For Christmas this year I wanted to make something special to share with friends and family, and while thinking about ways to make my cheese better reflect local ingredients and terroir, I came up with an idea for a cheese that I've named Whitesmoke. I promptly made 4 of them and they turned out brilliantly.
It's a soft, white-mould ripened cheese, ashed and salted with hardwood-smoked salt from a nearby small producer, with a line of smoked paprika through the middle. The milk was pure jersey, from a small dairy just 10 minutes drive from my house.
The idea was to make a cheese that embodied summer and Christmas in Queensland, Australia. So I was thinking bushfires, smoky campfires and BBQs, and hazy sunsets. And it worked. Sure, the recipe needs a few tweaks (more salt, less paprika, etc), but it was damn tasty.
The pic below was taken early in its life. When New Year's Eve rolled around and we polished off the last one, the middle had turned lovely and soft and gooey.
