I’d never really thought much about quinces until I got interested in cheese and then it seemed I couldn’t move for falling over a sticky chunk of membrillo. I was desperate to try and make some last year but never managed to track down the elusive quince. When they came back into season this year I searched high and low but there wasn’t a quince to be found anywhere in southwest London. Finally, I gave up and decided to make a version with plums instead but just as I hauled my shopping bag of fruit onto the table an email pinged in from Linda at Mrs Portly’s Kitchen, who was in London with some Suffolk quinces in need of a home. A mad dash across London later and I was the proud owner of half a dozen beautiful golden quinces (many thanks, Linda!)
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Tag Archives: lincolnshire poacher
Quince Cheese and Plum Cheese with…er…Cheese
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Not Very French Onion Soup with Lincolnshire Poacher Toasts
If life gives you lemons, make lemonade. If life gives you onions, make…er…bhajis? But bhajis aren’t renowned for their cheesiness (although I’m sure you could probably whack a bit of paneer in there with great results) and so, when I mucked up on a grocery order and found myself with the Mount Kilimanjaro of onions, French Onion Soup it was. Typically French Onion Soup is topped with melted gruyère and so I mused upon British cheese and thought of Lincolnshire Poacher. Poacher is made to a recipe loosely based on West Country cheddar but is also influenced by Swiss mountain cheeses due to the starter culture that’s used. The result is a smooth Gruyère-like texture but with the nutty, grassy taste of a mature Cheddar. Perfect melty cheese.
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Another Eight Cheeses…
Never one to miss the opportunity to try several new cheeses in one sitting, I recently hiked across to Brixton again to one of Ned Palmer’s tastings at Cannon and Cannon. If you missed the last instalment, ‘Eight Cheeses in One Day’, you can check out what I snaffled last time here.
The theme of this tasting was ‘Cheese and Culture’ in which Ned attempted to show how cheese has evolved through history according to the environments and societies which produced it. With two hours ticking on the clock and just eight cheeses on the plate (just eight cheeses!), Ned himself admitted that it was never going to be a comprehensive and chronological survey of global cheese history but it was certainly interesting. I won’t attempt to reproduce everything he said, partly because he might sue me and partly mainly because I drank some beer and can’t remember. But I will tell you about the lovely cheeses and drop a few nuggets of information in as I recall them.
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Smoked Lincolnshire Poacher
There has been a distinct bias so far on this blog towards cheeses of the English southern counties and semi-soft cheeses and I felt this week I should attempt to redress the balance. So I’ve headed north-east to munch on Lincolnshire Poacher, a hard unpasteurised cheese made from the milk of cows that graze on the chalky pastures of the Lincolnshire Wolds, an area not usually associated with dairy let alone cheese-making.
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