We recently purchased a cheese from Nordic Creamery at the East Side Farmers' Market in Madison. Nordic Creamery makes goat and cow's milk cheeses, and they don't have a stand at Madison's Saturday market-- although the family-owned farm is located in Westby, Wisconsin, they cross the border into Illinois on the weekend to hock their goods at the Lincoln Park Farmers' Market in Chicago.Background: We tried a Feddost cheese, which is a cow and goat milk cheese made with a "curd infusion" of cumin and cloves. Nordic Creamery says that Feddost is "a Norwegian flavor tradition with a sweet and spicy flavor."
Feddost won second place in the mixed milk category at the American Cheese Society competition in 2008.
The Taste: Feddost was a stretch for C:AJ - neither of us thought that we liked flavored cheeses, preferring instead flavors that arise from your basic milk, rennet, and bacteria. Feddost proved us (somewhat) wrong. We enjoyed how seamlessly the spices were incorporated into the cheese - the sweetness (clove) and savoriness (cumin) tasted and felt like they were organic to the creation of this cheese, rather than being added in at the last minute. (Perhaps this is the advantage to "curd infusions," which take place so early in the process.) Feddost has a pleasing texture: medium-soft and smooth, excellent for a hard cracker. Kara would suggest this as an interesting addition to an appetizer plate - funky, thoroughly approchable, yummy... at least for a few bites. Several pieces in (after the cameras stopped rolling), the flavor becomes a little tedious... It's a pretty simple flavor, albeit unusual. It wasn't our favorite cheese, by any means, but it's worth a taste. We'll be on the lookout for other "curd-infused" cheeses for comparison.
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