I’ve always been drawn to aquired tastes, and I tend to regard it as a personal challenge to make myself like something that initially seems… well, less than delicious. It happened with beer, and it happened with black coffee. And in my pre-vegan days, it happened with cheese. Before becoming vegan, I would devour the sharpest, most matured cheeses I could find. A lot of the time, this meant blue cheese. I couldn’t get enough of it- until I came to understand the moral implications of my cheese-vice, that is.

So naturally, I was a little more than excited when, while shopping online for such thrilling groceries as Hank’s dog food, I realised that the new blue Cheezly was available. Mozzarella and nacho Cheezly are staples in the Wiko house, so I had to know how this new addition would hold up.

So far, I haven’t found a vegan cheese that matches the sharpness of vegan cheese. Nor have I found one that I would happily eat on crackers. Blue Cheezly doesn’t change that. I hadn’t expected it to taste especially good on its own, so I gave it the benefit of the doubt and threw together a quick dinner of gnocchi with a blue ‘cheese’ and chive sauce.

Blue 'cheese' gnocchi

Unfortunately, it didn’t meet my expectations here either. There was none of the sharpness I’d been looking for, just an odd sweetness. I ended up having to add quite a bit of parmesan (left over from Yellow Rose Recipes) to highlight the cheese flavour. Although this wasn’t necessarily a bad meal, it wasn’t what I’d hoped for.

Blue Cheezly might be more at home in milder, American-style blue cheese dressings. But for those who were cheese lovers in their former lives, it’s not worth the cost. And so we’re left alone, still looking for a hero of sharp, vegan cheese to save us. Please hurry.

Tagged: pasta