Mention Hawes in Yorkshire to many cheese-lovers and they’ll think of the Wensleydale Creamery, a big old operation with viewing gallery, museum and gift shop to boot. But recently Ribblesdale Cheese caught my eye – mainly because all of the roads where I live are named after places in Lancashire, with Ribblesdale being one of them; the Ribble valley straddles both Yorkshire and Lancashire, a pretty perilous position for anywhere to take, quite frankly. (It’s fair to say the region has ‘history’.) Also based in Hawes, Ribblesdale Cheese is a slightly smaller operation, with just three staff but one sight of their snowy white goat’s cheese, set off with its brown rind, the colour of a smoky ceiling in an age-old pub and, as ever, size didn’t matter.
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Category Archives: cheese
Ribblesdale Goat’s Cheese (Smoked)
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Isle Of Man Creamery Druidale Cheese with Mango and Pineapple
Whenever my friend Rachel goes back to her native Isle of Man, she puts up with a variety of hilarious gags about tax avoidance and Jeremy Clarkson’s holiday home. Maybe some light-hearted ribbing about sheep and/or incest. You know, all the usual xenophobic island stereotypes. But when she recently brought me back some Manx cheese, I started to wonder if the joke was on me. You see, it had [gasp] ‘fruity bits’ in it, mango and pineapple to be precise. If I’m honest, my first thought was, ‘Ugh! Cheese aberration.’
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Perl Wen
I’m a recent convert to Caerphilly (or Caerfilli as I now realise it should be called) and a long-time snaffler of Brie and so when I saw Pong describe a cheese as the ‘organic lovechild of a Caerphilly and a Brie’ I knew I had to hunt it down and make it mine. That cheese is Perl Wen and here it is, looking all creamy and lovely and a bit gooey around the edges:
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Shropshire Blue
Of course, I’ve eaten Shropshire Blue before. I knew I had because I grew up in Staffordshire, the neighbouring county. We used to shop over county lines in Market Drayton and Shrewsbury so obviously I’ve eaten Shropshire Blue.
Oh dear
Oh dear, oh dear.
So, this is one of those moments when I’m reminded that I know bugger all about cheese. Probably more than your average Joe, I’ll give me that, but really, bugger all. Now, I don’t feel too bad about knowing flip about flocculation or being an affinage amateur. And I’d never heard of Norwegian Brown Cheese or Idiazabal or even Perl Las until the last couple of months. And I’m fine with that. But recently I found out that…pauses to put on the big cap with ‘CD for Cheese Dunce’ on it and retires to the corner in a puddle of shame…Shropshire Blue has nothing to do with Shropshire.
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Mimolette
I’ve been eating a lot of British cheese recently as there’s so much to discover on my own doorstep and so many great stories behind our cheeses that I hadn’t felt the urge to stray very far afield. But there’s one cheese I keep hearing about that’s causing such a ruckus at the moment that I felt compelled to check it out. And that cheese is mimolette.
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Bath Soft Cheese
Perhaps it’s just me but when I think of historical British cheeses, it’s the hard ones that spring to mind: Cheddar, Cheshire, the crumblies – Caerphilly and Wensleydale. And I confess that when I first saw a piece of Bath Soft Cheese, I thought, ‘Oh hello, here’s one we pilfered from the French.’ But actually I couldn’t have been more wrong, as whilst Bath Soft Cheese certainly looks a bit on the Gallic side, it turns out to have a British pedigree stretching back centuries.
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Gorwydd Caerphilly
I thought I must have tasted Caerphilly. I mean, how could I not have? It’s up there with Cheddar and Cheshire and Stilton as a traditional British cheese. It even has its own joke (don’t tell me you don’t know it). But what I vaguely recollected was a dull crumbly white cheese so when I happened to mosey past Gorwydd’s stand at Borough Market and saw their great rindy wheels of squidgy ivory loveliness, I was perplexed. In the name of research I thought I’d better try some. Then in the name of greediness I thought I’d better buy a chunk and take it away with me.
Here it is, happy in its new home, showing off a bit with its frilly rind:
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Spenwood
There’s been a distinct lack of ovine action on this blog so far and I think that’s partly because I didn’t realise just how many sheep’s cheeses were out there (remember, I did start this blog from the premise of ‘I am a cheese ignoramus’). In my defence, I think it’s fair to say that most people in the UK don’t associate sheep with cheese. In fact, let’s face it – given that almost a third of primary pupils think cheese is made from plants, they probably don’t associate cows with cheese either. But some of our favourite cheeses are derived from the woolly-backed beasts: Pecorino, Feta, Manchego and Roquefort, to name but a few.
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Pablo Cabrito
From the name alone you’d be forgiven for thinking that I’m eating a Spanish number this week, maybe also nibbling on some Ibérico ham and washing it all down with a glass of Rioja. But in fact, Pablo Cabrito, a soft unpasteurised goat’s cheese, hails from the sultry climes of Shropshire.
I have a bit of a soft spot for goats. I grew up on a farm but always found sheep a bit dull once they grew past the cute lamb phase. Cows were okay but after a nasty run-in with a herd of post-natal Friesians and a barbed wire fence, they were off the Christmas card list. Goats though have always seemed both full of character and infinitely practical. I used to write about goats for a living so could bore on for several pages about their virtues and even reproduce some rather fetching pictures of me wearing combat trousers and petting a pony-sized Toggenburg…but, hey, onto the cheese.
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Reypenaer V.S.O.P.
Okay, okay, I’ll come clean from the start. This cheese is Gouda and I have eaten Gouda before. But although it said Gouda on the label, this one looked different, casually propped up against the back of the chiller cabinet with its ‘two year aged’ label. I’ll admit it; it looked expensive and a bit vintage. It was the cheese equivalent of being beckoned onto a yacht by a leathery-skinned old oligarch jangling his Rolex at me. Reader, I fell for it.
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Fromage Homage 