Éire go Brách

A belated St. Patrick's Day dinner with friends provided the perfect occasion to search out an Irish cheese.  I found a couple options at Trader Joe's, and opted for Dubliner, which is a cow's milk cheese aged around 12 months.  It was billed as a combination of elements from cheddar, Swiss and Parmesan, and it did not disappoint.  With a firm texture and sharpness like many cheddars, it was dry and a bit grainy like Parmesan and sweet and nutty like Swiss.  It was a unique and wonderful combination of textures and flavors.  While it was great alone, I also grated it on top of baked zucchini and found both options to be equally delicious.

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cheese in other languages

I've had an interest in words and language for as long as I can remember.  As a small child, my mom taught me and my brother words in Spanish.  We would practice in the car on the way to school, and she even placed stickers on things around the house to label them with their Spanish name.  My fascination continued in college where I took eighteen hours of Spanish classes, and it continues today as I study Italian.  Since so many cultures make and consume cheese, I wanted to look at the words for cheese in other languages.

According to Wikipedia, the word cheese derives from the Latin word caseus, which eventually became kasjus in early West Germanic.  The Italian, French and Catalan words below, derived from another Latin word, formaticum (from caseus formatus), which translates as "formed or molded cheese." With many of the others below, it is easy to see their similarity to the original word caseus.

Italian - formaggio
French - fromage
Spanish - queso 
Catalan - formatge
Portuguese - queijo
Romanian - branza
German - käse
Dutch - kaas
Danish/Norwegian/Swedish - ost
Finnish - juusto (pronounced oo-stoe)

Irish Gaelic - cáis

Russian - сыр (pronounced "syr")
Arabic -  جبنة, jubnah
Greek - τυρί (pronounced teeree)