As part of last Friday’s goat’s cheese paean in honour of Chinese New Year I promised you a ewe’s milk cheese to redress the balance for those who thought we were now entering the Year of the Sheep instead. And, as fate would have it, the lovely folks at online artisan cheese emporium The Cheese Market very kindly sent me a very delicious example of the type indeed. So here, in all its gooey orange loveliness, is Nuns of Caen:
Filed under cheese
I am fascinated by natural yeasts and like to grow a sourdough starter in my kitchen. It was given to me by an Italian friend who got it from her in-laws in Italy who got it from a bakery. So it feels a bit like a pedigree pet, one of those long-haired hamsters or something that needs food and attention or it starts to smell. The problem is that if it was a hamster I’d be in big trouble with the rodent obesity protection league as I feed it far too much and end up with a giant Kilner full of starter:
Filed under Cheese Recipes
It’s Chinese New Year today and so when I skim-read somewhere that we were entering the Year of the Goat it seemed like the perfect opportunity to present you with a goat’s cheese this week. But then things got complicated when I read this article. The celebrated animal in question derives from the Mandarin Chinese character ‘yang’ which means simply ‘horned animal’. So whilst some people interpret this as ‘goat’ others are in the ‘sheep’ or ‘ram’ camp. When I used to work for a farming organisation we sometimes used the term ‘shoats’ when we wanted to talk about a mixed herd of sheep and goats. That would solve everything. Except for the fact that I really don’t have time to track down a British mixed milk sheep and goat’s cheese, if such a thing even exists. So you’re getting goat’s this week and that’s that. Without further ado, here is Saint George:
Filed under cheese
There are several sights you might expect to see on a visit to a Somerset cheesemakers: blotchy black and white cows grazing jade meadows; grown men wearing hairnets; great hulks of maturing yellow cheddar. But one thing you perhaps don’t figure on stumbling upon is a state-of-the-art laboratory complete with microscopes and canisters of liquid nitrogen.
Continue reading
Filed under cheese features
Well, this cheese is a first. Usually I don’t write about two cheeses made by the same producers in quick succession because I find that I don’t have enough to say (same cows, same milk, same people making it in the same place…) But this week’s cheese was described as ‘exceptional’ by the Other Half and ‘oh blimey, THAT is something VERY different’ by me. So, I give you the cheese that broke all the rules, Paddy’s Milestone:
Filed under cheese
Call this post a Burns Night hangover if you will. I wanted to write about Scottish cheese last week and, given that a) it’s not always easy tracking down far-flung cheese and b) I was too busy working to leave the house for extended cheese mooching trips, I decided to order my chosen cheese online. And everybody knows that if you’re mail-ordering, it pays to order in bulk, right? So this week I present Scottish Cheese II: its name is Hebridean Blue. And if you are afraid of blue cheese, you might want to look away now:
Filed under cheese
It’s Burns Night on Sunday and so what better excuse to mail-order a mahoosive haul of cheese explore another historic Scottish cheese? This time last year I plumped for Caboc, which even its own producer describes as having ‘a taste which should stay in the 1970s’. I have to say I couldn’t disagree with him and so I was hoping for something a little less…ahem…idiosyncratic this time around. The big question though of course remains: will I be able to shoehorn a mention of Robert Burns into this week’s post? So, settle down on your hurdies and get a load of this week’s cheese down your weel-swall’d kytes: I bring you Dunlop.
Filed under cheese
As I wrote last week, I was lucky enough to be sent a truckle of Wookey Hole Cave-Aged Cheddar to try and, although we have been gobbling it non-stop throughout the festive period and beyond, it stands undefeated. I swear it grows back overnight. So, I thought I’d use some of it to cook up something suitably troglodyte-friendly. I pondered about what cave-people would eat (probably not mature cheese, to be fair) and the basic principle I came up with was: MEAT.
Filed under Cheese Recipes
Happy New Year everyone! Okay, I realise I’m a bit on the late side for that but I’ve been so busy lazing about, scoffing festive cheese, that this poor old blog has been a bit neglected. But here I am, pushing away the tumbleweeds and blowing off the cobwebs, ready to start the year afresh. And what better way to leap back into action than with a great big bear of a cheese?
Most cheeses on this blog I forage for but I was lucky enough to be sent this week’s. I received it a week before Christmas, then my parents arrived and my dad took a serious fancy to it, along with the Other Half who hasn’t stop guzzling it. Or indeed myself. But the cheese lives on. It’s like the tardis of cheeses. So here it is (and I must apologise to any cheese pros for the photo as so eager was I to get to the cheese that I cut it in half before I read the label on the bottom telling me not to do just that. Whoopsie):
Filed under cheese
It’s been a crazy couple of weeks what with one thing and another and, sadly, for the first time ever I have had to neglect the blog (and reading everyone else’s too – apologies). New Year will see me return full of cheesy vim and vigour but, in the meantime, I thought I would lead everyone into the festive spirit by sharing the cheeses I have bought for Christmas. And – as if that wasn’t exciting enough – now is the time to see who has been listening and who has been sitting at the back of the class flicking rubbers and writing rude verse in the back of their exercise book. Cheese quiz!
So, here are nine cheeses. Seven of them are British, two of them are foreign interlopers. Eight of them have featured on the blog before in one way or another. Seven of them I’m going to scoff myself, two of them I bought for a friend (just so you don’t think I’m a complete pig). Score yourself one point for identifying the cheese and a bonus point if you can get the producer, where one is named (the most you can score is sixteen points). It’s just for fun so have a bash and I’ll reveal the results when all the cheeses have been guessed or during the boring bit between Christmas and New Year, whichever comes first. Have yourselves a very Merry Christmas. Ready…Steady…Guess that Cheese!
Filed under cheese
Fromage Homage 