I’m off to Devon for Easter and am looking forward to seeking out some little-known West Country cheeses. However, I’ve become aware recently that my selections have been displaying a distinct southern bias. So, to redress the balance before I go away, to give Margaret at From Pyrenees to Pennines a fighting chance at tracking down a cheese (they stock it in Booths!) and to please my mother, this week’s selection is from Yorkshire:
Filed under cheese, Uncategorized
It’s been a while. I’d like to say that my vacation from the blog has meant that I’ve lost at least half a stone due to eating less cheese. But I appear to have filled the gap with eating chocolate. And cheese but just not getting around to writing about it. Whoops. Anyway, I’m back on the cheese trail and this week I bring you an especially pretty one:
Filed under cheese, Uncategorized
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:
Filed under cheese
The wealth of information now available about British cheeses and their producers usually makes it pretty easy to research and write about whichever hunk has made it on to the blog. But boy oh boy was this week’s cheese ever a slippery one to pin down. It has taken sleuthmanship and cunning beyond the wit of man to find out even the basics. I’m mentally spent. So, here is it, the Loch Ness Monster, the Lord Lucan of cheeses, Inglewhite Buffalo:
Filed under cheese
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?
Filed under cheese
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.
Continue reading
Filed under cheese makers
Well, no-one can say that I didn’t get my cheese-worth from my recent ramble around West Wales. Following last week’s Visit to Caws Teifi and the previous post about Y-Fenni, I am back this week with a double bill of Welsh cheesiness from the Caws Cenarth cheesemakers. My eldest son and I visited the farm and watched the cheesemakers in action from the purpose-built viewing room. It’s a great way to see the process, although I felt a bit sorry for them – what if they fancy talking to themselves or scratching their bottom? We chose today’s cheese through the simple process of: we’ll taste everything we can get our hands on in the farm shop and then you can choose one to buy and I’ll choose one. Caws Llain (top picture) is my choice and Lancych Mature (bottom) is my offspring’s:
Filed under cheese
Eek, it’s been quite a while since my last post but, in my defence, I have been on some intrepid cheese travels, exploring the beautiful coast and valleys of West Wales and eating rather a lot of local cheese along the way. More of that soon but first I bring you Y-Fenni, a little number I picked up in a deli in the pastel-pretty seaside village of Aberaeron:
Filed under cheese
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
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
Fromage Homage 