However, I recently got my paws on a choice piece of Ardrahan, a wash-rind, semi-soft cheese hailing from a small family farm in Cork, Ireland. Those of you who know my cheese sensibilities won’t be surprised that I’m featuring this particular cheese on this particular blog.

Ardrahan proved itself a complex cheese, worthy of the awards it has garnered. Splitting open the golden, saffron-hued exterior reveals an ocre-colored flesh that’s both firm and springy. Like some of my other stinky cheese favorites, Ardrahan possesses a somewhat sticky rind and a meaty interior that’s delivers a subtlety pungent barnyard aroma and an earthy, mushroomy flavor, which becomes slightly tangy as it ages. On the tongue, the mouthful is buttery, nutty, salty and slightly chalky.

Ardrahan is made from pasteurized cow’s milk and vegetarian rennet, hand-made in small batches by the Burns family on their Kanturk, County Cork farm.

In the summer months, I prefer recipes that require little forethought and little time. However, there’s no need to sacrifice flavor and substance at the hands of simplicity. In August, we often feast on cold cucumber soup with aromatic lemon, ambrosial mint and tangy buttermilk, fresh pasta tossed with ripe heirloom tomatoes, spicy basil and a light splash of sweet aged balsamic or a summer salad of fresh, crisp spinach and honeyed strawberries. Some recipes are so effortless, clean and restrained that utilizing a bevy of ingredients seems excessive.

Recently I found myself in need for a little extra something to accompany bowls of chilled truffle-oil infused pea soup. I contemplated slices of toasted baguette, but have used garlicky toast points ad nauseam to accompany soups, salads and the like and was a little weary of dipping something so hearty into the light and delicate soup. I wanted to step it up, celebrate our evening with a Thomas Keller-inspired meal, and something a little more sophisticated and airy. As I flipped the pages of The French Laundry Cookbook, I remembered Italian frico, or wafer-thin cheese crisps, from my days as a cook.

Keller’s recipe for Parmigiano-Reggiano crisps is effortless. I have a hard time calling it a recipe as it only requires one ingredient: the parmesan. I have made frico many times before, sometimes throwing in herbs and spices, or a little flour for texture. Sometimes I fry them in a cast iron skillet, rather than bake them. For Keller’s parmesan crisps, all you need is a cheese grater, a silpat (or parchment paper) and a cookie sheet, and you’re in business.

The act of baking grated cheese yields an intensified nutty flavor, a crackling texture and the most beautiful, cobweb-esque structure. Like crystallized snowflakes, no two frico are exactly the same, the cheese melting artistically into fragile, edible doilies.

Frico are perfect served alongside your favorite meal or as a crunchy snack with a glass of red wine.

Parmesan Crisps

1/2 cup finely grated Parmigiano-Reggiano (from a moist piece of cheese)

1. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Line a baking sheet with a Silpat (or parchment paper). Sprinkle about 2 teaspoons of the cheese in one corner of the Silpat. Use your fingers to spread the cheese into a 2-inch circle. Repeat with the remaining cheese; you should have about 12 rounds.

2. Bake for 8-10 minutes, or until they are golden brown. Use a small spatula to transfer them to paper towels. They will be soft when they are removed but will stiffen as they cool. Store the crisps in an airtight container for up to 2 days.

Yield: Makes about twelve 2-inch crisps.

My obsession with cheese has gone international! On a recent trip to England, I made cheese an important part of my itinerary, which included stomping around town with the English faction of my family. Our schedule read something like this: Buckingham Palace, Covent Garden, Royal Albert Hall, Westminster Abbey, Neal’s Yard Dairy. You can take the girl out of her country, but you can’t take the cheese away from the girl. Although it was a tourist affair extraordinaire, I needed to recall a bit of home: I needed some cheese!

Neal’s Yard, considered London’s most venerable cheese shop, has two locations: the original in Covent Garden and their bigger location in London’s Borough Market.

Found in 1979 by Nicholas Saunders, Randolph Hodgson, an employee who acquired the shop soon after its inception, was making his own cheeses at the time. Early in their business, they began buying and selling mature cheeses. After their requisite growing pains, they grew into a haven for high quality farmstead English, Irish and Welsh cheeses.

Their staff is armed with an arsenal of knowledge and I ended up spending a huge chunk of time in their Covent Garden shop, tasting everything I could fit in my seemingly bottomless stomach. I probably tasted more cheese in-house than I actually purchased in the long-run. I was lucky to have met Martin, behind the counter, whose passion for cheese equaled my own. We talked shop and tasted together. We compared English cloth-bound cheddars and blues, and compared quince pastes to accompany my selection; we sniffed stinky cheese until I burned all the hairs from my nostrils.

To give a sense of their undeniable and almost inconceivable generosity, I was able to sample Montgomery’s Cheddar, unpasteurized cow’s cheddar from Somerset, Lincolnshire Poacher, a hard cow’s milk, unpasteurized cheddar, Crozier Blue, and Irish blue sheep’s milk cheese, Mileens Dotes, a soft cow’s milk washed-rind cheese and Ardrahan, a semi-soft pungent cheese from Cork, Ireland, among others.

Cheese is piled high, cloth bound cheddars towering over the customers like lactic skyscrapers. This shop fired me up. If I could, I’d live in Neal’s Yard Dairy. I love the smell of a ripening room, I love the ammonia it emanates. Back in the States, I am missing Neal’s Yard like Dorothy missed Kansas while trapped in Oz. There’s no place like an artisanal cheese shop.

As much as I have unapologetically resisted a fondness for living in the Hudson Valley, my childhood dream of living on a farm has grabbed hold of my impervious soul and latched on for good. I can no longer resist the idyllic aesthetics of my surroundings. I’m hooked on local farms and their verdant, sweeping pastures. I have been romanced by the earth’s abundance and by the honest dairy.

If I can help it, I only drink Ronnybrook Farm’s milk and I love their creamy garlic infused butter, addictive yogurt, and luscious ice cream. After starting an internship at my favorite local creamery Sprout Creek Farm, I only eat local cheese (and yes, pretty much only SCF cheese….and in a somewhat unhealthy abundance!).

However, having never tried cheese from the Old Chatham Sheepherding Company, I decided to branch out. After all, I am from Albany and these guys are my neighbors. Old Chatham burst onto the scene in 1994 with a small flock of sheep and went on to produce award winning sheep’s milk cheese and creamy full-fat yogurt.

Nestled in the softly undulating hills of the upper Hudson Valley, Tom and Nancy Clark, the farm’s proprietors, now house a flock of over 1000 organically-raised East Friesian crossbred sheep.

One of the few producers of sheep’s milk cheese in America, its Camembert is award-winning, a blend of their flock’s milk and from a bit of cow’s milk from neighboring Hollrock Farm in Kinderhook. At the 2001 US Cheese Championship it won the coveted Best Cheese in America prize and in both 2002 and 2006, it won World Championships in Best of Class.

In “Cheese, A Connoisseur’s Guide to the World’s Best” Max McCalman and David Gibbons state that the cheese “gives the continental double and triple crèmes a run for their money, adding an extra dimension with the inclusion of sheep’s milk.” A traditional French Camembert is made from the unpasteurized milk of Normande cattle.

The soft bloomy-rind Camembert is less mushroomy than its French counterpart, with a subtler earthy flavor. Its texture is richly buttery and sweetly creamy and the mix of sheep’s and cow’s milks yields an even, harmonious taste. The cheese is distinctly American, a neat little square packaged in breathable paper and labeled with the likeness of a sheep.

Serve this antibiotic and hormone-free cheese at room temperature and enjoy its melt-in-your-mouth goodness.

On that note, I have become a Sprout Creek Farm groupie. Their outlook on responsible agriculture, cheesemaking, and humane animal husbandry sets a gold standard for farming, a standard by which other farms should abide.

According to their website, the purpose of the farm is to “enhance awareness, foster informed compassion, and evoke the desire to become an agent of change in our troubled global society.”

Small farm, big dreams.

With proper care of the land and animals, their cheese is wholesome in body and spirit, something you can feel good about eating. The cheese is, of course, hormone and antibiotic free.

One of my favorite SCF cheese is their Batch 35. Colin McGrath, the gifted cheesemaker, told me that he had to work through 35 batches (and that’s many, many gallons per batch) of milk in order to perfect his recipe for the washed-rind, subtly pungent cheese. It is aged at least 60 days, yielding a firm, orange rind. The cheese’s “meat” is soft but not gooey, earthy but not overly yeasty or biting. It is the kind of cheese even stinky cheese naysayers could love (albeit this cheese is not really that stinky). I even slipped it, shredded, onto some pasta, and my hubby Mike slurped it down with a big grin. (let’s just say he’s not a fan of my stinky cheese habit).

This is good stuff, kids. Made with pride in Poughkeepsie, NY.

Many debate Taleggio’s stink-factor, but one thing remains indubitable: it is a semi-soft, washed-rind baby, hailing from the Valteleggio region of Italy. Taleggio is a pleasantly nutty cheese, creamy and buttery. However, Steven Jenkins, famed author of the “Cheese Primer” describes it as “beefy,” nomenclature generally reserved for stinky cheeses.

I’d personally like to welcome Taleggio into my friendly family of stinky-cheeses. It is more mild in flavor than some of its brothers and sisters, but on the nose, Taleggio gives off a yeasty, heady scent. It has an orange or salmon colored rind and the center is often gooey and always moist.

My Taleggio pizza really was a taste to behold- a simple construction brimming with welcoming flavor. A crackling crisp crust offset by warm, sensual cheese oozing in the dough’s craters; the sweet melted creaminess perfectly contrasts the peppery bite of wilted arugula and the earthy, perfumed truffle oil.

I didn’t want to doctor the pizza too much; I like taste to speak for itself. I wanted the pie to beckon eaters with its scent and reel them in with its bold, yet simple flavors. Taleggio is the perfect cheese for pizza- it melts well and when heated, yields an incredibly sweet smell, almost too much goodness to take when combined with the scent of truffle oil!

Taleggio and Arugula Pizza

1 pound pizza dough, thawed if frozen
3/4 pound well-chilled Taleggio, rind discarded
1 garlic clove, minced and mashed into a paste
4 cups loosely packed baby arugula
Truffle oil for drizzling
Salt to taste
Freshly ground black pepper to taste

1. Put a large pizza stone in lower third of oven and preheat oven to 500°F. Allow 1 hour for pizza stone to heat.

2. Meanwhile, roll out dough on a lightly floured surface with a floured rolling pin, stretching corners with your hands to form a 14-inch circle. (Do not punch down dough; it will be easier to roll out as it warms.) Transfer to a large tray lined with sheet of parchment paper. Lightly prick dough all over with a fork, then slide dough (on parchment) from tray onto hot pizza stone. Bake until top is puffed and pale golden in patches, 6 to 10 minutes. (Prick any large bubbles with a fork and flatten.)

3. While crust bakes, shred cheese in a food processor fitted until you have about 1 1/2cups. If the cheese is extremely gooey, do not process.

4. Remove crust from oven and brush with garlic paste, careful to avoid the outer edges. Sprinkle evenly with cheese and brush the outer crust with olive oil and a light coating of kosher salt. Bake pizza on lower level until edge of crust is deep golden and cheese is bubbling and golden in patches, 8 to 10 minutes.

5. Remove from oven, then scatter arugula over pizza. Drizzle with truffle oil and coarsely grind pepper to taste. Serve immediately.

Yield: 1 pizza.

That isn’t to say that this month’s cheese isn’t edgy. I’m in love with Meyenberg’s aged cheddar. In fact, I can’t get enough of it. I need to have a hunk of this zippy standby in the fridge at all times. It is so versatile- glistening between two crispy pieces of buttery grilled bread, wonderfully zesty when sprinkled on al-dente pasta. It is also yummy in my fiery scrambled egg whites. It helps round out an otherwise Tabasco-heavy concoction. It’s your everyman’s cheese, but with a twist. Most cheddars I’ve imbibed are made from cow’s milk, but this is a lovely goat’s milk cheddar, robust and complex, but very accessible. After all, it’s cheddar, and who doesn’t love a good cheddar?! It tastes like an Asiago. Its texture is dryer and less waxy than your average cheddar, however, much like a moister pecorino.

Meyenberg is made in California. Once Swiss immigrant Mr. Meyenberg himself realized that goat’s milk is more easily digested than cow’s milk, he began marketing his milk and was even the first American to evaporate the milk. Meyenberg produces fabulous cheese with a gourmet European sensibility.

Of all local products worthy of discussion, I adore cheese beyond comprehension and in a perfect dream world devoid of cholesterol, I would eat only cheese, all day, every day. Lately I have been trying to up the ante with my cheese obsession and really take the bull by the horns, or in this case, take the cow by the utters and take advantage of my surroundings.

I’m fascinated with extremely small creameries that produce artisanal cheeses made with love, compassion, and creativity. One local gem is Sprout Creek Farm and I was lucky to have attended a cheese making class with Colin, a young, passionate, and fiercely intelligent cheese maker. A graduate of the Culinary Institute, he has the creative artistry of a chef and the calculated intelligence of a scientist, which made him a fascinating, well spoken teacher.

We got down and dirty in our class and by the time the session ended, I was halfway covered in a hearty helping of whey. During the session we learned about heating the milk to very specific temperatures in order to facilitate the fermentation of lactose to lactic acid. We watched as Colin added lactic starters and rennet (a veal enzyme) to the raw milk and observed as it turned from liquid to a gelatinous solid. We helped stir the pot, separating the curds and whey with heavy metal tools that looked better suited to a torture chamber. This breaks up the curd mass in order to release and separate the whey. Colin poured curds in molds and the two other students and I got to work, crumbling curds with our fingers and pushing them into the molds to form a solid mass.

In short, we bore witness to a simple vat of cow’s milk turning into a glorious, glimmering round of cheese (young maiden cheese, but cheese nonetheless). I was I could be more scientifically accurate in my description of the process, but it was my first introduction to the science and was a bit overwhelmed.

Colin was nice enough to prepare an educational (and scrumptious!) tasting in between stirs of the milk tank. He has recently added several cheeses to his repertoire and the farm now offers a vast selection that progress nicely in flavor and texture. You don’t even have to leave the farm to create a perfect cheese plate!

We tried washed rind, mold ripened, and bloomy-rind varieties. I went nuts for the “Rita.” We were under the impression that Colin or an equally whimsical compatriot named the cheese after a special lady-friend. But as it turns out, Rita is the alpha-cow in the barn. She’s a fierce creature, with an attitude to boot, and the little-known muse of the eponymous cheese!

Rita is a bloomy-rind cheese. A well known example of a bloomy-rind is brie and like brie, Rita has a creamy, pasty interior, with a soft, fluffy white rind. However, the deep center of the Rita has a silken, buttery texture that melts in your mouth. It dances on the tongue and provides a tangy, edgy finish.

I can’t get enough of Rita. I bought a round at the farm’s market and decimated almost the entire small wheel the same day. I can’t believe I just admitted that! Sprout Creek does not disappoint and Rita, the sexy, silken minx of cheese, has put a spell on my palate.

I digress. The Stinking Bishop is a yellowish cheese with a mushroomy-orange or sometimes dusty-gray rind. Its middle is soft and silken. It has been produced since 1972 by Charles Martell and Son at Laurel Farm in England. What precocious scientists! Do these English folks know how to make a knock-your-socks off cheese, along the lines of what the French have been concocting for centuries! Like many of my other favorite stinkers, the eponymous TSB is a washed rind cheese, and this guy is washed in Perry, a pear cider made from the local Bishop Pear.

The cheese has a grab-you-by-the-balls odor. The bark is more than the bite, however, as the flavor tends to be meaty and hearty, slightly sweet, slightly briny, but more subdued than its smell. Monks are often at the forefront of the stinky, washed rind cheese movement and TSB is no different. The Bishop is said to be derived from a cheese once produced by Cistercian monks. Hooray for artisan monks!

The cheese is somewhat rare and I was lucky to find it at Adams Fairacre Farms. Charles is only able to make a limited amount of cheese using milk from its farm’s cows. They supplement their milk with that from a local farm and therefore, the cheese is pasteurized.

This is good stuff, kids. If you can handle the smell, it’s worth a try. You might want to sit downwind from your bedroom while you eat it, however!

As much he hates the scent of an aroma-rific cheese, I adore the taste, and even the smell. To me, the stinkier the fragrance, the more gorgeous the flavor. I tend to be a reckless adventurer when it comes to cheese. I am not suggesting that I am out of touch with my taste buds, or pick a cheese based simply on the pulchritudinous color of its rind, but I will happily stick my hyper-sensitive nose into any powerfully smelling cheese. I particularly enjoy those that an overwhelming majority might characterize as possessing an odor akin to a rancid foot locker. Yes, I like my cheese so aggressive that it up and causes air raids. I want it to wrestle with my nose and fervently slap my taste buds.

My absolute favorite stinky cheese is the French Munster, not to be confused with the oily, mild American version, Muenster, a childhood favorite commonly used to make grilled cheese sandwiches. Munster is from the Alsace region of France. It is a Monastery cheese, meaning that it originated and is currently produced in French monasteries. All I can say is that those monks know their stuff! The cheese is rind-washed with brine and aged, developing a biting odor and creamy, silken texture. It is so incredibly aggressive on the nose that it could clear a room. When properly ripened, the mouthfeel is quite barnyardy. Doesn’t this make you want to run out and buy Munster?! Smells like feet, tastes like licking a cow……officially voted by scientists at Cranford University in Bedfordshire as one of the world’s smelliest cheeses. Can’t argue with science! But if you happen to be a turophile like myself, you might just appreciate its sharp, penetrating aroma and brazen flavor.