Torta de Casar

Whilst waiting for personal storms to pass overhead, food seems like a safe topic.  Today I would like to discuss a wonderful Spanish cheese that I feel probably doesn’t have the international recognition it deserves, the ‘Torta de Casar’.

I was first introduced to this cheese by some younger, upwardly mobile friends for whom I suspect I was their street cred downwardly mobile friend.  Whatever, I was invited to their country house for supper.  At one point, the man took a faded yellow Tupperware box out of the fridge and peeled back the opaque white lid under my nose.  “What do you think of this?” he asked, presenting a round, yellow skinned cheese and respecting my reputation as a good cook (he had eaten at my house many times).  I knew him well enough, and unfortunately had sufficient personal experience, to reply that it smelt like a dead sheep that had been lying in a stream for two weeks.

Taken aback but not discouraged, he urged me to dip my bread in the liquid centre.  It was divine.  I find tastes are impossible to describe, but if you like a ripe camembert (the ones that smell like a chicken coop that hasn’t been cleaned out for a while), you will like the Torta de Casar even more.  It isn’t bitter or acrid, but is very pungent.  The best ones are very young, when the centre is still liquid enough to scoop up with a piece of good bread (preferably sour dough bread).  At first, I mistakenly thought that, like camembert, the cheeses got more liquid as they got older, but the reverse is true and they are just as tasty and more fun to eat when youngest.  It’s like a ready-made fondu, and makes for fun communal eating with a nice salad (my favourite at the moment is curly endive and pomegranate).

The best ones are sold in a little wicker basket so that they keep their shape whilst you scoop out the centre, and then later, when you’ve eaten all the cheese you can stomach, you can make a delicious (high calorie/high cholesterol) meal by filling the shell with the stuffing of your choice and baking it, because the shell is made of completely natural ingredients.  Mushrooms, celery, rice and ham are nice.  Vegetarians might be pleased to know that the coagulating agent is vegetable.

Be advised that this is not a cheese to buy when facing a long journey home, unless it is vacuum packed.  I will never forget a night in a tent with an ex-boyfriend and a ripe, unpasteurized camembert, spent in suspicion (thinking ‘his farts are insufferable, and he’s denying it’) and discomfort.  A Torta would be ten times worse.  A friend has told me of a time when, given one as a leaving present, he felt obliged to throw it out of the car half-way home.  Presented to my mare once, when I still had her, she flung back her head and cantered away.  More subtle friends have commented, ‘You do like strong cheeses, don’t you’ as they took a cautious nibble.  But be reassured, its smell is far, far worse than its bite.  If you like strong cheeses, that is.

I had one in the house the other day, bought for some friends who came to stay, but the time never seemed right – would we all suspect each other of farting but be too polite to ask?  Or worse still, would they suspect me of some serious housework lapse/crime?  In the end, they probably just thought that I hadn’t cleaned my fridge in the last decade.

To summarise, to really enjoy the Torta de Casar experience, you need to like strong cheese, buy it young, like communal eating and have total self-confidence when you serve it.