Say Munster!

Our featured cheese today is Munster! An apt choice because we are still in mourning over the passing of Yvonne DeCarlo.
There are two varieties of Munster made in Alsace. Munster and Munster-Gerome, They are very similiar and made very near each other, but the Gerome is a little more pungent and more to my taste.
Until I moved to Europe, I had only eaten the American style Munster available in grocery stores. A white rather tasteless bland cheese, it did have the orange rind. The commercial American variety is also made in Mexico, where there is a real German influence in the dairy industry and music if you listen to those bass lines in mariachi music. It is used a lot in Mexican melted cheese toppings.
What a shock I was in for when I first encountered a real Alsatian Munster! It has a yellow orange rind and is a soft, pungent cheese. The rind gets moist and a liittle slippery as it ages and the odor and taste develops as it gets more runny.
It was first made by Benedictine monks in the middle ages in the Southern part of the Vosges Mountains in the Fecht Valley. The name derives from the name of the village in Latin, Monestarium, now Munster.
The cows are a race particular to the Vosges and eat the herbs and grasses in the region which give character to the cheese. It is made in the traditional fashion, the curd is crumbled and packed into molds, left to dry then aged in cellars for at least three weeks. During this time it is washed with salt water and turned every two days.
I like Munster plain with bread. A very good way to enjoy it is with small boiled potatoes with their skins on. You just let the cheese melt over the hot potatoes right before yyou serve them. If you have only tried American sttyle munster cheese, look for a real Alsatian Munster-Gerome. The small, Petit Geromes are more pungent than the large ones.
One of my favorites