Horse and carriage. Fish and chips. Pepsi and Shirlie. Some things are just meant to go together. And one of those combinations is cheese and chutney, slathered together on a cracker or three. So this month I’m excited to say that one lucky cheesy cook will win a set of six chutneys from the Suffolk-based company The Naughty Sheep.
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Taste is a funny old thing. It’s easy to assume that if you love something with a passion that everyone else does too. But, of course, it doesn’t work that way. Children are a prime example: you think that your children are inestimably clever and funny but the person sitting next to you on the train for two hours thinks they are badly-behaved and precocious. And so it seems to be with blue cheese. I adore it and my fridge is never without a hunk. We consume kilos of the stuff and even the precocious children like it. So this month it was a shock to discover that lots of people don’t like blue cheese. Not only were there less recipes than usual but many people prefaced their blog post with ‘I don’t like blue cheese but…’ Nevertheless, several people gamely overcame their prejudices to cook up something lovely.
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It’s May Day this week which has, it turns out, more associations with cheese than you can shake a Morris dancer’s jingly-jangly stick at. Sharing a lineage with the ancient Celtic and Gaelic festivals of Bealltainn, the date traditionally marked the start of the summer season. Cows and sheep were taken up to graze the fresh pastures and milking started again (milking was a ‘May to Michaelmas’ affair back in the seasonal mists of time). Finally the ‘white meats’ (milk, butter and cheese) were back on the menu following the lean winter months.
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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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Almost a year ago, when I’d been blogging about cheese for just a few weeks, I was invited to a Fondue Secret Supper Club by a North London couple called Les Greedy Cochons. It felt terribly daring at the time, partly because it was in the badlands i.e. north of the river and partly because Secret Supper Clubs sounded far too hip for the likes of me, who hadn’t been out for the best part of a year since I had my youngest baby. I was most definitely not feeling like a hipster.
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You can’t move in the food blogosphere at this time of year for wild garlic. I even saw someone on Twitter refer to it as a ‘wild garlic willy-waving contest’ the other day, which did make me titter. But, nevertheless, I was determined to find me some and pair it with some cheese. I’d heard rumours that there was a patch of wild garlic in our local woods (and when I say ‘woods’ please do not imagine anything expansive; Robin Hood would have lasted about ten minutes before he was either discovered or one of the dog-sized rats that live in there ate him alive). But still, it’s a pretty enough spot for SW17.
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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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As you can probably tell, I love pretty much all cheese. I get asked a lot what my favourite cheese is or which cheese I would take to a desert island (which are completely different questions; halloumi isn’t my favourite cheese but that’s what I’d take to a desert island). There’s no one answer for it, as it depends on what mood I’m in, what the weather’s like and who’s paying. But Stilton would have to be up there in all its creamily piquant loveliness.
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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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It was always going to be hard to follow March’s home-made cheese spectacular. I thought about taking advantage of today’s date and asking fellow bloggers to perhaps milk a pet for cheese-making purposes or cook up a dish specifically with Casu Marzu (more popularly known as Sardinian Maggot’s Cheese). But in the end I decided to plump for something more inclusive – because everyone loves blue cheese, right?
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Fromage Homage 