Nutty Artisan Foods is a small vegan cheese maker established in 2018 by a mother & daughter team in La Linea de la Concepcion, Cádiz, Spain. Nutty aims to create tasty plant-based alternatives to dairy cheese with few ingredients. It was the success of the prototype of Simply Blue that inspired the creation of Nutty Artisan Foods.1
The Simply Blue we purchased came with a sticker showing it won a 1-star Great Taste award in 2023. These awards are organised by the Guild of Fine Food in the UK and a 1-start accolade means ‘simply delicious’, a rating about 28% of entrants to the competition achieve each year.2
Simply Blue is made using traditional cheese making methods such as fermentation and aging. The fermentation is of cashew nuts and during the aging period the taste develops thanks to Penicillium Roqueforti, the blue cheese mould.3
When tasting Simply Blue, we noted at the start some sweetness of the nut base, followed by a very strong mushroomy, a bit mineral, taste from the blue mould. It is quite strong, so we would recommend to have it with crackers, bread or something sweet like figs for some balance. As it is based on a nut paste, Simply Blue does not melt, but is spreadable as it is quite soft.
Conclusion
We think Simply Blue is an interesting looking and strong tasting blue cheese that we would gladly encounter on a cheese platter. For us, the taste was on the sharp mushroomy side, which quite overpowered other tastes in the cheese such as the sweet & sour, nutty taste of the fermented cashew base.
