Quark

I tend to separate cheeses into two categories - eating cheeses and ingredient cheeses.  It's self explanatory, but my eating cheeses are cheeses with complexity. They usually combine the sharp, salty, sweet and bitter with tones with butter or caramel.  My ingredient cheeses can be either completely bland but with good texture (ricotta. mozarella, fromage blanc) or incredibly powerful and needing another ingredient to mellow out the flavor (Point Reyes for blue cheese dressing or parmigianno reggiano). 

In the past few months, we've been buying an excellent ingredient cheese called quark. Quark is an interesting hybrid of ricotta and fromage blanc.  It has a nice tang but a great texture that melts into soups.  I love a dollop of it in a pureed tomato soup.  For those of you watching fat, it's lowfat, so you can use it as a substitute for cream in soups or sauces.    We have also tasted it sweet, with sugar and vanilla bean (easy to substitute Splenda). 

I will say it can be hard to find.  We get ours at the Spring Hill Jersey cheese stand at the Berkeley Farmers Market.  I haven't seen it at Trader Joe's or Safeway but have found it at Berkley Bowl and several other farmer's markets. 

If you do find a supplier, I highly recommend getting some.