And so, the season of the courgette is upon us. Ten days in and five kilos of them harvested already. Friends and neighbours are starting to avoid me in the street because they know I’ll try and force cucurbits on them. Fry them, griddle them, spiralize them, stuff them…do what you like with them, you’re still fighting a losing battle.
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Sun. Rain. Baking sun. Torrential rain. Repeat to fade. The unpredictable British summer may not be good news for my outfit budget but it makes my allotment very happy indeed. Beetroot, carrots, new potatoes, chard, garlic and courgettes are already flourishing, with beans, peas, tomatoes, Padrón peppers and onions not far behind. Such abundance calls for culinary inventiveness (courgettes – I’m looking at you) and so when Pong Cheese asked if I’d like to pair up some of their cheeses with my seasonal produce, it seemed the perfect opportunity to kickstart my creativity.
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Those of you with a critical eye may be thinking that I’m frying up way too much cheese lately, as this recipe follows hot on the heels of last week’s St Tola Ash Log and Wild Leek Fritters. I would counter that there is no limit on how much cheese you can fry.
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If there’s one Irish cheese that seems to deserve an automatic place on any St Patrick’s Day platter, it may well be this one. Second out of the Pong Cheese Irish Selection Box I was sent to review is Cashel Blue, which is named after the ‘Rock of Cashel’, the medieval castle where St Patrick is said to have started converting the pagan Irish to Christianity, using the three-leafed shamrock as a metaphor for the Holy Trinity.
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Writer G. K. Chesterton once wrote that ‘poets have been mysteriously quiet on the subject of cheese.’ It could also be said that, in comparison to Welsh, Scottish and English, this blog has also been somewhat tight-lipped on the particular subject of Irish cheese. Not entirely – Brewer’s Gold and Coolea have both featured – but still, some work to be done to redress the balance. So, with St Patrick’s Day just around the corner, when online cheese specialists Pong Cheese asked me if I’d like to review their Irish Selection Box, it seemed positively serendipitous.
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Dorset Blue Vinny was the first cheese I ever wrote about on this blog. At that point, I was planning to find out about cheeses from all over the world but, as I researched the Vinny, I realised that, cheese-wise, there was enough history and variety on the British Isles to keep me going for some time. Nearly four years later and there’s still about 500 cheeses I have yet to track down!
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Apparently yesterday was Blue Monday, supposedly the most miserable day of the year. Based on a not-very-scientific-looking formula that takes into account weather, debt, breaking New Year’s resolutions and the fact that next Christmas is aaaages away, we were all supposed to sink into a pit of existential doom. Admittedly, it was a bit cold and rainy outside and the remains of the Quality Street were impinging somewhat on my healthier eating plans but all in all, it wasn’t so bad.
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2016 was seemingly all about Scandinavia. You couldn’t move for newspaper articles about how to hygge up your home with a furry throw or make cloudberry jam for your meatballs. Amongst all the candles and crayfish, one thing caught my eye – apparently, the hard, traditional ginger biscuits, much-beloved of our Viking cousins (and known as pepparkakor in Sweden) go very well with blue cheese.
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I find myself drawn to cheeses for different reasons: maybe because I want to try something from a new region; maybe because I just fancy a certain type of cheese; or sometimes for a random reason. In this case, I thought it had gorgeously striking packaging, so – boom – it was in the bag:
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This week brought the exciting news that I have reached number six on the allotment waiting list and so should get my soft city hands on a plot in the next few months. Usually in London, to get an allotment you have to: a) wait for two decades; b) bump off the 73 people ahead of you on the list; or, c) sleep with at least seven senior figures from the borough council. Fortunately for me, one of my local allotments got funding a couple of years ago to regenerate some disused land to create about 70 new allotments and so the waiting list is short and the turnover relatively high.
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Fromage Homage 