December was a bumper month for Cheese, Please! entries with a veritable panoply of cheesy nibbles that would make any party go with a bang. From popcorn to parcels, palmiers to pastries and truffles to tartlets, people cooked with parmesan, stilton, goat’s cheese, brie, camembert and cheddar – and even with vegan cheese – to make something for everyone at the buffet table.
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December’s Cheese, Please! Recipe Round Up – Festive Nibbles
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Lord of the Hundreds
I bought the cheese for this week and then a few days ago I thought, ‘Oh, you know what, I’m going to skip it this week. I’ve got lots to do, everybody’s got lots to do. Let’s just give it a miss.’ But then I was reading a book (about cheeses, by the way, not Jesus) that quoted the Bible as saying ‘Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel. He shall eat curds and honey when he knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good.’ So, there you go, cheese at Christmas! Plus, I’d chosen a sheep’s cheese and you only have to flick through a hymn book to see that sheep feature big-time at Christmas (cattle, on the other hand, just seem to hang about lowing). And then there’s the name of the cheese, ‘Lord of the Hundreds’…
…So, I relented and bring you a suitably festive cheese, as an excuse to wish a Merry Christmas (or Happy Holidays, if that’s more your thing) to everyone who has stopped by for a cheesy chat this year. It’s been great fun and I hope to see you again in 2014.
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A Marbletree Cheeseboard and Belvoir Crumpets
I was feeling a bit put out the other week when someone ‘fed back’ to me that they thought the design of my blog was a bit awful and the photos were especially dreadful, partly because I always use the same plates. Now, don’t get me wrong, I concentrate on the writing and the cheese, I know I have the design skills of a mole in the dark and I still haven’t got a new camera after dropping mine a few weeks ago. So this feedback wasn’t a surprise. I even agreed. But still, you know, it hurt. So when I got an email from some nice people at a little company called Marbletree, asking if I would like to try out one of their cheeseboards, it seemed like very good timing. A nice new thing to show off the cheese on.
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Teifi
Since setting out on my mission to chomp my way through and learn about as many cheeses of the British Isles as I can (there are about 700 at the last count…and I’m not sure that includes Ireland…so I could be some time…) I’ve tried to ensure I represent a mix of different cheeses. Cow, sheep, goat, buffalo. Hard, soft and the various states of squidginess inbetween. Raw and pasteurised. But I know that I’ve been very rubbish indeed when it comes to geography and anywhere outside of England is getting a raw deal of it. This is purely down to what’s available where I shop, rather than any kind of cheese separatism but I know I need to try harder. So, this week, in the spirit of union, I bring you Teifi:
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Barber’s Cheese, Starter Cultures and Success with Soufflés
Contrary to what some of my friends think, I do not, alas, lie on a chaise longue all today quaffing free cheese. Partly because eating cheese lying down is a recipe for indigestion but also because mine is not the kind of blog that gets inundated with freebies. Which is fine by me, as a large part of the fun of it is deciding what cheese to try next.
Recently, however, I got invited to the Good Food Show by the cheddar chaps at Barber’s in Somerset and didn’t hesitate to accept; partly because it seemed free cheese might finally be in the offing, partly because it meant twelve hours on my own without having to attend to anyone’s toileting or answer questions about slugs, but mainly because I had recently found out that Barber’s are the sole guardians of Britain’s traditional starter cultures. For a cheese geek like me, it was an offer too good to turn down.
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Cotehill Blue
For anyone squeamish of cheese (who, let’s face it, probably ran screaming from this blog a long time ago) today’s cheese may well sound like their worst nightmare. Not only is it soft and squidgy like a ripe Brie but it also has blue veins and a slightly crusty rind. Only washed rinds terrify cheese-haters more than a squidgy, crusty blue. But one person’s cheese nightmare is another’s jackpot and the combination sounded pretty fantastic to me. So when I caught sight of some at a food show recently, it was in my bag as quick as you like.
Here it is, oozing menacingly:
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The Perfect Christmas Cheeseboard?
Image courtesy of La Crèmerie
For most of us the festive season is not a time of frugality or healthy-eating. The winter as a whole makes us crave hearty, even stodgy, food but at Christmas we can really go to town. From meats to sauces, drinks to sweet treats, everything is about richness and feasting. I like to think that rather than just being a greedy oink, I’m responding to a primeval call; just as once our ancestors would have made the most of times of excess before they hunkered down in their caves, so too do we fill our boots in December. An ex-colleague of mine called it ‘laying down fat for the winter’ but then she was always a bit harsh.
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December’s Cheese, Please! Recipe Blog Challenge – Festive Nibbles
Over the last few months, my fellow bloggers have risen admirably to the Cheese, Please! Recipe Challenge with a variety of cheeses: cow, sheep and goat; soft and hard; and last month’s smoked cheese extravaganza. I’d had a certain cheese in mind for December for a while; both seasonal and distinctive, Stilton seemed the perfect choice. But then I started to feel a bit bad as one of the stalwarts of Cheese, Please!, who will remain nameless Food Day-Dreaming, is afeared of the blue cheese. Now obviously what I should do is either force-feed her Roquefort until she comes to her senses or else tell her to never darken my blogging doors again with her deranged tastes.
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November’s Cheese, Please! Challenge Recipe Round-up – Smoked Cheese
November was certainly a smokin’ month (arf!) for the Cheese, Please! Challenge, with a record number of entries. It was great to hear about people using smoked cheese who had never cooked with it before – or even eaten it – creating a variety of dishes which paired the cheese with meat, fish, fruit and vegetables in a veritable harvest festival of smoked cheese loveliness.
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Baron Bigod
I just love the name of this cheese. I wasn’t sure how to say it when I bought it and the nice young chap who was selling it couldn’t enlighten me but I liked to think of it as pronounced like ‘Baron BY GOD!’, preferably by Brian Blessed, whilst dressed as Henry VIII. I was terrified that in the course of researching the cheese I would find out that it was actually pronounced ‘Bee-Go’ or somesuch but fortunately ‘BY GOD!’ it is. Genius.
So, here is Baron Bigod, throwing its voice from the diaphragm, darling, and shaking its magisterial beard:
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Fromage Homage 