I am easily confused this week. Off the back of last week’s lurgy, we launched straight into the festivities for my Other Half’s ‘big birthday with a zero on the end’. Six days later my liver is a pulsating rugby ball and my head is filled with cotton wool. The only milk product I really need is milk thistle. So exactly the sort of day that some cheese could sneak up and get me all geographically confused again. First of all there was Shropshire Blue, which I discovered wasn’t made in Shropshire and then there was Appleby’s and their gold-standard Cheshire cheese, which is made in Shropshire, not Cheshire. Stilton, of course, can’t be made in Stilton. And now, here is Old Winchester – which isn’t made in Winchester (although it is sort of nearby, I’ll give them that…)
Category Archives: cheese
Five Counties
Every now and then I see one of those posters advertising an eighties spectacular concert and I’m tempted. The line-up usually features any and all of the following: Rick Astley, Bananarama, Katrina and the Waves, T’Pau and Curiosity Killed the Cat. They sound like fun events, a mash-up of all the pop acts of my schooldays. How can you go wrong, combining all your favourite things together at once? Well, that, dear reader, is what I will explore in today’s post.
I’ll be honest. I didn’t plan to buy this week’s cheese. We’ve all been under the weather in this house (nothing to do with my cheesy cocktail, I can assure you) and anyway I seem to have spent much of my life this week waiting in for deliveries. So I haven’t had a chance to go anywhere other than my local supermarket, which is where I found this cheese. And I’ll admit, when I first saw it, my innate cheese snob rose up and said ‘no’. I did the rest of my shopping but kept thinking: ‘What’s your problem. Not all British cheeses are made from the milk of rare-breed pygmy llamas and pressed between the thighs of Morris Men in Neolithic caves. It’s a British cheese you’ve never tried before. Go and buy it. Then try it.’ So that’s what I did. And here it is, Five Counties:
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St James
With some cheeses, their reputation precedes them. These are the cheeses that crop up at tastings, the cheeses that hard-core cheese addicts tell you that you have to try, the cheeses that sound a bit maverick and even, dare I say it, sometimes a bit alarming. And so it was with this week’s cheese. Every time I put out a plaintive call for inspiration on Twitter, someone would come back, telling me to try St James. So I tried to but then discovered that it’s a seasonal cheese and it wasn’t available. Then I tried again but realised I needed to make a trip to central London to track it down. It was becoming the stuff of legend. Finally I found it in Neal’s Yard Dairy and captured it, to see if it lived up to the hype:
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Mayfield
Okay, I’ll ‘fess up. I chose this week’s cheese for no other reason than it has holes in it, which is always a very funny thing, even in the serious world of artisan cheese. Holey cheese is the sort of cheese that you get in cartoons; it’s Tom and Jerry cheese, cheese for mice to drag into a half-moon mouse-hole in the skirting board. As a child I remember being fascinated by the holes and how they got there. I had some wide-ranging theories ranging from mice nibbling them to someone making them with some sort of special cheese-hole tool. But, really, how did the holes get in there?
Here it is, Mayfield, the holiest of British cheese:
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Alexandra
This week, I managed to finish all my work by Wednesday and so this obviously deserved some sort of reward. For me, there’s no greater treat than going to Borough Market and spending most of what I’ve just earned and so that’s where I headed, bribing the youngest child with artisan croissant to stay in his pushchair and not yell ‘POO!’ at passers-by. A trip to Neal’s Yard Dairy was always on the cards and I’d also stocked up on several of life’s other essentials (you know the sort of thing – clams, vino cotto, smoked paprika in a pretty tin) when I was starting to mosey towards the exit.
But – wait! What did I see before me? Hurray, it was only a cheesemaker whose wares I’d been wanting to try for ages. How exciting! Wildes Cheese are only based across the river from me in North London but I hadn’t yet managed to track down their cheese or pay them a visit (scary place, the North). So the sight of their stall pleased me immensely. As did this, Alexandra, the cheese that I decided to take home after gobbling all of the others too:
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Eve
It’s fair to say that this cheese has led me a right old dance this week. I saw it in a cheesemongers and was immediately taken by the look of it, its very French-looking livery yet its British origins. Into the basket it went along with a couple of others and I went on my way. It was when I was on the train home that I realised I couldn’t remember the name of it and the receipt inside the bag was no help to me. ‘But that’s okay,’ thought I. ‘I remember that it’s from Somerset and how many cheeses can there be from Somerset that are soaked in cider brandy and wrapped in vine leaves?’ Two, it turns out. Oh. B*gger. But, look, you can see why I fell for it, can’t you? Ooh là là.
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Pendragon
There are many annoying things about possessing small children but one of the worst has to be the terrible potential for ear-worm. But – wait! – before you start leaving in droves, horrified at a food blog discussing parasites, don’t worry, it’s not like ring worm or tape worm but instead is a term for a catchy piece of music that gets stuck in your head. Children’s television is the worst offender when it comes to embarrassing yourself in polite company by singing about Mr Bloom’s compostarium or Rastamouse’s Da Easy Crew. But the most evil ear-worms of all come from the irrepressibly jaunty Tractor Ted; as a result I can’t think about buffaloes without hearing ‘they’re big, black and slow – the buffalo!’ I had to eat this week’s cheese just to stop me hearing it every time I opened the fridge.
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Brinkburn
It’s coming up to the first anniversary of Fromage Homage. Just as I set out to do, I’ve tried a different cheese (nearly) every week and found out how and where they were made. I’d still place myself firmly in the fancier’s camp rather than connoisseur’s corner but I’ve moved on from this time last year when I couldn’t tell a Stilton from a Roquefort or a Stinking Bishop from a Brie. I can at least now taste a cheese and have a bash at which animal it came from and whether it’s a washed rind or a hard territorial. But there’s always one waiting to catch me out and so it was with this week’s cheese. It is a downright enigma. So here is Brinkburn, the Mona Lisa’s smile of cheeses, the crop circle of fromage:
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Devon Oke
Celebrities making cheese is nothing new. Alex James turned his back on the rock lifestyle to give his name to a range of award-winning cheeses before courting controversy by launching a range of cheddars blended with salad cream, tomato ketchup and tikka masala (not altogether, I hasten to add) and a ‘pouring cheese’ called Spudsworthy. Sean Wilson made Martin Platt leave the cobbles and the Rovers Return to make a range of Lancashire cheeses. But could it be that S-Club 7 pop poppet Rachel Stevens had really given up showbiz glamour to get elbow-deep in curd?
Well, no, obviously not. It’s a different Rachel Stevens. In fact it’s Rachel Stephens. But it made a nice intro to this week’s cheese, didn’t it? And, in fact, this week’s choice does have its roots in the world of media, albeit of a somewhat different sort from that which churned out nineties floor-fillers such as Don’t Stop Movin and Bring It All Back. But, first, Ghetto boys, make some noise! Hoochie mamas, show your nanas!* Here is Devon Oke:
*No, I have no idea what these lyrics mean either.
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Sleightlett
The clocks going forward last weekend mean several things. First is that my children will wake up absurdly early, full of vim and vigour, at a time fit for only dairy farmers and red-eye pilots. Another is that an increase in warmth and daylight will start to frisk up my tastebuds. Cravings for cheese on toast and chunks of Stilton wane in favour of something a wee bit fresher and lighter. Coincidentally this is the season when fresh goat and sheep’s cheeses start to appear after a winter break; so either my tastebuds are works of evolutionary genius, perfectly in tune with nature’s cycles, or else I’ve been reading too many spring recipes in the Waitrose magazine. Either way, it was a goat’s cheese that took my fancy on a recent spending spree in Neal’s Yard Dairy and very seasonally cheeseonal Sleightlett is too.
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Fromage Homage 