I said last week, didn’t I, that you wait for months on this blog and then three ewe’s milk cheeses come along at once? Well, here’s the third. I didn’t mean to choose another sheepy one this week but then I saw these little pots of strained curd, quite unlike any cheese I’ve tried before, so couldn’t resist buying one. Plus, it’s the season for fresh sheep’s milk cheese, given that they tend to stop producing milk in the winter months. So here is the pot of ovine temptation that lured me in:
Tag Archives: sheep’s milk cheese
Flower Marie
So it seems like soft sheep’s cheeses are like proverbial buses: you wait a year and then two come along at once (yes, that should be three but I think you can have too much of a gooey ovine thing…) This week’s cheese is one that I’ve often spotted in cheese shops but have never bought due to the sheer heft of the thing and the fact you have to buy a whole one. Since starting this blog I’ve had to start walking about 10k a day to avoid turning into one of those people on Channel Five documentaries that have to have the front of their house removed by emergency services to let them out. And I try not to buy pieces of cheese the size of a small house brick. However, the imminent visit of some fellow turophiles gave me the perfect excuse to snap one up this week. So here is Flower Marie:
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St James
With some cheeses, their reputation precedes them. These are the cheeses that crop up at tastings, the cheeses that hard-core cheese addicts tell you that you have to try, the cheeses that sound a bit maverick and even, dare I say it, sometimes a bit alarming. And so it was with this week’s cheese. Every time I put out a plaintive call for inspiration on Twitter, someone would come back, telling me to try St James. So I tried to but then discovered that it’s a seasonal cheese and it wasn’t available. Then I tried again but realised I needed to make a trip to central London to track it down. It was becoming the stuff of legend. Finally I found it in Neal’s Yard Dairy and captured it, to see if it lived up to the hype:
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May Day Frittata with Hawthorn Leaf Garnish
It’s May Day this week which has, it turns out, more associations with cheese than you can shake a Morris dancer’s jingly-jangly stick at. Sharing a lineage with the ancient Celtic and Gaelic festivals of Bealltainn, the date traditionally marked the start of the summer season. Cows and sheep were taken up to graze the fresh pastures and milking started again (milking was a ‘May to Michaelmas’ affair back in the seasonal mists of time). Finally the ‘white meats’ (milk, butter and cheese) were back on the menu following the lean winter months.
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Swaledale PDO
Anyone who grew up in Britain in the seventies or eighties will remember Sunday night TV for one thing: James Herriot driving his Austin 7 through the Yorkshire Dales to the sounds of a soaring, tinkling piano soundtrack. All Creatures Great and Small had a huge effect on me as a child and inspired two ambitions: one, to become a vet and two, to play the piano. The first ambition was swiftly crushed come GCSE time when half of my teachers ganged up to inform me that I was hopeless at science and should do something arty-farty instead. The second was more fruitful and I taught myself to play the entire theme tune from scratch. It remains the only piano piece I have ever played (aside from Beverley Craven’s ‘Promise Me’, but let’s draw a veil over that).
I digress. I chose this week’s cheese because it epitomises the landscape of the Yorkshire Dales. Its history and substance is so intertwined with the area, from the cows and sheep that pepper the hills and valleys to the dry stone walls which its very rind resembles. I’ve even put it on a grassy-green plate this week, because it seemed somehow to belong there:
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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:
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Lanark Blue
After I broke my Scottish cheese duck last week with Caboc, I’m on a roll as this week’s cheese also hails from north of the border (or The Borders, to be precise). But this week’s cheese could not be more different from last week’s. If Caboc is mild and inoffensive, the Balamory of Scottish cheese, Lanark Blue is – Scottish cliché alert – the Braveheart of cheeses. It’s fierce, blue and has certainly faced battle in its time.
So, here is Lanark Blue, seeking freedom from its foil:
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Lord of the Hundreds
I bought the cheese for this week and then a few days ago I thought, ‘Oh, you know what, I’m going to skip it this week. I’ve got lots to do, everybody’s got lots to do. Let’s just give it a miss.’ But then I was reading a book (about cheeses, by the way, not Jesus) that quoted the Bible as saying ‘Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel. He shall eat curds and honey when he knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good.’ So, there you go, cheese at Christmas! Plus, I’d chosen a sheep’s cheese and you only have to flick through a hymn book to see that sheep feature big-time at Christmas (cattle, on the other hand, just seem to hang about lowing). And then there’s the name of the cheese, ‘Lord of the Hundreds’…
…So, I relented and bring you a suitably festive cheese, as an excuse to wish a Merry Christmas (or Happy Holidays, if that’s more your thing) to everyone who has stopped by for a cheesy chat this year. It’s been great fun and I hope to see you again in 2014.
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It’s a Sunday…there’s an R in the month…must be time for Another Eight Cheeses
I’ve already written about two previous tastings which I attended at one of my local cheeseries, Cannon and Cannon, hosted by cheese-meister Ned Palmer. For a self-educating cheese geek like myself, they’ve proved a great way to try several great British cheeses in one go, as well as learn a little about their history and production. You can read about the previous two here and here.
The theme this month was Winter Warmers and the tasting reflected both the changing nature of cheese throughout the seasons, as well as the fact that as humans we tend to crave different foodstuffs according to whether it’s hot or cold. With regards to taste, the colder weather tends to makes us crave something with a bit more oomph; substantial rather than salady, comforting rather than cooling.
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Pumpkin, Whitmore Ewe’s Cheese and Sage Tart
It would have been perfect timing for me to post up this recipe last week. The pumpkin would have been a shoe-in for Halloween and last month’s Cheese, Please! theme was hard sheep’s cheese. But last week saw me on a remote sheep farm in the Peak District with inadequate Wi-Fi, trying not to shout at to entertain two small boisterous children and fashion firelighters from old copies of the Farmer’s Guardian. It was a remote and beautiful place and if I ever have a mid-life crisis and decide to become a cheese-maker, I think I will move there and make a nice mountain sheep’s cheese.
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Fromage Homage 