There has been a distinct bias so far on this blog towards cheeses of the English southern counties and semi-soft cheeses and I felt this week I should attempt to redress the balance. So I’ve headed north-east to munch on Lincolnshire Poacher, a hard unpasteurised cheese made from the milk of cows that graze on the chalky pastures of the Lincolnshire Wolds, an area not usually associated with dairy let alone cheese-making.
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Smoked Lincolnshire Poacher
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Olde Sussex Cheese and Beer Bread
We were down in East Sussex for the Bank Holiday weekend and, once the rain had stopped and we’d swilled out our tent, the weather was glorious and the countryside lush. If I was a cow in Sussex I’d be pretty happy with my lot. Endless green meadows full of buttercups and clover would fill the belly of the fussiest Friesian. So it seemed only right to hunt out some local cheese. And as we drove though ancient country lanes, their banks spilling wildflowers onto the road, it seemed that there was an oast house round every corner.
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Pont L’Évêque
As I sheltered under a shop awning, watching the hail bouncing off the pavements on an English ‘summer’ morning, my mind turned to sunny holidays and then narrowed it down to holidays that aren’t too far away, what with having to listen to small people asking ‘Are we there yet?’ for the entire journey. So, when I finally emerged back into the soggy street, I had decided upon France for my holidays and French cheese for this week’s fromage.
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Sambocade — Medieval Elderflower and Cheese Tart
There’s something so green and abundant about May that it brought out the forager in me this week. Considering that the wildlife round my way consists mainly of pit bulls and shouty people, this was an optimistic undertaking but nevertheless I headed out with my Sainsbury’s carrier bag special foraging trug to see what I could find. And one lonely Elder tree was my prize.
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Roasted Squash and Blue Cheese Arancini
Arancini roughly translates from Italian as ‘little oranges’ which is what these little stuffed rice balls resemble. Traditionally eaten in Sicily, arancini are balls of sticky rice, stuffed with fillings such as ragù, cheese or vegetables and then coated in breadcrumbs and fried.
It doesn’t seem to matter how much weighing and measuring I do when I cook risotto, I still end up with enough to feed an advancing army. I also have a violent aversion to defrosted risotto; there’s something just so soggy and sad about it. So when my latest batch of squash risotto resulted in a spectacular surplus even by my standards it seemed an ideal opportunity to make arancini and marry the sweetness of the squash to the sharpness of a blue cheese stuffing. This recipe will make about 20-25 balls.
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Burwash Rose
I was drawn to this cheese for the simple reason that it looked a bit like Brie. ‘Ah, this one is rind-washed,’ says the cheese-man behind the counter. ‘Do you know about rind-washing?’
This was my first venture to a proper cheese-shop and I was feeling awkward and amateur. I went to an Ann Summers shop once and felt the same way, gawping at shelves full of ‘what-the-hell-do-you-do-with-that’s?!’ When an assistant asked me what I was looking for, I legged it and went to get a cup of tea. Determined to be braver this time, I admitted my ignorance of rind-washing and fortunately the cheese-man was nice and not at all patronising. (As an aside, I suspect if you started talking about rind-washing in an Ann Summers shop, it probably means something quite filthy…) Continue reading
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Dorset Blue Vinny
It was always going to be hard to choose the first cheese to kick off my cheese odyssey. Where to begin? More than 700 British cheeses…at least 400 in France…Mauritanian Camel Cheese… Sardinian Rotting Maggot’s Cheese…
Dorset Blue Vinny won by managing to combine two of my favourite things: blue cheese (dribble) and Dorset, scene of many happy childhood holidays. It’s also a cheese that I’ve heard of but can’t remember ever tasting (I know, I know, but remember that I come to you if not a cheese virgin then certainly a cheese lover who’s only had a few fumbles with fromage).
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Sweet Potato and Red Leicester Cheese Scones
Ever since I starting writing this blog, I’ve been thinking about eating cheese, especially artisan cheeses and foreign cheeses that I haven’t tried before. But, unexpectedly, there is one cheese that I can’t stop thinking about. And that cheese is Red Leicester.
I don’t think I’ve eaten Red Leicester for about twenty years. It doesn’t seem to be in vogue these days, doesn’t seem to have had the renaissance that cheddar has, rarely features in cookery magazines or lifestyle features. Nobody ever serves it on a cheeseboard. Or if they did, it would probably be in an ironic way, on cocktail sticks with pineapple chunks, jammed into a tin-foiled potato. It feels like the cheese that time forgot.
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And Lo, a Cheese is Born
Right then, how is this cheese stuff made then? A brief Google and a scary flashback to biology lessons at school told me the basics. Milk is heated and then curdled using some sort of acid and the resulting curds (solid bit) are separated from the whey (liquid bit). Bing, bang, bosh. But a brief brush with educational theory recently (don’t ask) taught me that the best learning is always through doing. So I decided to make some cheese. As you do.
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Cheesed to Meet You
So what’s with me and cheese?
Well, I’d like to tell you about my twenty years’ experience as the Herald Tribune cheese correspondent. Or the artisan mozzarella I perfected from my alpaca herds fed only on wild chervil on the slopes of Pen y Fan. I’d love to regale you with the years I spent building up my global restaurant franchise ‘The Big Cheese’, which I sold for millions, enabling me to retire to the Cotswolds. I would so like to impress you with my credentials and experience and general all-round cheese-expertise. But I can’t. Sorry about that.
I just love cheese. That’s it really.
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Fromage Homage 