I’ve been eating a lot of British cheese recently as there’s so much to discover on my own doorstep and so many great stories behind our cheeses that I hadn’t felt the urge to stray very far afield. But there’s one cheese I keep hearing about that’s causing such a ruckus at the moment that I felt compelled to check it out. And that cheese is mimolette.
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Mimolette
Fennel Goat’s Cheese, Tomato and Samphire Tart
I love my local shop but do think they should change their strapline to ‘Let Us Surprise You!’ The surprise being that they have run out of semi-skimmed milk but do have preserved lemons or have no fish whatsoever but shelves full of venison sausages. And so it was that earlier in the week I went in to buy some spring onions and left with a packet of samphire. (And no, I don’t live in some very chi-chi area of London where we all breakfast on crayfish and acai berries, just in case that’s what you’re thinking; I just have a weird, if rather lovely, local shop.)
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The Big Cheesy Barbeque: Shropshire Blue Burgers, Halloumi Rosemary Skewers and Aubergine Tricolore Parcels
The sun is finally out, the back doors are flung wide open and it’s time to dust off and light up the barbeque, ready to spend an afternoon trying to stop the baby bum-shuffling into the hot coals and listening to the Other Half swearing in confusion at his raw meat/cooked meat utensils. Yay, summer fun!
Now, I love a sausage as well as the next girl but you can get a bit ‘meated out’ at barbeques sometimes and, as for veggies, there’s surely only so many slabs of burnt halloumi they can face. So I pondered the cheese options for a while and below, for your delectation and delight, bring you some fromage-for-the-flames.
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Bath Soft Cheese
Perhaps it’s just me but when I think of historical British cheeses, it’s the hard ones that spring to mind: Cheddar, Cheshire, the crumblies – Caerphilly and Wensleydale. And I confess that when I first saw a piece of Bath Soft Cheese, I thought, ‘Oh hello, here’s one we pilfered from the French.’ But actually I couldn’t have been more wrong, as whilst Bath Soft Cheese certainly looks a bit on the Gallic side, it turns out to have a British pedigree stretching back centuries.
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Tooting Gold II: Further Adventures in Home Cheese-Making
Last month I documented my first attempt to make an artisan Cheddar cheese for the discerning citizens of SW17. If you’ve already read it, you’ll know that it wasn’t an unqualified success. If you haven’t, the sorry story is here. Or to summarise: I bought the wrong milk, didn’t have a thermometer or proper mould, heated up the curds too quickly, drank some wine and left them to drain for too long before finally someone moved my ‘cheese’ onto a warm hob and it gave up the ghost altogether. The finished ‘Cheddar’ looked like this:
So. Not terribly Cheddary then.
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July’s Cheese, Please! – soft goat’s cheese
In a recent blog post about the Perfect Summer Cheeseboard, the cheesemongers I asked were universal in their love of goat’s cheese in the summer. Variously described as ‘fresh’, ‘citrusy’ and ‘luxurious’, it’s a great summer choice. Think herby tarts and fresh salads, grilled sandwiches and warm frittatas.
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Colston Bassett Stilton, Pear, Walnut and Dandelion Salad
The Other Half’s step-dad has a wonderful knack for giving random gifts. This week turned out to be no exception and we were presented with a Spitfire jigsaw puzzle, a bag of paraphernalia warning against the dangers of carbon monoxide poisoning and half a kilo of walnuts. I’ll spare you the first two but look at these lovelies:
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Gorwydd Caerphilly
I thought I must have tasted Caerphilly. I mean, how could I not have? It’s up there with Cheddar and Cheshire and Stilton as a traditional British cheese. It even has its own joke (don’t tell me you don’t know it). But what I vaguely recollected was a dull crumbly white cheese so when I happened to mosey past Gorwydd’s stand at Borough Market and saw their great rindy wheels of squidgy ivory loveliness, I was perplexed. In the name of research I thought I’d better try some. Then in the name of greediness I thought I’d better buy a chunk and take it away with me.
Here it is, happy in its new home, showing off a bit with its frilly rind:
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Les Greedy Cochons Secret Supper Fondue Club
When I received a message from Les Greedy Cochons inviting me to their Secret Supper Fondue Club, I’ll admit I felt apprehensive. Firstly, it seemed to go against every aspect of Stranger Danger that had ever been drummed into me:
‘Hello, you don’t know us or even where we live but would you like to come for tea?’
‘Ooh, thank you very much. Do you have some puppies too?’
Secondly, I’ve been pretty much under house arrest by small people for the last five years and have lived my life vicariously through copies of Time Out. Secret Supper Clubs all looked to be inhabited by consummate hipsters – the sort with the attire and facial hair of nineteenth century coal magnates or post-war lindy-hoppers. The last time I was approaching cool The Levellers were in the charts and I just wasn’t sure that was going to cut it.
But then I thought about all the cheese, brushed the sick off the shoulders of my cardigan and headed off to the wilds of North London, clutching only an A-Z and a bottle of dry white wine.
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The Perfect Summer Cheeseboard?
Believe it or not, last Friday’s Stonehenge hippy-fest marked the mid-point of summer. By now, we should have been frolicking in the sun for a good three months. In true British fashion, our shoulders should be criss-crossed with tan-lines and our feet all hobbit-hard from flip-flops. Myself, I haven’t taken my parka off since last September but every now and then the sun peeks out and I live in hope that warmer weather is on its way.
To many people summer cheese means feta in a salad and picking bits of scorched halloumi off the barbeque but what makes a good summer cheese? And – let’s get greedy – a good summer cheeseboard? I’ve learned that the basis of a good cheeseboard is three to five cheeses and a mixture of animals, texture and interest. And if all else fails, you can do worse than follow the rhyming advice of Blessed are the Cheesemakers: something old, something new, something goat and something blue.
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Fromage Homage 