August 8, 2013 · 9:55 am

Staffordshire Oatcakes with Chaize (Cheese)

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It’s August 8th! Happy Staffordshire Oatcake Day! I’ll bet you’ve all been drooling in anticipation of this one, cheese-graters at the ready, haven’t you? No? No. Well, I guess that’s because no-one outside of Staffordshire has heard of this mighty regional delicacy. In truth, few people outside of Staffordshire seem to have heard of Staffordshire, never mind its lovely oatcakes; I say this as someone who has spent the many years since leaving for university repeating the mantra, ‘It’s between Birmingham and Manchester…have you been to Alton Towers?’ And I can go to the supermarket and buy French sticks, Indian naan breads, Italian focaccias, German rye bread…but can I get me an oatcake south of Tamworth? No, sirree.
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August 5, 2013 · 9:19 am

Home-made Feta Cheese (or Fetter Cheese, as it shall be legally known)

So, this Feta sort of started off as halloumi. I found a recipe for halloumi and bought myself a few pints of unpasteurised milk. I was looking forward to some nice squeaky halloumi.

However, as anyone who has followed my previous cheese-making adventures will know, I’m actually not very good at making cheese. I think I’m generally good at concentrating and fine details but the process of cheese-making takes things to a whole new level and seems to turn me into the world’s clumsiest fool. And so it was that, within the first few minutes, I dropped my thermometer and it looked like this:

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August 2, 2013 · 9:36 am

Isle Of Man Creamery Druidale Cheese with Mango and Pineapple

Whenever my friend Rachel goes back to her native Isle of Man, she puts up with a variety of hilarious gags about tax avoidance and Jeremy Clarkson’s holiday home. Maybe some light-hearted ribbing about sheep and/or incest. You know, all the usual xenophobic island stereotypes. But when she recently brought me back some Manx cheese, I started to wonder if the joke was on me. You see, it had [gasp] ‘fruity bits’ in it, mango and pineapple to be precise. If I’m honest, my first thought was, ‘Ugh! Cheese aberration.’
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August 1, 2013 · 7:13 am

August’s Cheese of the Month – Feta (and other salad-style cheeses)

I realise it seems a strange title – ‘and other salad-style cheeses’ – but Feta is a bit of a sensitive subject these days. Granted PDO protection in 2002, true Feta can now only be made from goat’s and ewe’s milk in several mountainous regions of Greece. On the one hand, it seems cheesy poetic justice, given that the first record of cheese-making was probably in Homer’s Odyssey and featured a suspiciously Feta-sounding recipe but, on the other hand, the decree was a blow for many cheese-makers across Europe and beyond who had been making ‘Feta’ for generations and now had to find another name for it.
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July 31, 2013 · 8:40 am

July’s Cheese, Please! Recipe Round Up – Soft Goat’s Cheese

Soft goat’s cheese was the choice for July’s Cheese, Please Recipe Challenge; a lovely, summery cheese light enough to grace a salad if the sun deigns to comes out or equally hold its own as part of a comforting casserole whilst we watch the driving rain pelt down. The chèvre gauntlet was laid down but who would come to the party…?
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July 29, 2013 · 12:29 pm

Baked Cheese, Ham and Spinach Pancakes

I came across a great recipe challenge recently on Belleau Kitchen. Geared around choosing a recipe at random from your stash of cookbooks (hence called ‘Random Recipes’) it seemed a fab idea. I’ve got a serious cookbook addiction but, like a lot of people, most of the time I cook from half a dozen favourites whilst the rest gather dust. Challenge yourself, I thought. So far, so good.

My first problem was the cheesy nature of my blog. I didn’t want to cheat but equally a recipe for Thai-marinated pork thighs or somesuch was going to look a bit out of place (and I wasn’t sure I could get away with just sprinkling a bit of parmesan on the top). The rules said if I chose a recipe I’d already cooked I could go to the next page, so I thought I’d just keep going until I found a cheesy one (apologies Belleau Kitchen for the complete mangling of your rules). I left out all the obvious non-cheese contenders (sorry Gok Wan) and made my selection and – huzzah! – Rick Stein’s Baked Cheese, Ham and Spinach Pancakes it was! Without a word of a lie, I didn’t even have to cheat.
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July 26, 2013 · 8:07 am

Perl Wen

I’m a recent convert to Caerphilly (or Caerfilli as I now realise it should be called) and a long-time snaffler of Brie and so when I saw Pong describe a cheese as the ‘organic lovechild of a Caerphilly and a Brie’ I knew I had to hunt it down and make it mine. That cheese is Perl Wen and here it is, looking all creamy and lovely and a bit gooey around the edges:

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July 22, 2013 · 6:31 pm

Bath Soft Cheese Preserved with Oil and Herbs

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I was leafing through the British section of the cheese-porn that is Juliet Harbutt’s World Cheese Book, when I came across an intriguing-sounding little cheese; named simply ‘Grace’, it was apparently a fresh soft cheese, packed into jars and covered with sunflower oil and herbs and spices. It sounded lovely but I sadly can’t find any trace of the cheese now, nor its producers.
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July 19, 2013 · 6:52 am

Shropshire Blue

Of course, I’ve eaten Shropshire Blue before. I knew I had because I grew up in Staffordshire, the neighbouring county. We used to shop over county lines in Market Drayton and Shrewsbury so obviously I’ve eaten Shropshire Blue.

Oh dear

Oh dear, oh dear.

So, this is one of those moments when I’m reminded that I know bugger all about cheese. Probably more than your average Joe, I’ll give me that, but really, bugger all. Now, I don’t feel too bad about knowing flip about flocculation or being an affinage amateur. And I’d never heard of Norwegian Brown Cheese or Idiazabal or even Perl Las until the last couple of months. And I’m fine with that. But recently I found out that…pauses to put on the big cap with ‘CD for Cheese Dunce’ on it and retires to the corner in a puddle of shame…Shropshire Blue has nothing to do with Shropshire.
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July 16, 2013 · 8:30 pm

Summertime…and the City is cheesy…

Back in May, when I sat huddled in my thermal slanket, the hail battering against the windows, booking a place on a Cheese Walk in the City of London seemed like a good idea. Hopefully it would be a typical English day in July: overcast, fairly chilly and with a middling to high chance of a freezing downpour. So I admit that when the day dawned with the kind of heat that melts pigeon’s feet into the tarmac, it suddenly seemed less appealing. And throw in a tube journey and consuming large quantities of cheese and wine in the sun and the prospect started to feel more like appalling. But I take my role as intrepid cheese correspondent seriously (coupled with the fact I’d already shelled out for it upfront) and so I donned the Factor 30 and set forth valiantly.
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