Cheese No. 9

Number 9, number 9, number 9, number 9, number 9 Number 9, number 9, number 9, number 9, number 9 Number 9, number 9, number 9, number 9, number...

— The Beatles, "Revolution 9"

The combination of just missing the 7 o'clock ferry and having the weekend ahead of me, gave me the time and the incentive to shop for a new cheese last night. Despite the wide selection of varieties available at my local Loblaws, I decided to go with a cheese I've actually tried before*: Oka. Even though I feel like I should be trying to get into stinky cheeses at this point in the "project," my stomach's not so happy right now (there's some sort of flu-like thing going around where I'm living) so I decided to play it safe and go with something pretty mild. However, it's not cheating: if you check out my last post, you'll see that Oka's on my shopping list (a recommendation from S.).

Anyway, I sliced a piece off the not-so-cheap chunk of Oka Classic I bought last night to taste at lunch today. It was exactly what I was in the mood for cheese-wise: medium-firm, salty, not too creamy, and with a nice flavour. I'm a total chese novice so I don't care if it's wrong to make such a comparison but it reminded me of cheap brie that you've just taken out of the fridge: not too flavourful but salty enough and creamy enough to be delicious... before it gets all gooey and runny.

According to my research, Oka has a good story behind it. While the cheese is simply named after the village in Quebec where it's been made by monks since 1893, the recipe, however, comes from France. According to Wikipedia, following the seizure of their abbey by the Frech army and their expulsion from France, a group of eight monks emigrated to Canada in 1881 and set up a new order on a piece of land granted to them by the Grand Seminary of the Sulpician Order in Montreal, which had large land holdings. The exiled monks established l'Abbaye Cistercienne d'Oka and an affiliated agricultural school, and soon became well known for their Port-Salut-type cheese, made from a recipe they brought with them from Brittany.

You can visit the monastery and buy Oka directly from the monks at their store (which also sell chocolates made by nuns and cider made by another abbey), or you can purchase it from their online store. For just $58.25, plus $7.50 for shipping, you can get a 2.5-kilogram wheel delivered straight to your house, which will "amply serve 75 persons with generous portions." Sounds like a bargain to me.

* The first time I had Oka was on a hot summer day in Montreal during a day-long organized bike ride called Tour de l'Ile. There were two rest stops and one was sponsored by Quebec dairies so you could line up for free samples of chocolate milk and cheese, including packages of sliced Oka.