Choice Cheese: Angel Feat

by Amy Albert
Fine Cooking Magazine

"The stinkier the better" is a motto I often live by, at least where cheese is concerned. I also love cheeses that don't happen to smell, but redolence can be a telltale sign: of earthiness, soulfulness, time, and most of all, flavor. So if you love stinky cheese, read on. And if you don't, Bingham Hill Cheese Company's Angel Feat could change your mind. It's that good.

Angel Feat is a washed-rind cheese (if you're a cheese hound, think Pont L'Eveque, Epoisses, or Taleggio): after being molded into disks, it spends one month being fastidiously washed and rubbed with a salt solution before it gets laid down to age for another month to gain more nuance and depth. It's the rubbing and washing that allow the cheese to take on an orangey rind on the outside and pungent flavor on the inside. This full-flavored, creamy cheese begs for a glass of dark, Belgian-style ale and a slice of dark bread. Or a glass of Beaujolais and a hunk of sourdough. Or a slice of rye toast and a swig of cider. It would also be a great way to finish off dinner with a glass of brandy.

Tom Johnson, cheesemaker at Bingham Hill, crafts the cheese by hand, in small batches of only 75 gallons of sheep's milk at a time (compare this to larger-scale dairies that might process more than 2,000 gallons of milk in a single day). And sheep's milk is the stuff of inspiration, according to Tom, who was "amazed" when he first started working with it. "It's higher in protein and fat, and there's almost no waste compared to cow's milk, where you have to pour off all that whey," he says. Where a typical yield for cow's milk is one pound of cheese per gallon of milk, Tom says he gets two to three times that from a batch of sheep's milk "The milk is much denser, much richer," he says. "When you work with sheep's milk, there's magic going on."

Tom based the recipe for Angel Feat on his cow's milk washed rind cheese. It was an experiment -- at the time, he didn't know of any similar cheese to base it on, and he worked by instinct. The results were impressive: This is the first year that Bingham Hill Cheese Company has made Angel Feat and, incredibly, the cheese took first place in its category this year at the American Cheese Society's national competition. (Bingham Hill cleaned up, winning five other medals -- visit www.cheesesociety.org for the full rundown.)

To order Angel Feat or for more information about where to find it, visit www.binghamhill.com or call 970-472-0702.

Amy Albert is Fine Cooking's senior editor.