Given that this month’s Cheese, Please! Challenge is the very British Cheddar, it seems only right that I should conduct extensive research by stuffing my face with as many quality farmhouse Cheddars as I can lay my hands on. The first up for tasting is Montgomery’s Cheddar:
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I was drawn to this cheese by the story of its name. A blue cheese (rather obviously), it was named ‘Blacksticks’ after a farm of the same name near to the dairy, where some tall chestnut trees looked like black sticks against the winter sky. I love the British countryside in the autumn and winter (my other half likes to go on about ‘crows in ploughed fields’ as he knows it will make me all misty-eyed) and, as the summer starts to wind down, it seemed an appropriate cheese to check out.
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I love my Fromage Friday adventures but have to admit I’ve been getting impatient. There are so many cheeses I’ve heard about and want to try but there are only so many cheese purchases my hips and thighs can tolerate in one week. A tasting at Leadenhall Cheese back in July introduced me to some new cheeses in more pocket-size portions and so when I saw an event advertised at one of my local delicatessens, Cannon and Cannon, I jumped at the chance (and then did a few more star-jumps, just to build up a nice calorie deficit to be filled by cheese).
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Since starting this blog, I’ve been looking forward to meeting my first proper cheese-maker. Whenever I imagined it, I was usually welly-clad in a field, perhaps with the early morning mist floating over the grass as some cows lumbered into the dairy. It’s fair to say that my fromager fantasies didn’t look much like this:
Looking more Albert Square than Ambridge, Gringa Dairy is situated under a railway arch in Peckham, South London. Peckham has a reputation for being bad-ass rather than bucolic but, beyond the ‘don’t go there or you’ll get stabbed’ tabloid headlines, it boasts an eclectic food scene that encompasses events like KERB, restaurants like Peckham Refreshment Rooms and producers such as new craft brewers Brick. Another new kid on the block, Gringa Dairy was founded by American Kristen Schnepp and makes artisan Mexican cheese.
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I’d heard so much talk about Stinking Bishop that I was starting to think it was some sort of novelty cheese. Dubbed ‘the stinkiest cheese in Britain’ in 2009, it seems to be the marmite of cheese-lovers – you either love it or hate it. My sister’s boyfriend adores it but the Other Half thinks it’s the devil’s work. Its appearance in a Wallace and Gromit film where it raised Wallace from the dead further cemented its reputation as a hardcore cheese.
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Whenever my friend Rachel goes back to her native Isle of Man, she puts up with a variety of hilarious gags about tax avoidance and Jeremy Clarkson’s holiday home. Maybe some light-hearted ribbing about sheep and/or incest. You know, all the usual xenophobic island stereotypes. But when she recently brought me back some Manx cheese, I started to wonder if the joke was on me. You see, it had [gasp] ‘fruity bits’ in it, mango and pineapple to be precise. If I’m honest, my first thought was, ‘Ugh! Cheese aberration.’
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I’m a recent convert to Caerphilly (or Caerfilli as I now realise it should be called) and a long-time snaffler of Brie and so when I saw Pong describe a cheese as the ‘organic lovechild of a Caerphilly and a Brie’ I knew I had to hunt it down and make it mine. That cheese is Perl Wen and here it is, looking all creamy and lovely and a bit gooey around the edges:
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Of course, I’ve eaten Shropshire Blue before. I knew I had because I grew up in Staffordshire, the neighbouring county. We used to shop over county lines in Market Drayton and Shrewsbury so obviously I’ve eaten Shropshire Blue.
Oh dear
Oh dear, oh dear.
So, this is one of those moments when I’m reminded that I know bugger all about cheese. Probably more than your average Joe, I’ll give me that, but really, bugger all. Now, I don’t feel too bad about knowing flip about flocculation or being an affinage amateur. And I’d never heard of Norwegian Brown Cheese or Idiazabal or even Perl Las until the last couple of months. And I’m fine with that. But recently I found out that…pauses to put on the big cap with ‘CD for Cheese Dunce’ on it and retires to the corner in a puddle of shame…Shropshire Blue has nothing to do with Shropshire.
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Back in May, when I sat huddled in my thermal slanket, the hail battering against the windows, booking a place on a Cheese Walk in the City of London seemed like a good idea. Hopefully it would be a typical English day in July: overcast, fairly chilly and with a middling to high chance of a freezing downpour. So I admit that when the day dawned with the kind of heat that melts pigeon’s feet into the tarmac, it suddenly seemed less appealing. And throw in a tube journey and consuming large quantities of cheese and wine in the sun and the prospect started to feel more like appalling. But I take my role as intrepid cheese correspondent seriously (coupled with the fact I’d already shelled out for it upfront) and so I donned the Factor 30 and set forth valiantly.
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I’ve been eating a lot of British cheese recently as there’s so much to discover on my own doorstep and so many great stories behind our cheeses that I hadn’t felt the urge to stray very far afield. But there’s one cheese I keep hearing about that’s causing such a ruckus at the moment that I felt compelled to check it out. And that cheese is mimolette.
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Fromage Homage 