November 1, 2013 · 11:24 am

Tunworth

Tunworth was a name that I’d heard time and time again since I started my cheese journey. Everyone raves about it, with Raymond Blanc calling it ‘the best Camembert in the world’ (which I imagine made him a whole lot of fromage friends back in his native France.) It was definitely on my hit-list and so I was really pleased when I won some in the La Cremerie recipe competition that I talked about on a previous thread. It’s an exciting moment when you open the door to see postie with a box but I must admit that my first thought on encountering this postie was ‘Whoah, my love, you need to have a bit of a washdown.’ But I smiled nicely, signed the chit, closed the door and realised that the smell was actually coming from the box, not the poor postman. That makes it sound bad, I realise, but that’s the beauty of cheese, isn’t it? Cabbagey-smelling postman = bad. Cabbagey-smelling cheese = very good.

Anyway, here it is, both in its plain but stylish box and oozing slightly on a plate:

tunworth

tunworth2
Continue reading →

6 Comments

Filed under cheese

Tagged as , , , , ,

October 30, 2013 · 11:39 am

October’s Cheese, Please! Recipe Round Up – Hard Sheep’s Cheese

I was apprehensive about choosing hard sheep’s cheese (think Pecorino, Manchego) as this month’s cheese of choice for the Cheese, Please! Challenge. It’s not a cheese that springs to mind when you think about cooking, except perhaps for pasta. And so it was with some trepidation that I pressed the button and issued the call.
Continue reading →

1 Comment

Filed under cheese please challenge

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , ,

October 25, 2013 · 9:37 am

Sparkenhoe Red Leicester

Yes, I’ve eaten Red Leicester before. If truth be told, I was practically weaned on Red Leicester. I ate so much that it probably permanently altered my DNA. We always had a slab of it in the fridge – cheese sandwiches, cheesy jacket potatoes, cheese salads. But when I grew up, I went off Red Leicester. It always seemed to look a bit sweaty and shiny and taste quite sharp and, if I’m honest, there’s probably an element of food snobbery about its colour. We’ve been so conditioned to think that all colouring in foods is bad – salmon shouldn’t be pink, smoked haddock shouldn’t be yellow and children’s juice shouldn’t be the colour of dayglo socks from the 1980s – that orange cheese somehow feels a bit wrong. But back to the colouring later…

dscf0945
Continue reading →

14 Comments

Filed under cheese

Tagged as , , , , ,

October 22, 2013 · 9:34 am

Another Eight Cheeses…

Never one to miss the opportunity to try several new cheeses in one sitting, I recently hiked across to Brixton again to one of Ned Palmer’s tastings at Cannon and Cannon. If you missed the last instalment, ‘Eight Cheeses in One Day’, you can check out what I snaffled last time here.

The theme of this tasting was ‘Cheese and Culture’ in which Ned attempted to show how cheese has evolved through history according to the environments and societies which produced it. With two hours ticking on the clock and just eight cheeses on the plate (just eight cheeses!), Ned himself admitted that it was never going to be a comprehensive and chronological survey of global cheese history but it was certainly interesting. I won’t attempt to reproduce everything he said, partly because he might sue me and partly mainly because I drank some beer and can’t remember. But I will tell you about the lovely cheeses and drop a few nuggets of information in as I recall them.
Continue reading →

13 Comments

Filed under cheese events

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

October 18, 2013 · 10:07 am

Wild Garlic Yarg

I chose this cheese as in the space of a week two fellow cheese-fans raved about it and posted photos. I’d tried original Yarg cheese before but not this variation. I bought it from a local market next to a river; as South London goes, it’s about as rural as it gets and the kind of leafy damp place I imagine wild garlic might have grown in the past, before the rusty shopping trolleys squashed it all.
Continue reading →

14 Comments

Filed under cheese

Tagged as , , , ,

October 15, 2013 · 9:41 am

Inne’s Log Goat’s Cheese and Apple Tarts with Plum and Sloe Gin Sauce

Inne's Log Goat's Cheese and Apple Tarts with Plum Sloe Gin Sauce

Once I’d sampled some of my Innes Log last week, I was still left with quite a chunk and with the in-laws coming over and expecting sustenance, I decided to make some goat’s cheese tarts as a starter, also using up some of the windfall apples I was given recently.
Continue reading →

10 Comments

Filed under Cheese Recipes

Tagged as , , , ,

October 11, 2013 · 9:43 am

Innes Log

I was pleased as punch recently when ‘the real me’ won a selection of British cheeses from La Cremerie in a recipe competition with my Spenwood Soufflé with Blackberry Sauce. When they arrived (and I could smell them even before I opened the box – bliss!) I was even more pleased that one of them was from Staffordshire, county of my birth. I’d been searching for homeland cheeses for some time but with little luck. I had a brief flutter of excitement when I found a cheesemaker based around the corner from where I used to live but hope was dashed when I discovered that they’d ceased production. Then when I tried making Staffordshire Oatcakes for the first time, I wanted to use local cheddar but I may as well have been trying to get my hands on Novak Djokovic’s donkey cheese. I surrended my quest.
Continue reading →

20 Comments

Filed under cheese

Tagged as , , , , ,

October 9, 2013 · 11:45 am

Spenwood Cheese Soufflé with Blackberry Sauce

spenwood cheese souffle with blackberry sauce

First of all, let me apologise for what must be the worst photograph of a soufflé in existence. I still don’t have a proper camera after I smashed mine, the soufflé collapsed when I went to find my phone and the addition of the sauce makes it look like some sort of CSI crime scene. But trust me, it does taste really good!

I came up with the idea for this recipe whilst I was on holiday in France. The shops and markets were full of hard sheep’s milk cheeses and one stallholder told me that they are traditionally eaten with black cherry jam. I took a jar away with me and it was an amazing combination, the saltiness of the cheese contrasting with the sweetness of the fruit and sugar. It got me thinking about British combinations; I tried Spenwood cheese for the first time a few months ago, a sheep’s milk cheese made in Berkshire and thought that it would go well with blackberries – so then I just had to wait for the blackberries to appear! It’s slightly different to the French combination, as the blackberry sauce is tarter than the jam but still lovely (it would be interesting to try with a blackberry jam).
Continue reading →

15 Comments

Filed under Cheese Recipes

Tagged as , , , ,

October 7, 2013 · 12:37 pm

Spiky Green Tomato Chutney

green tomato chutney

This is the first recipe I’ve posted on this blog that doesn’t contain cheese but I can pretty much assure you that it may not have cheese in it but it will certainly have cheese on it, under it and with it! The tartness of the green tomatoes combines with the sweetness of the apples and red onions and the spices to make a delicious, almost sweet and sour, flavour that goes perfectly with a tangy farmhouse cheddar.
Continue reading →

20 Comments

Filed under Cheese Recipes

Tagged as , ,

October 4, 2013 · 9:15 am

Millstone

I choose a cheese to write about in a myriad of different ways. Some I hunt out because I’ve heard great things about them or because they have an intriguing history. Some are given to me by travelling friends. Some I panic buy at the last minute because I’ve just remembered. But this week’s cheese is the first that I’ve bought because I was amused by the fact that it looks like its name.
Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Filed under cheese

Tagged as , , , ,