Tag Archives: pasteurised

March 14, 2014 · 9:23 am

Parlick Fell

Today, I bring you a cheese born of long-ago love on the farm. Yes, yes, I know that I did cheesy romance on Valentine’s Day but when I read the family story behind today’s cheese, I got a little wibbly. First, let me set the scene a little with some Thomas Hardy (and for anyone who moans and wants to skip to the cheese part, I’m an English literature graduate, just count yourself lucky I don’t do this every week):

“They were breaking up the masses of curd before putting them into the vats. The operation resembled the act of crumbling bread on a large scale; and amid the immaculate whiteness of the curds Tess Durbeyfield’s hands showed themselves of the pinkness of the rose. Angel, who was filling the vats with his handful, suddenly ceased, and laid his hands flat upon hers. Her sleeves were rolled far above the elbow, and bending lower he kissed the inside vein of her soft arm.”

Phewee. (And at this point I should say that if you’re the person who came to my blog on Wednesday night having Googled ‘cheese soft porn’, the next bit of the blog is going to leave you sorely disappointed.) Onto the cheese; here it is in its ‘immaculate whiteness’, Parlick Fell:

Grandma Singleton's Parlick Fell
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February 28, 2014 · 9:39 am

Coolea

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):

Coolea cheese
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February 25, 2014 · 6:13 pm

Home-Made Stilton

home-made stilton

It’s been a while since I bid a fond farewell to my home-made Cheddar, known as Tooting Gold or E-Colin for short. Anyone who has read this sorry tale before will recall that Colin, despite maturing apparently happily down in my cellar for six months was judged (quite literally, by a judge) to be distinctly below par. It was a disappointing result but hardly surprising, given my complete lack of knowledge about cheese-making when I set out to create him. Dr Frankenstein had nothing on me as I cobbled together moulds, picked off hairs and chased away mites to create my cheese monster. Poor Colin.
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February 21, 2014 · 11:14 am

Cotherstone

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:

Cotherstone cheese

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January 24, 2014 · 11:06 am

Caboc

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:

Caboc cheese
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January 17, 2014 · 10:15 am

Barkham Blue

Today’s cheese choice demonstrates the power of social media. Or something like that. When I wrote up my sorry tale of the mauling judging of my home-made Cheddar, Colin, I was somewhat mortified to receive several tweets from proper cheese-makers, although all of them were kind and full of encouragement. One of them was from a producer called Two Hoots Cheese, with reference to my nascent plans to produce a Stilton called Trevor:

It made me smile and so I clicked on their profile and then onto their website and read all about the cheeses they produce, which included one called Barkham Blue, which I’d heard of before but never tried. A few days later I was in my local cheese shop to stock up when what should I see on their shelves but Barkham Blue! After a wee tasting, which involved the cheese-monger being rather lovely and ceremoniously involving my five year old (who loves blue cheese and, after much slightly precocious Gallic shrugging and face-manoeuvring, gave it a literal thumbs up) the Barkham Blue was in the bag. And here it is:

barkham blue cheese
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December 10, 2013 · 12:29 pm

Barber’s Cheese, Starter Cultures and Success with Soufflés

Twice Baked Cheddar Cheese Soufflés Barber's 1833 Vintage Reserve Cheddar

Contrary to what some of my friends think, I do not, alas, lie on a chaise longue all today quaffing free cheese. Partly because eating cheese lying down is a recipe for indigestion but also because mine is not the kind of blog that gets inundated with freebies. Which is fine by me, as a large part of the fun of it is deciding what cheese to try next.

Recently, however, I got invited to the Good Food Show by the cheddar chaps at Barber’s in Somerset and didn’t hesitate to accept; partly because it seemed free cheese might finally be in the offing, partly because it meant twelve hours on my own without having to attend to anyone’s toileting or answer questions about slugs, but mainly because I had recently found out that Barber’s are the sole guardians of Britain’s traditional starter cultures. For a cheese geek like me, it was an offer too good to turn down.
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November 22, 2013 · 10:58 am

Kit Calvert’s Wensleydale

This week’s post is nominated for both personal and topical reasons. The personal sees me in an opening credits montage from Who Do You Think You Are, staring pensively into the middle distance in the sheep-dotted Yorkshire Dales, sandwiched perhaps between Christopher Biggins and Derek Griffiths. This is because we recently found out that my great-great Uncle Charles was involved in Wensleydale cheese-making (well, okay, we think he was a stockman but that’s a vital job; happy cows equals tasty cheese). Alas, penning a cheese blog has yet to bring me the requisite celebrity and so the BBC are not rushing to help me with this one. Another time.

Here is my family’s legacy the cheese:

wensleydale hawes
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November 11, 2013 · 2:12 pm

Hart’s Content: Bringing Stilton-Making Back to Derbyshire

Hartington Creamery Cheese Stilton Peakland Blue White

It’s a film we’ve all seen. A traditional industry is closed down, leaving a community devastated, both in terms of economic loss and sense of identity. But then a band of locals get together and find new purpose through ballet dancing or trombone playing or pub stripping. Of course, it’s all made up, based on whimsical notions of plucky northerners winning over adversity. But, for one Derbyshire village I visited recently, truth could be stranger than fiction – except they’ve found a new beginning in a different sort of culture from ballet or brass bands. To be precise, a cheese culture – Penicillium roqueforti – which is responsible for the blue veins of Stilton.
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November 1, 2013 · 11:24 am

Tunworth

Tunworth was a name that I’d heard time and time again since I started my cheese journey. Everyone raves about it, with Raymond Blanc calling it ‘the best Camembert in the world’ (which I imagine made him a whole lot of fromage friends back in his native France.) It was definitely on my hit-list and so I was really pleased when I won some in the La Cremerie recipe competition that I talked about on a previous thread. It’s an exciting moment when you open the door to see postie with a box but I must admit that my first thought on encountering this postie was ‘Whoah, my love, you need to have a bit of a washdown.’ But I smiled nicely, signed the chit, closed the door and realised that the smell was actually coming from the box, not the poor postman. That makes it sound bad, I realise, but that’s the beauty of cheese, isn’t it? Cabbagey-smelling postman = bad. Cabbagey-smelling cheese = very good.

Anyway, here it is, both in its plain but stylish box and oozing slightly on a plate:

tunworth

tunworth2
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