Okay, stop sniggering at the back, please. The title of the post doesn’t say that I made my own bodyweight in mozzarella or enough mozzarella to keep Papa John’s afloat. I will admit that it’s not the largest haul of cheese ever produced but that’s the thing about artisan cheese, right – quality over quantity. So there.
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I was quite excited to find some smoked mozzarella at the local farmers’ market this weekend. I’d been pondering what to make for this month’s Cheese, Please! Challenge but, although I love smoked cheddars, they were leaving me a bit devoid of inspiration. The mozzarella immediately made me think of bread but I wanted to do something a bit different and that’s when I thought of campfires and cowboys and cornbread. All very smoky indeed.
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Filed under Cheese Recipes
This week’s post is nominated for both personal and topical reasons. The personal sees me in an opening credits montage from Who Do You Think You Are, staring pensively into the middle distance in the sheep-dotted Yorkshire Dales, sandwiched perhaps between Christopher Biggins and Derek Griffiths. This is because we recently found out that my great-great Uncle Charles was involved in Wensleydale cheese-making (well, okay, we think he was a stockman but that’s a vital job; happy cows equals tasty cheese). Alas, penning a cheese blog has yet to bring me the requisite celebrity and so the BBC are not rushing to help me with this one. Another time.
Here is my family’s legacy the cheese:
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I’ve already written about two previous tastings which I attended at one of my local cheeseries, Cannon and Cannon, hosted by cheese-meister Ned Palmer. For a self-educating cheese geek like myself, they’ve proved a great way to try several great British cheeses in one go, as well as learn a little about their history and production. You can read about the previous two here and here.
The theme this month was Winter Warmers and the tasting reflected both the changing nature of cheese throughout the seasons, as well as the fact that as humans we tend to crave different foodstuffs according to whether it’s hot or cold. With regards to taste, the colder weather tends to makes us crave something with a bit more oomph; substantial rather than salady, comforting rather than cooling.
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In the days when I had a proper job that involved changing out of my pyjamas, leaving the house and eating something slightly more varied than fishfinger sandwiches every day, there were many things that I loved about central London. The view up the river from Waterloo Bridge never lost its ‘Wow’ factor. The man selling peacock feathers outside Farringdon station always made me smile. And the winter arrival of the hot chestnut sellers counted down the festive season like some kind of hot nut-based advent calendar.
My two favourite spots were outside the British Museum and on the South Bank, halfway between Borough Market and Waterloo (although I think the latter may have now given way to some sort of caramelized nut thingies, tut). It was the evocative smell – all smoky and roasty – that I loved, as well as the ritual of juggling half-burnt nuts from hand to hand and trying to get the skins off whilst trying to avoid the inevitable shard of shell that gets stuck under your thumbnail.
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Stichelton is one of those cheeses that gets talked about a lot in cheese-world but it’s fair to say that most people, living sadly in un-cheese-world, won’t know the name (although if they heard it they might stop, ponder and perhaps think ‘Hmm, sounds a bit like another blue cheese…’) Stichelton is a cheese with an interesting genesis. It’s a bit of a rebel cheese; the sort of cheese that would skive off cross-country running and go for a fag instead. But it’s that sad kind of rebel that tried to hang out with its peers but was shunned for being ‘a bit different’:
Here it is, looking rebellious and a bit sulky:
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It’s a film we’ve all seen. A traditional industry is closed down, leaving a community devastated, both in terms of economic loss and sense of identity. But then a band of locals get together and find new purpose through ballet dancing or trombone playing or pub stripping. Of course, it’s all made up, based on whimsical notions of plucky northerners winning over adversity. But, for one Derbyshire village I visited recently, truth could be stranger than fiction – except they’ve found a new beginning in a different sort of culture from ballet or brass bands. To be precise, a cheese culture – Penicillium roqueforti – which is responsible for the blue veins of Stilton.
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No real story behind why I chose Shipcord for this week’s cheese; I had heard its name and saw it in a cheese-mongers. Job done. I will admit that when I got it home and unwrapped it I felt a bit sulky as it looked like a cheddar. Not that there’s anything at all wrong with a good cheddar but, well, I was in the mood for a cheese with a certain je ne sais quoi and this didn’t look like that cheese. But stay with me, as the moral of this story involves judging, books and covers.
And here is Shipcord for you to judge:
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It would have been perfect timing for me to post up this recipe last week. The pumpkin would have been a shoe-in for Halloween and last month’s Cheese, Please! theme was hard sheep’s cheese. But last week saw me on a remote sheep farm in the Peak District with inadequate Wi-Fi, trying not to shout at to entertain two small boisterous children and fashion firelighters from old copies of the Farmer’s Guardian. It was a remote and beautiful place and if I ever have a mid-life crisis and decide to become a cheese-maker, I think I will move there and make a nice mountain sheep’s cheese.
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If you’ve read more than about three of my posts, you might have picked up on the fact that I have a bit of an autumn fetish going on. I love bonfire night and Halloween, piles of leaves and toffee apples and – most of all – the lovely smoky smell of open fires. I love all smoked food too, from cheese to bacon, garlic to paprika. There’s sometimes a bit of snobbery around smoked cheeses, partly because people think that it ruins a good cheese and partly because most available cheeses aren’t smoked over fire these days and are instead flavoured with liquid smoke. But I can’t get enough of it and it seemed like the perfect November cheese, a great pairing for seasonal foods like roasted root vegetables, chestnuts, jacket potatoes, rich stews and peaty whiskey. Throw some logs on the fire and put on your best ridiculous cardigan (extra points for blog posts featuring the ridiculous cardigan.)
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Fromage Homage 