What Maasdam Tastes Like
What Maasdam actually is
Maasdam is a Dutch cheese, and the one we sell is made in the Netherlands. If you have ever seen a cheese with big round holes through it and wondered what it was called, there is a fair chance it was this. The holes have a name. They are called eyes.
The ingredient list is short: pasteurised cow milk, salt, starter culture and rennet. That is the whole thing.
We buy it as a whole wheel and bring it to Auckland, where we cut it and pack it ourselves. That means the wheel stays intact until we open it, and your piece gets wrapped here rather than in a factory on the other side of the world.
What it tastes like
The texture is soft and smooth, with the classic Maasdam eyes through it, and it melts well while keeping a rich, rounded flavour.
If you want to know what that means in your own mouth, eat a piece plain before you do anything else with it. Take it out of the fridge and leave it on the bench a while, because cheese straight from the cold gives you less than cheese that has warmed up a bit. Cut a slice off the block rather than a cube. A slice lays more of itself on your tongue.
Then eat it on its own, with nothing under it and nothing to drink. Do that once and you will know how you feel about it.
How to serve it
Slice it and put it in a sandwich. Bread, butter, a bit of mustard or pickle, and you are done. It also goes in a toasted sandwich, since it melts.
Grate or slice it over hot food and let the heat do the work. On a baked potato. Stirred through macaroni. Over a bowl of soup just before you carry it to the table.
On a board, cut it into fingers or wedges rather than cubes, and put it out with bread, crackers, apple or pear. People eat more of it when someone has already done the cutting.
Breakfast is a normal place for it as well. Cheese on toast, or cheese on bread with a coffee, on a Tuesday, with nobody coming over. There is no rule that says it has to wait for guests, and a block that sits in the fridge for a month waiting for the right night is a block you are not enjoying.
How to keep it once it is cut
The pack asks you to keep it refrigerated between +1°C and +5°C. In a home fridge that means a shelf or the crisper drawer, not the door, where the temperature swings every time someone opens it.
Once it is cut, dry air is the problem. Cover the cut face, then put it in a container so it does not take on the smell of everything else in there. Change the wrapping when you go back to it. If the cut face has dried or darkened, trim that off and carry on with the rest.
There is more on all of this in How to Store & Handle Artisan Cheese.
Where to buy Maasdam in New Zealand
You can order dutch maasdam cheese directly from us. We bring the wheels in from Europe, cut them in Auckland, and send them out from there.
The retail size is Dutch Maasdam Cheese 280g, which covers a few sandwiches and a board without leaving you a slab to work through on your own.
If this is your first go at it, start with that and see what you think.