PASSIONATE RATIONS

As might be expected, food gifts are always a hit in my household.

This year, the winning holiday package came from Murray’s Cheese in Greenwich Village.

Murray’s pairs three gourmet cheeses with three bars of chocolate from New York’s Mr. Chocolate (Jacques Torres).  Since there’re only two of us, we’ve only broken into one pair so far:  the Blue Cashel and the 60% cocoa Jacques Torres Costa Rican (single origin) chocolate bar.   If the remaining pairings are half as good, we’re going to be in flavor heaven for a good long time.

The Blue Cashel is a blue cheese that hails from Ireland and 110 happy cows.   And the happiness shines through in aroma, texture and taste.

It’s a beautiful blue cheese, its pale yellow generously marbled with gray-green-blues.

Its aroma is musky, bringing to mind the jostling liveliness of a bovine barnyard.

Some blues are too blue, overpowering.   Not this cheese.  It is mildly tangy, earthy and minerally, unlike any other blue I have tasted.  One of our cheese references (The Cheese Plate by McCalman and Gibbons) dubs it the “choice blue,” noting that it “settles all the other lingering nuances in one clear, conclusive statement.”  That pretty much sums it up.

Add to this the coffee-esque flavor of the Costa Rican chocolate and you begin to wonder if there was religious inspiration behind the pairing.  The barely sweetened chocolate cuts the tang of the blue, smoothing it into something otherworldly.

Perfect.