What Walnut Gouda Tastes Like
What Walnut Gouda actually is
It is a gouda with walnut in it. Not a topping, not something scattered on the board beside it. The walnut is part of the cheese, and it is there on the pack in the ingredients: pasteurised meadow cow milk, walnut at 3.7%, salt, starter, microbial rennet and natural flavour. That is the whole list.
It is made in the Netherlands. It comes to us as whole wheels, and we cut and pack it here in Auckland. That is worth knowing, because a wheel that gets cut close to the person eating it has spent less of its life sitting on a cut face. It also means the piece you buy was cut from something that started as a proper wheel of cheese, not portioned off somewhere else and shipped in its plastic.
So: a Dutch gouda, walnut through it, cut here.
What it tastes like
Here is how we describe it on our own page: smooth, creamy gouda with a rounded, buttery base and a natural walnut character throughout.
The word doing the work there is throughout. The walnut is not in pockets you occasionally hit. It runs through the cheese, so a slice off the middle and a slice off the end taste like the same thing. Under it is the buttery base, which is what makes this an easy cheese rather than a demanding one. You do not need to concentrate to enjoy it.
If you have eaten gouda before, you already know most of what this is. The walnut sits inside that, not on top of it.
How to serve it
Take it out of the fridge a good while before you want to eat it. Cold cheese tastes flat, and the buttery part of this one is the first thing you lose. Set it on the bench, still wrapped, and get on with something else.
Cut it into slices rather than cubes. Slices are easier to pick up, easier to lay on a cracker, and they show the walnut through the cheese instead of hiding it.
A few things that work:
On a board with bread, crackers and something sharp like pickles or a chutney.
Sliced into a sandwich with ham or with plain salad greens.
With apple or pear, cut thin, on the same plate.
Straight off the board while you are cooking dinner. This is not special-occasion cheese.
If you are putting a board together, cut a handful of slices before people arrive and leave the rest of the piece whole. The slices get things moving, and the uncut part keeps better for the rest of the week.
It cooks as well as it slices. Our stuffed chicken breasts put it inside the meat, where the butteriness has somewhere to go.
How to keep it once it is cut
The pack asks you to keep it refrigerated between +1°C and +5°C. That is the back of the fridge or the bottom shelf, not the door, where the temperature swings every time someone goes looking for milk.
Rewrap it after each time you cut it. Cheese paper or waxed paper is better than cling film pressed straight onto the cut face, because the cheese needs to breathe a little. If cling film is what you have, at least change it when you rewrap.
We have written the longer version of this up in How to Store & Handle Artisan Cheese, which covers the rest of the fridge as well.
Where to buy it in New Zealand
You can order Walnut Gouda from us directly. The retail pack is 170 g, which is a reasonable amount for a couple of people over a few days, or one board.
Every piece is cut and packed in Auckland from wheels we bring in ourselves. If you want a hand deciding between this and something else on the shelf, get in touch and tell us what you are eating it with.