Old Friends

Photos: right, Saint Agur blue cheese, I like it more than Cambozola (below), but it's harder to find.
I have this horrible habit of eating the same thing for 2 weeks straight because I've fallen in love with it, and then not eat it again for months, years even, because I've grossed myself out.

Thing is, when I return to my former addiction, it can be a beautiful thing to re-discover all the reasons I loved it in the first place. Today I had Cambozola, a luxuriously creamy blue cheese, and baby New York Empire apples. This is a snack that I enjoyed regularly until I moved up to Santa Cruz and would eat it for every meal when I was too lazy to shop for groceries. I soon tired of it and eliminated Cambozola from my weekly grocery list.

Perhaps I'm a plebeian for liking this cheese, whcih is mass-produced by machines in Germany, but it is such a delight that I am willing to accept my status as an unsophisticated cheese-lover. The beauty of Cambozola is the way in which it's creators artfully paired the mellow, buttery qualities of camembert with the tangy, fragrant qualities of gorgonzola. The result of this unlikely marriage is a mildly nutty, intensely briny, meltingly smooth cheese with a slightly bitter after taste. I used to eat this cheese with fuji apples, but I found that the New York Empire apples, being slightly more tart and less sweet while having all the crispness and juiciness, allowed the delicate flavor of the Cambozola to develop and stand out on the palate. Furthermore, the cool, juicy apples help to cut through the pronounced briny-bitter flavor of the cheese so that there is a perfect balance of sweet, salty, buttery, nutty tastiness.

Ah, the beauty of fromage.