My favourite German cheese

You might have thought I was a little harsh when I ranted on about bland, yellow German cheese the other day. You might well have thought that I find nothing to like about German cheese. Well, you'd be wrong. There is one German cheese that I like above all others, the one I would not like to give up, but it is one that looks weird, most uncheese-like and that is Harzer Käse. It looks like plastic, like some organic growth in a swamp rather than an actual cheese.

It always looks golden and plasticky, but when it is immature, it's solid white at its core. My mother might like it like that, but I prefer it when it is fully mature, when it's golden all the way through. It tastes even better when it goes beyond the 'just right' stage to the 'starting to look a bit putrid and smell like feet with a serious bacterial infection' stage. Basically, all varieties of cheese that smell like sweaty socks taste absolutely fantastic. 

When I was growing up, we would get a parcel from Berlin at Christmas time - if we didn't happen to be in Berlin for Christmas, naturally. And my gran would buy two very fresh and immature rolls of Harzer Käse, wrap them up in tinfoil and then put them into a plastic bag before putting them into the box with the other Christmas presents. She knew how much I'd appreciate them. 

One year, the parcel didn't arrive. We waited and waited and it finally arrived at Easter time. Instead of going to Deganwy, Wales, it had gone to Gdanya in Poland. 

The poor postman stood at the door and said to my mum, "I don't know what you've got in here, but, please, take it." 

The odour was so strong and the cheese so mature that it was almost liquid that my mother forbade me to eat it. Shame. I'd have loved it on hot buttered toast.

I think this picture will give you some idea of its weirdness:

It often comes covered with caraway seeds (good for the digestion)

And here's another version of it with one bit showing the white bit inside that disappears as the cheese matures:

Hot buttered wholemeal toast - or any other bread - with slices of that and some slices of Schlesisches Gurkenhäppchen (slices of a sort of sweet pickled gherkins)....food of the gods.