixture), as it didn't come off with one bite, but covered evenly the whole pizza.
2. With fruit: The tartness of goat cheese contrasts with the juiciness of fruit (oranges, for example), extending the taste experience by adding tart to sweet. And when you add basil to the orange slice topped with a dollop of goat cheese, and drizzle the morsel with rosemary and garlic infused olive oil (as Noah did in a sparkling original creation), well then you've got many flavors jovially packed into one texture-frenzy of a bite!
3. With vegetables: Raw sweet corn cut from the ear, chopped asparagus, and halved cherry tomatoes, warmed slightly in a skillet, topped with goat cheese, drizzled with a balsamic reduction, and left to melt into a creamy, crunchy, fresh salad.

The cheese works with textures similar (eggs) and opposing (raw asparagus), and it's tartness complements sweet, sour, and savory beautifully.

Falling quickly for the cheese, I ate it as much as possible. I searched for it on menus, breakfast lunch and dinner. I stealthily kept a bag of milk chocolate chips in the freezer while in New York, pairing a chip with a bit of goat cheese when no one was looking, savoring the simultaneous melting and melding of the flavors. I began recommending unwise pairings: goat cheese with leftover filling from chicken dumplings? not so much...

Regardless of my novice flavor faux pas, I write today to extol the virtues of the adaptable, dependable, charming goat.
The goat, though strange and stinky, creates adorable babies and unbeatable cheese. I lift my glass and cheer, "To the Goat!"


-Lillie