Tag Archives: unpasteurised

September 30, 2016 · 9:16 am

St Gluvias

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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March 20, 2015 · 9:41 am

The Duke and Duchess

This week’s cheeses (yes, it’s a rare double-bill this week!) have had me thinking about what sort of cheese I’d like to be immortalised as. It’s a tricky one. Much as I adore blue cheese, its main characteristics are mould and stinkiness, which I’m not sure I’d like to be summed up by. Ditto smear-ripened cheese which is a bit of a smelly joke. Perhaps a farmhouse cheddar? But then that just brings up words like ‘earthy’ and ‘robust’ which would make me sound like a used tractor. Hmmmm… Anyway, republicans look away as this week I bring you The Duke and Duchess:

duke of cambridge cheese duchess of cambridge cheese
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March 13, 2015 · 12:53 pm

Celtic Promise

One of the lovely things about writing about British produce is that you get to learn about new areas of the British Isles which sound rather appealing. And so it is that we’ll be spending half the Easter holidays in west Wales, partly because it sounds like a peaceful idyll full of pristine beaches and rivers packed with jumping fish and partly because it’s been described as ‘the Loire of Welsh cheesemaking’. And whereas some cheesemakers (somewhat understandably) say on their website ‘don’t come and visit us, we’re too busy making cheese’, these Welsh cheesemakers are all like: ‘Please come and visit us – we’d love to see you!’ and ‘Drop by, see us in action and taste our cheese!’ Well, don’t mind if I do…but first this week’s suitably Welsh cheese:

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February 27, 2015 · 11:29 am

Nuns of Caen

As part of last Friday’s goat’s cheese paean in honour of Chinese New Year I promised you a ewe’s milk cheese to redress the balance for those who thought we were now entering the Year of the Sheep instead. And, as fate would have it, the lovely folks at online artisan cheese emporium The Cheese Market very kindly sent me a very delicious example of the type indeed. So here, in all its gooey orange loveliness, is Nuns of Caen:

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January 30, 2015 · 12:27 pm

Hebridean Blue

Call this post a Burns Night hangover if you will. I wanted to write about Scottish cheese last week and, given that a) it’s not always easy tracking down far-flung cheese and b) I was too busy working to leave the house for extended cheese mooching trips, I decided to order my chosen cheese online. And everybody knows that if you’re mail-ordering, it pays to order in bulk, right? So this week I present Scottish Cheese II: its name is Hebridean Blue. And if you are afraid of blue cheese, you might want to look away now:

hebridean blue cheese isle of mull blue

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January 16, 2015 · 11:40 am

Old Ford

Today’s cheese drew me to it like a fossil in a bed of pebbles. Lurking in a cheese shop, I was disappointed to find that they’d reduced their usual selection to less than a dozen. I was grumpy. I’d tried them all before and, although some of them were great cheeses, that wasn’t going to help me find a new one to write about. I was about to flounce from the shop when one cheese caught my eye. It wasn’t labelled and so I’d overlooked it but it had one of those beautiful rinds that made it look like a millstone or an ammonite. I asked the lady in the shop what it was and, sure enough, it was new to me and one that I’d been wanting to try. Praise be! So here it is, the cheesy siren on the rocks that is Old Ford:

Old Ford cheese

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November 28, 2014 · 9:47 am

Dunsyre Blue

It’s been a heck of a week. Not in a bad way, just in a ‘How much work? And I have to hand in my Masters project (which is about cheese, of course)? And try and keep two offspring alive? Eek.’ So I nearly, very nearly, decided to forget the blog this week. But then I remembered that it’s St Andrew’s Day this weekend and I had recently tried a Scottish cheese and so fate stepped in, thwacked me sharply round the back of the head with a rolled-up newspaper and said, ‘Get on with it. Tell them about Dunsyre Blue.’ So here I am. And here is Dunsyre Blue:

Dunsyre Blue

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November 21, 2014 · 8:05 am

Posbury

Earlier this week I had my fifteen minutes of fame on a radio show called The Dirt, which focuses on gardening and food. Should you be at a very loose end and wish to hear me wittering on about disastrous home-cheesemaking and how people should be able to eat nasty cheese if that’s what they like (fence-sitter, moi?) then you can find it here. I turn up about three quarters of the way through. One of the topics we got on to was ‘cheese with bits in’ and I did at this point declare that I am, on the whole, not a fan. All of which leads me neatly on to this week’s cheese, Posbury. My slab of Posbury was kindly sent to me by a friend who tried it, liked it and thought I might too. My initial thought was ‘Eeek, cheese with bits in!’ So, here it is: Posbury, pre-nibble, with its bitty-bits glittering at me evilly:

Posbury goat's cheese

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November 7, 2014 · 9:51 am

Young Buck

I confess: I bought this cheese because I thought it was another cheese made by someone else. And also because I’d been sent out to buy blue cheese. But then, rather excitingly, not only did I find out that it was a totally different cheese, I also found out that it was to be the first cheese from Northern Ireland to feature on the blog and the only raw milk cheese made there. It was also being feted as ‘the next big cheese thing’ by top-end delis. So it must have been cheese fate. Here is Young Buck, masquerading as a cheese made by someone from Buckinghamshire (duh, more fool me): Young Buck cheese Continue reading →

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August 1, 2014 · 9:23 am

Allerdale

The advantage of living in London is that there are numerous cheese shops which stock a huge variety of British cheeses; the capital has been an epicentre of cheese commerce for centuries, even before Samuel Pepys was being ‘merry’ with a Cheshire cheese in 1660 (must have made a change from his housemaids). But there are also a myriad of cheeses being made all over the British Isles that rarely or never make it to the Big Smoke and are predominantly sold in local shops and farmers’ markets. I know they’re out there but unless I’m on my travels I often never hear about them. Eventually though, a quality local cheese will pack up its belongings Dick Whittington-style and make it down to one of my emporiums of choice and, when it does, I’m waiting, jaws open like a cat near the hole in the skirting board. So it was when this week’s chunk of regional loveliness hit my local shelves. Snap. Gotcha.

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