The best soft gourmet French Cheese around is.....
 

NOT Brie...The taste is horrible..

However, there is a cheese called St. Andre that I'm eating now and it's fabulous. And it had better be at $17 a pound!...It's as creamy as brie once it hits your mouth, but it doesn't have the slimy consistency and strong taste of brie. As long as you don't eat any of the edible rind (which makes me vomit) the cheese itself is a masterpiece. It's almost like putting butter on your cracker. I'd pay an extra dollar or two a pound if they just sliced the rind off altogether before they packaged it.

It's been off the market for months around here because the quality wasn't consistent and France was shipping out too much bad cheese so they had to reformulate it. Now it's back and better than ever.

Any cheese and cracker lovers needs to try it if you haven't already.

From http://www.cheesemonthclub.com/pastn...rs/vol3no2.htm


A country cheesemaker started the St. Andre Creamery in Villefranche de Rouergue, France, (the famed region that gives us Roquefort cheese) back in 1928 to ensure the plentiful flow of fresh milk for his store. More than 40 years later, a soft-ripened, triple-cream cheese named St. Andre made its debut. With a taste described as a blend of the perfect brie mixed with equal parts of thick, sour cream and whipped sweet cream, St. Andre is a cheese for the uncompromising connoisseur in you. A soft-ripened cheese with bloomy rind, it has a downy white, edible rind with a smooth paste. Being made from cow's milk and enriched with pure cream, gourmands consider it a treasure. St. André is also fairly rare. Its "triple-creme" status means that that this beauty has no less than 75% butterfat for every 100 grams of cheese. It's about 50% richer than the average Camembert, and it gets that way by adding more cream to the already rich curds during the cheesemaking process, resulting in a cheese that resembles a beautiful, velvet-coated cheesecake.

This sinful delicacy is beautifully paired with a light, fruity rosé or ale - and no cheeseboard should be served without it. To appreciate its nuance of flavors, we suggest indulging in this cheese at room temperature without the "distraction" of strongly flavored bread or crackers. Wait until the aftertaste of the cheese has "set" before taking a sip of wine or other accompaniments. We know that, once you taste St. Andre, you'll want to indulge in this seductress again and again.




Oh and you can't eat too much at one time or you'll get sick. It's a VERY rich cheese.