Horse and carriage. Fish and chips. Pepsi and Shirlie. Some things are just meant to go together. And one of those combinations is cheese and chutney, slathered together on a cracker or three. So this month I’m excited to say that one lucky cheesy cook will win a set of six chutneys from the Suffolk-based company The Naughty Sheep.
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It’s May Day this week which has, it turns out, more associations with cheese than you can shake a Morris dancer’s jingly-jangly stick at. Sharing a lineage with the ancient Celtic and Gaelic festivals of Bealltainn, the date traditionally marked the start of the summer season. Cows and sheep were taken up to graze the fresh pastures and milking started again (milking was a ‘May to Michaelmas’ affair back in the seasonal mists of time). Finally the ‘white meats’ (milk, butter and cheese) were back on the menu following the lean winter months.
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Almost a year ago, when I’d been blogging about cheese for just a few weeks, I was invited to a Fondue Secret Supper Club by a North London couple called Les Greedy Cochons. It felt terribly daring at the time, partly because it was in the badlands i.e. north of the river and partly because Secret Supper Clubs sounded far too hip for the likes of me, who hadn’t been out for the best part of a year since I had my youngest baby. I was most definitely not feeling like a hipster.
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You can’t move in the food blogosphere at this time of year for wild garlic. I even saw someone on Twitter refer to it as a ‘wild garlic willy-waving contest’ the other day, which did make me titter. But, nevertheless, I was determined to find me some and pair it with some cheese. I’d heard rumours that there was a patch of wild garlic in our local woods (and when I say ‘woods’ please do not imagine anything expansive; Robin Hood would have lasted about ten minutes before he was either discovered or one of the dog-sized rats that live in there ate him alive). But still, it’s a pretty enough spot for SW17.
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Celebrities making cheese is nothing new. Alex James turned his back on the rock lifestyle to give his name to a range of award-winning cheeses before courting controversy by launching a range of cheddars blended with salad cream, tomato ketchup and tikka masala (not altogether, I hasten to add) and a ‘pouring cheese’ called Spudsworthy. Sean Wilson made Martin Platt leave the cobbles and the Rovers Return to make a range of Lancashire cheeses. But could it be that S-Club 7 pop poppet Rachel Stevens had really given up showbiz glamour to get elbow-deep in curd?
Well, no, obviously not. It’s a different Rachel Stevens. In fact it’s Rachel Stephens. But it made a nice intro to this week’s cheese, didn’t it? And, in fact, this week’s choice does have its roots in the world of media, albeit of a somewhat different sort from that which churned out nineties floor-fillers such as Don’t Stop Movin and Bring It All Back. But, first, Ghetto boys, make some noise! Hoochie mamas, show your nanas!* Here is Devon Oke:
*No, I have no idea what these lyrics mean either.
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As you can probably tell, I love pretty much all cheese. I get asked a lot what my favourite cheese is or which cheese I would take to a desert island (which are completely different questions; halloumi isn’t my favourite cheese but that’s what I’d take to a desert island). There’s no one answer for it, as it depends on what mood I’m in, what the weather’s like and who’s paying. But Stilton would have to be up there in all its creamily piquant loveliness.
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It was always going to be hard to follow March’s home-made cheese spectacular. I thought about taking advantage of today’s date and asking fellow bloggers to perhaps milk a pet for cheese-making purposes or cook up a dish specifically with Casu Marzu (more popularly known as Sardinian Maggot’s Cheese). But in the end I decided to plump for something more inclusive – because everyone loves blue cheese, right?
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This week’s cheese was a very lucky find. With Friday approaching and a fromage-less fridge, I braved the cheese counter at my local supermarket to see if I could find anything of interest. Apart from the usual continental suspects and a handful of decent territorials, there is usually very little to be found there, unless you like your cheese soused in some dodgy booze flavouring or tasting of jalfrezi (and sorry if it makes me a cheese snob of the worst kind but I just don’t).
My heart was beating with fear and trepidation at the sight of all the shrink-wrapping when I noticed this week’s cheese nestling against the glass. I’d heard good things about Cornish Blue so snapped some up sharpish (much to the annoyance of the deli lady who was obviously in a big huff about the fact she had to cut into its virgin rind). But the big question was: what’s an artisan cheese like you doing in a joint like this?
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Am I a food blogger? Well, I write about cheese which is, after all, one of the major food groups. I cook stuff and stick photographs up of each excruciating chopping, stirring, braising stage for all to see. So I guess I must be.
But on the other hand, some food bloggers always have beautiful photographs of perfectly cooked dishes quivering on vintage china with flowers in the background. They never seem to have disasters where their pie crust cracks down the middle or they leave a sauce simmering to go and break up a row about a mouth organ and come back to find it’s burnt to the bottom of the pan. I’m certainly not one of those food bloggers. And this post bears testimony to that. So before an angry hoard of Canadians takes up arms and heads for the suburbs of Tooting, look, I know it’s not worked out perfectly, okay?
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I am ashamed to say this is the first Irish cheese to make it to the blog. When I decided to focus on ‘British’ cheeses, I wasn’t sure whether to include Irish; Ireland is, after all, a very separate country. I might just as well have included France or Papua New Guinea. I got myself in a right old pickle, trying to work out the difference between the United Kingdom, Great Britain and the British Isles (all completely different, since you ask). But there are so many great Irish cheeses with fascinating stories behind the people and landscapes that make them that I decided to settle on cheeses of the British Isles (a geographical term, not a political one, since you ask again). Plus, many of the Irish cheeses have won gongs at the British Cheese Awards, so that sealed it for me.
Phew, that was a hard-going intro, wasn’t it? Onto the cheese! Here is Coolea, a very Irish cheese (and if this picture doesn’t make you think of sunny days, I don’t know what will):
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Fromage Homage 