Bloomin' Cheese

Although I will always love my Saturday mornings at the Greenmarket, my level of devotion waxes and wanes with the seasons.  It is infinitely less fun to wander among the stalls in the bluster and the rain (this past Saturday, for instance), than it is when the sun is brilliant and the city is sparkling.

However, I do drag myself to the market most weeks, even when the vegetables are predominantly root and the apples are months old, if for no other reason than the fact that Ronnybrook Farm shows up each and every week, and I am totally enamored with their utterly perfect milk.  And their rich, fat filled butter, and their exquisitely piquant yogurt.  It is perhaps pretentious of me to insist on drinking milk that comes in a glass bottle and that costs $2.25 per quart ($3.25 if you don't bring the bottle back for your $1 deposit), but I love it, and I put my dairy habit in the same category as my fresh flower habit:  frivolous yet absolutely necessary.

So imagine my delight when, in the downpour that nearly killed my Saturday, I spied this little beauty:

Ronnybrook has dipped their toe into the cheese-making business!  

And, true to the claim, it is a soft, bloomy rind Camembert.

And it is quite something.  The texture can be described as nothing but unctuous.  Buttery seems to be the cliche descriptor when camembert is involved, but I must say that it does seem to be quite appropriate to this particular version.  I also hear mushroomy, which I don't taste much in this one...rather it seems tangy, perhaps a little tiny taste of ash?  But earthy, which I hear a lot as well, perhaps covers the taste more appealingly.  And it seems like one of those things that would make an intense (perhaps too intense) red wine transcendent when the two are paired. 

Regardless, how luxurious does this look:

And for $5.25, it is most certainly one of those wonderful "little luxuries" that we also can (and should) indulge in at the moment.