Tag Archives: cheese

January 7, 2014 · 11:14 am

British Cheese Fondue Night

british cheese fondue

I’d made fondue before but this was back in the days when I was under the illusion that all British cheese was good for was toast topping and jacket potatoes, so I’d used traditional Swiss cheeses such as Emmental and Gruyère. Having garnered a reputation as the local ‘mad cheese woman’, I’d been promising some neighbours a fondue knees-up for a while. Once the date was sealed, I decided to try and create a menu from British cheeses, now that I know what a great variety of styles there are available. So, I set off for Borough Market on a cheese-quest (ensuring that I had only a limited amount of cash and no card in my wallet so I didn’t get the Borough Market red mist and end up spending £120 on partridges, quinces and kangaroo salami).
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January 3, 2014 · 11:09 am

Tooting Gold: Judgement Day

home-made cheddar cheese

Anyone who’s been getting their cheesy fix from this blog for a while now will know that in the bowels of my house, amongst the old abs toners and rusting tins of paint, lives a home-made cheddar which goes by the name of Tooting Gold (or more affectionately E-Colin, or Colin for short). Colin was made in June 2013. I’d been learning about cheese for about six weeks when I thought it would be interesting to see for myself how it’s made and so, with zero knowledge about milk, cultures, rennet, temperatures, acidity, timings, hygiene, maturation or indeed pretty much any aspect of cheese-making, I plunged right in there and tried to make a cheddar. Not an easy ricotta or even a little chèvre. Oh no. A cheddar, which requires rennet and cultures and cheddaring and moulding and maturing and all manner of what-not.
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January 1, 2014 · 11:56 am

January’s Cheese, Please! Recipe Blog Challenge – Comfort Food and Winter Warmers

cheese fondue secret supper club

A Happy New Year to everyone! And I hope that you haven’t gorged yourself on Christmas cheese such that you can’t bear the sight of it…because it’s Cheese, Please! time again. January is a miserable month. Cold and dark and with no prospect of any festivities to bring light and feasting, it’s a hunker-down-and-wait-it-out sort of month (unless you’re like my neighbour who jets off to Nigeria for three months in which case it’s probably quite toasty).
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December 20, 2013 · 11:39 am

Lord of the Hundreds

I bought the cheese for this week and then a few days ago I thought, ‘Oh, you know what, I’m going to skip it this week. I’ve got lots to do, everybody’s got lots to do. Let’s just give it a miss.’ But then I was reading a book (about cheeses, by the way, not Jesus) that quoted the Bible as saying ‘Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel. He shall eat curds and honey when he knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good.’ So, there you go, cheese at Christmas! Plus, I’d chosen a sheep’s cheese and you only have to flick through a hymn book to see that sheep feature big-time at Christmas (cattle, on the other hand, just seem to hang about lowing). And then there’s the name of the cheese, ‘Lord of the Hundreds’…

…So, I relented and bring you a suitably festive cheese, as an excuse to wish a Merry Christmas (or Happy Holidays, if that’s more your thing) to everyone who has stopped by for a cheesy chat this year. It’s been great fun and I hope to see you again in 2014.
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December 16, 2013 · 10:33 am

A Marbletree Cheeseboard and Belvoir Crumpets

Belvoir Crumpets port and stilton

I was feeling a bit put out the other week when someone ‘fed back’ to me that they thought the design of my blog was a bit awful and the photos were especially dreadful, partly because I always use the same plates. Now, don’t get me wrong, I concentrate on the writing and the cheese, I know I have the design skills of a mole in the dark and I still haven’t got a new camera after dropping mine a few weeks ago. So this feedback wasn’t a surprise. I even agreed. But still, you know, it hurt. So when I got an email from some nice people at a little company called Marbletree, asking if I would like to try out one of their cheeseboards, it seemed like very good timing. A nice new thing to show off the cheese on.
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December 13, 2013 · 11:26 am

Teifi

Since setting out on my mission to chomp my way through and learn about as many cheeses of the British Isles as I can (there are about 700 at the last count…and I’m not sure that includes Ireland…so I could be some time…) I’ve tried to ensure I represent a mix of different cheeses. Cow, sheep, goat, buffalo. Hard, soft and the various states of squidginess inbetween. Raw and pasteurised. But I know that I’ve been very rubbish indeed when it comes to geography and anywhere outside of England is getting a raw deal of it. This is purely down to what’s available where I shop, rather than any kind of cheese separatism but I know I need to try harder. So, this week, in the spirit of union, I bring you Teifi:

teifi cheese wales
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December 10, 2013 · 12:29 pm

Barber’s Cheese, Starter Cultures and Success with Soufflés

Twice Baked Cheddar Cheese Soufflés Barber's 1833 Vintage Reserve Cheddar

Contrary to what some of my friends think, I do not, alas, lie on a chaise longue all today quaffing free cheese. Partly because eating cheese lying down is a recipe for indigestion but also because mine is not the kind of blog that gets inundated with freebies. Which is fine by me, as a large part of the fun of it is deciding what cheese to try next.

Recently, however, I got invited to the Good Food Show by the cheddar chaps at Barber’s in Somerset and didn’t hesitate to accept; partly because it seemed free cheese might finally be in the offing, partly because it meant twelve hours on my own without having to attend to anyone’s toileting or answer questions about slugs, but mainly because I had recently found out that Barber’s are the sole guardians of Britain’s traditional starter cultures. For a cheese geek like me, it was an offer too good to turn down.
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December 6, 2013 · 10:49 am

Cotehill Blue

For anyone squeamish of cheese (who, let’s face it, probably ran screaming from this blog a long time ago) today’s cheese may well sound like their worst nightmare. Not only is it soft and squidgy like a ripe Brie but it also has blue veins and a slightly crusty rind. Only washed rinds terrify cheese-haters more than a squidgy, crusty blue. But one person’s cheese nightmare is another’s jackpot and the combination sounded pretty fantastic to me. So when I caught sight of some at a food show recently, it was in my bag as quick as you like.

Here it is, oozing menacingly:

cotehill blue cheese
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December 2, 2013 · 10:39 am

December’s Cheese, Please! Recipe Blog Challenge – Festive Nibbles

Over the last few months, my fellow bloggers have risen admirably to the Cheese, Please! Recipe Challenge with a variety of cheeses: cow, sheep and goat; soft and hard; and last month’s smoked cheese extravaganza. I’d had a certain cheese in mind for December for a while; both seasonal and distinctive, Stilton seemed the perfect choice. But then I started to feel a bit bad as one of the stalwarts of Cheese, Please!, who will remain nameless Food Day-Dreaming, is afeared of the blue cheese. Now obviously what I should do is either force-feed her Roquefort until she comes to her senses or else tell her to never darken my blogging doors again with her deranged tastes.
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December 1, 2013 · 1:51 pm

November’s Cheese, Please! Challenge Recipe Round-up – Smoked Cheese

November was certainly a smokin’ month (arf!) for the Cheese, Please! Challenge, with a record number of entries. It was great to hear about people using smoked cheese who had never cooked with it before – or even eaten it – creating a variety of dishes which paired the cheese with meat, fish, fruit and vegetables in a veritable harvest festival of smoked cheese loveliness.
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