food porn

If only the world could be a little more like smoked gouda.

It's my favorite cheese. Smoked on the outside, covered in that tangy and slightly burned flavor formed of carcinogen laden opaque billows rising from Cedar or Ash. And though it is hard on the edges it is all creaminess within. Aged for a year or two in a cabin somewhere, at least that's the picture on the outside would have me believe. All rough and tumble woodsman on the surface but turn it over and smoked gouda will let you pet its soft underbelly.

Smoked gouda is not a foodie cheese. Smoked gouda will never sit in an eggplant boat or deign to cross paths with lightly balsamic drizzled frisee and a miso glazed Atlantic whitefish sitting on a bed of asian mustard greens sniggers to itself when smoked gouda enters the room. Because around the overly delicate palate smoked gouda can't help but acting like a bull in a china shop, all elbows and thumbs. Shrink away you more sophisticated flavors, smoked gouda will walk all over you.

There aren't a lot of foods I could sit and eat by themselves at length. This cheese is an exception. In fact smoked gouda doesn't really play well at all with it's peers. It can't share the spotlight, becomes flat and dull on bread, bored and listless when slathered in mustard, and almost repugnant when melted on top of anything else. But when smoked gouda can stand on it's own, sliced or cubed or cut piece by piece with a knife, it is a wonder to behold. I am in no way ashamed to admit I've eaten nearly 2 pounds of this proud cheese in a single sitting, nary a cracker in sight.

Smoked gouda reminds me of home, and not only because it's usually produced in the mid-west. It's one of the few foods that I still enjoy imbibing the way I ate as a kid. When I was young I wanted pure flavor, if it's sweet let me rot my teeth in my head. If it's salty I'll just lick the shaker. If it's bitter I would eat a lemon raw and like it. Even things like pancakes had very specific rules: If I'm eating slightly fried bread than I want that taste only, put the maple and butter out of sight, it only complicates matters unecessarily. When I eat smoked gouda, I don't want anything else around.

It's a flavor that starts off familiar. It's simple and homey, that first bite is a taste I've come to trust. And unlike many other sources of culinary delight, this sensation only deepens with extensive repeated efforts. I think smoked gouda is pretty easy to like at first meeting. I think it becomes irresistable when you are willing to give it time. Because though the flavor is naive and unassuming, understated, there are no layers of wine-esque tasting here, the simplicity offers a jumping off point for the mouth. It is more in the thought of contrast, the idea of everything smoked gouda is not, that one appreciates it. White light is the purest light of any color for the very reason that it contains them all. Add everything together and you get simplicity.

Smoked gouda is that for me. Wonderfully complicated simplicity.

Simplicity and tastiness.