A couple of weeks ago, I had the honour of judging at the Global Cheese Awards, situated in Somerset, the Cheddar heartlands. It was pretty intimidating, judging alongside people who had worked in the dairy industry for decades, I can tell you, but I don’t think I made too bigger fool of myself. Whilst I was there, I had the pleasure of bumping into some of the Barber family, who I’ve visited and written about before (here and here). They very kindly sent me on my way with a bumper bag of Cheddar, which gave me the perfect excuse to try out this recipe, which has been on my mind for a while.
Tag Archives: cheese
Stuffed Savoy Cabbage Rolls with Barber’s Cheddar
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Royal Bassett Blue and Courgette Muffins
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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Salad of Sinodun Hill, Broad Beans and Radishes
I’ve had a little break from blogging for a while, mainly because I quite like absenting myself from all forms of social media every now and then. It’s perhaps not coincidental though that my break coincided with the ‘hunger gap’, the time of year when there is least fresh produce available to pick and eat. It’s been a busy time down on the allotment though, with a feverish period of digging, weeding, manuring and planting- and now we are finally starting to reap the rewards.
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Cheese, Ham and Leek Pancakes with Stinking Bishop
Happy St George’s Day! It may not be a classic territorial cheese but, since it was launched in 1994, Stinking Bishop has become one of England’s most well-known cheeses. As a washed rind cheese, it predictably divides people but once you get past its pungent rind, this is a consistently great cheese with a creamy, delicious and – honestly! – inoffensive paste.
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Montgomery’s Cheddar
It’s hard to choose one quintessential English cheese. For some it might be Stilton. Others may plump for their own regional territorial, a Lancashire or perhaps what’s thought of as our oldest cheese, Cheshire. But there is one cheese that has a habit of featuring on many an ‘England’s Best Cheeses’ list (as well as in Pong’s English Selection Box) and that cheese is Montgomery’s Cheddar.
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Cerney Ash, Ground Elder and Sweet Potato Balls
Spring heralds many things. Fresh goat’s cheeses are one of them and rampaging weeds are another. In my garden, the ground elder has started to stretch its legs.
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Cerney Ash
When tackling any cheeseboard, it makes sense to start with the less, ahem, feisty characters. So it is that, in breaking open the Pong English Selection Box, Cerney Ash was first on the cracker, given that its stable-mates are a mature Cheddar, a Stilton and Stinking Bishop itself.
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Pong Cheese: The English Selection Box
Cry ‘God for Harry, England, and Saint George!’ Henry V, William Shakespeare
It doesn’t get much more patriotic than a Shakespeare quote about our national patron saint – and, in a further twist, Shakespeare’s birthday is also on Saint George’s Day, April 23rd. In truth though, these days most English people would be hard pushed to tell you anything about Saint George other than he took on a dragon. However, in other countries such as Italy, Bulgaria, Croatia and Latvia, St George’s Day is traditionally tied in with the start of the cheese-making season and is a time to bless their livestock. All of which seamlessly leads me into Pong Cheese’s English Selection Box, which would seem to present the ideal way to honour St George, Shakespeare and farm animals all in one.
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Sharpham Savour
At the risk of recycling and mangling a very laboured analogy, it seems that mixed milk cheeses are like buses – you wait three years and then they all come along at once. Doublet, which I wrote about at the end of last year, is a Somerset cheese made using cow and sheeps’ milk. This week I bring you Sharpham Savour, which uses cow and goats’.
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Cheddar, Onion and Potato Pie
I first thought of making this dish a couple of weeks ago when some Irish Cheddar arrived as part of the Pong Irish Selection Box. There’s nothing fancy about it and – so I thought at the time – nothing controversial. But that was before the latest Mary Berry furore, otherwise known as ‘Pie-Gate.’ So, it turns out that a pie is not a pie unless there’s a great deal of pastry involved. Mary tried to get away with just a pastry top but was soundly castigated by the chairman of the British Pie Awards. Mine is entirely free of pastry. I’m still calling it a pie. I could call it a bake but I’m not going to. So there.
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