It’s hard to choose one quintessential English cheese. For some it might be Stilton. Others may plump for their own regional territorial, a Lancashire or perhaps what’s thought of as our oldest cheese, Cheshire. But there is one cheese that has a habit of featuring on many an ‘England’s Best Cheeses’ list (as well as in Pong’s English Selection Box) and that cheese is Montgomery’s Cheddar.
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Dorset Blue Vinny was the first cheese I ever wrote about on this blog. At that point, I was planning to find out about cheeses from all over the world but, as I researched the Vinny, I realised that, cheese-wise, there was enough history and variety on the British Isles to keep me going for some time. Nearly four years later and there’s still about 500 cheeses I have yet to track down!
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Sometimes cheeses come to me as a mystery to be solved. When my in-laws presented me with a piece of Savoyard, I assumed from the name it was French. ‘Oh no,’ says mother-in-law, who knew everything there is to know about cheese before I was even born. ‘I think it’s made down the road from us, in Wiltshire.’ So began The Search for Savoyard.
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The eagle-eyed amongst you may be muttering ‘Comté is neither a British nor an Irish cheese’ and you are, of course, correct. When I was invited to an evening to find out more about the French cheese, I flip-flopped as to whether to attend. Eventually, I decided to cross the cheese Channel because a) I’ve got two children and I don’t get out much; b) Comté is a nice cheese; and c) I am interested in different production methods and systems, so thought it would be interesting to head to the mountains that we tend to lack this side of La Manche. Blame it on The Oxford Companion to Cheese; it’s got me sniffing after all manner of furrin cheeses.
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Cheese-making in Britain seems to be going stratospheric at the moment. Just when I start to think I’ve heard of every producer going, I turn my back to deal with another courgette glut and – boom! – by the time I’m back, there’s another five popped up. Predictably, a recent visit to the Global Cheese Awards unearthed several cheese-makers new to me, one of whom makes St Gluvias. I bought the smoked version because it’s autumn now and I always go a bit mad for smoked cheese at this time of year. See – I’ve even put it on a seasonally-appropriate fabric:
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So much news to pack into one post! Where to begin? Okay, a confession: I bought a spiralizer. Yes, yes, I know, no doubt it will soon be relegated to the spot above the washing machine, along with the pasta machine and the bread-maker. In the meantime, though, I’m having fun with it.
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When choosing a cheese to write about, I always try and mix it up so there’s a variety of styles, animals and places of origin. I thought I’d done pretty well this week, following a cow’s milk cheddar with a sheep’s milk cheese but then it turns out that I’d managed to pick two cheeses made about half a mile away from each other. So, following Barber’s cheddar, come out of the lane, go past the pub, round the corner to the right and up the hill. There you are: this week’s cheese, Fosse Way Fleece:
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Most recounts of visits to cheese-makers seem to involve the word ‘bucolic’ and descriptions of jade-green grass and tumbling verges. Often cows feature, grazing contentedly in a hazy middle distance. Not so on my visit to Wildes Cheese. Stepping out from the train station, the only green to be spotted is the odd blowsy branch of elderflower hanging off the rail embankment and some plantains piled up outside a local shop. Tottenham is many things but a rural idyll is not one of them.
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I love a good regional word or saying. Where I’m from you can ‘have a cob on’, ‘be a mardarse’ or ‘firkle around’. I’ve also always like to get my boots ‘plothered’ but no-one else has heard of this so I suspect I might have made it up. So, I like the fact that this week’s cheese, Norfolk Mardler, is named after a dialect word. Ah, c’mon, everyone knows what a mardler is, right?
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Many myths abound about the origins of Cheddar and why the world-famous cheese took its name from a small village in Somerset. One is that a milkmaid left a pail of milk in the Cheddar Gorge caves for safety and when she returned found that it had turned into a delicious cheese. Another tale features some monks on a pilgrimage to nearby Glastonbury, a thunderstorm and some similarly transformative milk. Whilst anyone who has ever left milk in the fridge and gone on holiday for a fortnight will view such tales with scepticism, there’s no doubt that the cheese does take its name from the village of Cheddar which lies at the foot of the famous caverns. And, if you go down to the caves today, albeit the nearby Wookey Hole caverns, you’ll once more find some cheese.
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Fromage Homage 