I got some pretty rad presents this year, and not because they were big ticket designer items that cost a million dollars and were made by Marc Jacobs, like seriously thoughtful amazing wonderful presents.

Benny Z gave me cheese. Not just any cheese, two French, aged, semi hard cheeses from Richmond Larder and delivered them to my fridge so they didn’t manky.

He must have taken note of the fact that Gruyère is my favourite cheese because they are in a similar family with slightly different tastes and textures. They were pretty fucking amazing when I had them for breakfast on freshly toasted Olive Bread from Il Fornaio.

Abondance is a cow’s milk semi-hard cheese made in the Rhone Alps according to a traditional 12th century recipe concocted by monks of the Abondance Abbey in the Haute-Savoie. Made from raw cow’s milk and aged for ninety days. Roy de Vallees is a semi-hard shepherd’s cheese made from a blend of sheep and goat’s milk, produced in the French Basque Pyrenees. Pretty much the best presents I have ever recieved.

Bon Anniversaire indeed!

Then I had my own little cheese adventure at David Jones the other day, the David Jones Foodhall is actually a really great place for Cheese and the staff are really knowledgeable about their Cheeses. I had been reading Shannon Bennett’s best of the best from 2008 on Gourmet Traveller and he mentioned a cheese called Morbier that he touted as his favourite of the year.

Upon Wikipedia-ing Morbier I found that it is a semi-soft cow’s milk cheese named after the village Morbier in the France-Comte region where my beloved Gruyère de Comté is also made. Morbier consists of a layer of morning milk and a layer of evening milk, when making Gruyère cheesemakers would end the day with leftover curd that was not enough for an entire cheese. They would press the remaining evening curd into a mold, and spread ash over it to protect it overnight and the following morning the cheese would be topped up with morning milk.

As a result Morbier is instantly recognisable or the thin layer of ash horizontally through the cheese. It is a real stinker so be prepared to wrap it tightly and confine it to the sealed section of your fridge, but it has a beautiful rich creamy flavour that is well worth a try.

Currently my cheese cup runneth over, maybe a red wine and cheese night is in store? Or maybe a repeat of Francegate 2008 where everyone thought it would be awesome to bring three cheeses each to a sixteen person dinner party. After we had eaten three rabbits, several pigs, three chickens and two lamb shoulders. Definately time for another one.