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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Anyone who grew up in Britain in the seventies or eighties will remember Sunday night TV for one thing: James Herriot driving his Austin 7 through the Yorkshire Dales to the sounds of a soaring, tinkling piano soundtrack. All Creatures Great and Small had a huge effect on me as a child and inspired two ambitions: one, to become a vet and two, to play the piano. The first ambition was swiftly crushed come GCSE time when half of my teachers ganged up to inform me that I was hopeless at science and should do something arty-farty instead. The second was more fruitful and I taught myself to play the entire theme tune from scratch. It remains the only piano piece I have ever played (aside from Beverley Craven’s ‘Promise Me’, but let’s draw a veil over that).
I digress. I chose this week’s cheese because it epitomises the landscape of the Yorkshire Dales. Its history and substance is so intertwined with the area, from the cows and sheep that pepper the hills and valleys to the dry stone walls which its very rind resembles. I’ve even put it on a grassy-green plate this week, because it seemed somehow to belong there:
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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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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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Selecting which cheese to try next is always a fairly random occasion. Sometimes I like the name (Baron BIGOD!), sometimes I like the history (Single Gloucester PDO), sometimes I feel guilty about not eating cheese from a particular area (Teifi) and sometimes, if I am feeling particularly organised, I try and tie it in to an occasion (Caboc). But, feeling devoid of inspiration a few weeks ago, I put out a plaintive call on Twitter for cheese suggestions. One was from someone who works at Neal’s Yard Dairy who suggested Cotherstone because ‘It’s a great cheese, often overlooked and pretty rare…May not be around for ever either. Go grab some!’ I then heard it described as ‘the closest that British cheese-making has to a living fossil’. All in all, it sounded like a cheese to hunt down.
Here it is, the shy, retiring, winsome beauty that is Cotherstone:
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Some cheeses come with such a history and pedigree that I’m almost afraid to try them in case they taste like dust or tom cat’s spray. And so it was with this week’s cheese which manages to combine coming back from the dead with gaining the coveted PDO status and being cheese-sibling of ‘Britain’s smelliest cheese.’ It also has the distinction of being the nicest-smelling cheese I’ve yet to come across. If this cheese were a person, I’d be handing them a big red book and so, in the style of Michael Aspel (or Eamonn Andrews if you’ve got a couple of years on me): ‘Single Gloucester, This Is Your Life’…
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Given that tomorrow is Burns Night, I thought I would take the opportunity to correct the terrible fact that I haven’t yet featured a Scottish cheese (I know, I know, the shame etc.) So, without further ado, I offer up a suitably cheesy excerpt from The Holy Fair by one of the first cheesemongers of Scotland (oh yes, read on fact fans), Mr Robbie Burns:
Here farmers gash, in ridin graith,
Gaed hoddin by their cotters;
There swankies young, in braw braid-claith,
Are springing owre the gutters.
The lasses, skelpin barefit, thrang,
In silks an’ scarlets glitter;
Wi’ sweet-milk cheese, in mony a whang,
An’ farls, bak’d wi’ butter,
Fu’ crump that day.
Burns was no stranger to cheese, as his mother was a peasant cheese-maker; as a boy he often helped out, selling the cheese locally (which makes him a cheesemonger in my book). And so, without further ado, raise your whisky glasses, butter your neeps and say hello to Scotland’s oldest cheese, Caboc:
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Despite the lump of impenetrable mousetrap that was my home-made Cheddar, Colin, I was keen to get back on the cheese-making horse but felt that I need to do some limbering up before I tackled anything too complicated. Paneer is about as simple as cheese gets; milk is curdled and then pressed into a lump. It’s difficult to get wrong and suitable even for an inveterate cheese-mangler like me.
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Fromage Homage 