A simple sheep and goats' cheese board

Cheeseboards, as I've said, before don't have to be massive affairs featuring six or seven different cheeses. In fact it's far less wasteful if they're not.

Here's a simple one based on sheep and goats' cheeses from one of our two good local cheese shops Chandos Deli in Bristol. Top left a fresh young pecorino, at the bottom a silky-textured Montenebro goats' cheese and top right (and below) a slightly Roquefort-ish Beenleigh Blue ewes cheese from Robin Congdon of Ticklemore Cheese in south Devon. All have character but none are too strong which makes them a good selection for a red wine such as rioja. And equally good for someone who's intolerant to cows' milk.

And I like their paleness against the dark grey slate.

A great way to make a cheese salad

I've been in the Pacific NW (aka Oregon and Washington State) for the past 10 days, hence the absence of posts but I've come across a lot of good cheese dishes. Not least this salad at a restaurant called Farm to Fork in Dundee.

What's clever about it is that it's basically a reconstructed round lettuce - or butter lettuce as they call them over there - picked apart, washed and put back into a lettuce shape. There were also fine shavings of red onion, roasted pumpkin seeds, a light buttermilk and blue cheese dressing and - best of all - a snowfall of blue cheese flakes, apparently from a piece of cheese that can been frozen and grated on a Microplane. It looked and tasted great.

I came across a similar one at a really good bistro called Le Pigeon in Portland. Not sure who's copying who.

Real Danish Blue

Having spent 3 days in Copenhagen this week I've got a totally different perspective on Danish cheese, which is sadly represented in this country by industrialised Danish Blue and Samsoe. I'll be writing more about their fabulous soft cheeses which are often smoked or blended with herbs but it was good to come across a real organic Danish Blue at a small organic cheese shop off the Kultorvet called Osten ved Kultorvet which is run by a guy called Mikael Hendrikson aka 'Mikael the Cheese' (below).


It was called CumuluBlu and was much less harsh and fresher in flavour than the Danish Blues we get here, more like a creamy, slightly less salty Roquefort

There's another good cheese shop called Ostehjørnet at 56 Kongensgade with a beautifully displayed selection of international cheeses where we tried an award-winning semi-hard Gouda-style cheese called VesterHavsost from the Thise Dairy in Jutland.


We don't get this level of Scandinavian cheeses in England, unfortunately but if you're going to Copenhagen seek them out.

A white blue cheese

This cheese sounds like something out of Alice in Wonderland: a white blue. I found it in the Co-op under their slightly annoying 'truly irresistible' label which includes products that are perfectly OK but not that exceptional.

It comes from Butlers Cheese in Lancashire whose normal blue is the orange coloured Blacksticks Blue, a pleasant mellow cheese similar to a Shropshire Blue. The Blacksticks White is similarly buttery but has rather more bite. At £2.19 a 150g pack it's more expensive than basic supermarket Stilton and to be honest no better.

It would be good - and this is really damning it with faint praise - for cooking, say, a blue cheese sauce or dressing or in a salad or a quiche. In fact I might very well do that.

It is vegetarian though and - good for the Co-op - uses GM free rennet though I'm not sure how widespread the use of GM rennet is.

In praise of Irish cheese

Even if you're not doing anything particular to celebrate St Patrick's Day today I do urge you to go out and buy some Irish cheese. If, of course, you can find some. My own rather fruitless hunt in Bristol yesterday resulted in just one - a Cashel Blue. You'd have thought that cheese shops and delis would have been quicker to latch on to the chance to mark the occasion, an opportunity seized by the famous New York cheese shop Artisanal (though the fact they include Gorywdd Caerphilly in their selection shows their geography is a little hazy!)

Anyway Cashel Blue, a blue cows' cheese made in Co. Tipperary by Jane and Louis Grubb, is a great cheese - on a par in my view with the best Stilton and Gorgonzola but somewhat more sympathetic to any accompanying red wine. You can read more about it on the very helpful Teddington Cheese site here.

Other Irish cheeses I would single out are Ardrahan, Durrus and Gubbeen (all washed-rinded cheeses), the Gouda-style Coolea and St Tola organic goats' cheese but there are many more.

If you're in London today a good place to find them is Neal's Yard in Covent Garden and Borough Market, or in Dublin at Sheridan's (above) a tiny boutique-like shop in South Anne Street.

Is this the most expensive cheese in Britain?

Having half an hour to kill and being in Borough market, I made my way to one of my favourite cheese shops, Neal's Yard. It had the usual array of tempting offerings, some familiar, some new but my eye was caught not so much by a cheese as a price - the £55.60 per kilo they were charging for Rogue River Blue.

There are extenuating circumstances. The cheese is not British, but American: one of the few unpasteurised cheeses being produced in the States by the Rogue River Creamery in Oregon. Is there any justification for importing it when we have so many great blues of our own? Well, yes, it's unique, being wrapped in vine leaves soaked in pear brandy a flavour that really permeates the cheese and gives it the faint flavour of a pear eau de vie. It's only made in limited quantities (there's a waiting list for it in the States), it won an award for the World's Best Blue in 2003 and Neal's Yard is actually charging no more for it than the famous New York cheese shop Artisanal.

You also don't need to buy much of it. As I suggested the other day you can easily just buy a fine slice of a more expensive cheese - 100g would cost you £5.56 - the same price as an inexpensive starter or a couple of ready meals. And I know which I'd rather have.

Stilton and leek quiche

One of the best ways to use up odd bits of cheese is a quiche and over Christmas that's as likely as not to be Stilton. As I also just discovered two unused leeks I thought I'd combine the two along with half a pot of leftover crème fraiche that was nearing its use-by date. The bliss of cooking on an AGA, which we took over with our current flat, is that you don't have to pre-bake the pastry case which makes the whole process incredibly easy but I've given instructions for a conventional oven here. If you don’t have any blue cheese you could easily substitute Cheddar, Gouda or any other full-flavoured hard cheese.

Serves 4-6
40g butter
2 large or 3 smaller leeks (about 350g-400g untrimmed weight)
1 tbsp finely chopped fresh thyme
3 large eggs
100ml creme fraiche or double cream mixed with 100ml milk
3-4 tbsp grated parmesan (depending on strength)
100g Stilton or other medium-strong blue cheese, crumbled
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
For the pastry
225g plain flour (or a 50/50 mix of plain and wholemeal flour)
110g chilled butter, cut into small cubes
4-5 tbsp cold water
Salt
You will need a deep 23cm loose-bottomed quiche tin

First make the pastry. Put the flour and a pinch of salt in a food processor and pulse once or twice again to mix. Add the cubed butter and pulse to incorporate then add just enough water to bring the mixture together (about 3-4 tbsp). Shape the pastry into a disc, wrap in cling film and rest for half an hour.

Trim the bases and coarse outer leaves off the leeks, slice finely and rinse thoroughly to get rid of any dirt or grit that has accumulated between the leaves. Heat the butter in a large frying pan and fry the leeks for 5-6 minutes until beginning to soften. Add the chopped thyme, season well with salt and pepper and set aside to cool

Take the pastry out of the fridge and roll it out in a circle big enough to fit a 23cm/9in diameter flan tin. Carefully lower the pastry into the tin pressing it into the edges and lightly prick the base with the prongs of a fork. Chill in the fridge for 20 minutes then line the pastry case with a piece of greaseproof paper or foil weighed down with baking beans and bake the pastry shell for about 12 minutes.

Separate one of the eggs, reserve the white and beat the yolk and the other two eggs together. Measure the cream and milk into a jug, mix well, add the beaten eggs and parmesan, season with freshly ground black pepper and beat again.

Remove the paper and beans from the pastry case and brush lightly with the beaten egg white. Return to the oven for another 5 minutes then remove the flan case from the oven and turn the oven down to 180°C/350°F/Gas 4. Trim the overhanging edges of pastry with a sharp knife.

Scatter half the blue cheese over the base of the tart, spoon over the leeks then cover with the remaining blue cheese. Carefully pour the egg and cream mixture over the top making sure that it is distributed evenly*. Bake the quiche for about 35-40 minutes until the top is puffed up and lightly browned. Cool for about 20 minutes before serving. (I personally think it’s nicest at room temperature.)

*If there is too much egg mixture bake the tart for 7-8 minutes then half pull out the shelf and carefully pour the remainder over the top.

Cutting your cheese bill

If you're a fellow cheeselover you won't have failed to notice that it's an expensive habit to indulge. But as someone who is habitually watching my household budget (as you'll see if you visit my other blog The Frugal Cook) let me tell you that it is possible to have your cake - or rather cheese - and eat it.

You can buy the best cheeses around - just buy a lot less of them. Forgive me if this sounds blindingly obvious, but if you're like me you probably automatically buy too many cheeses and too much of each, particularly difficult if you're in a cheese shop and they've got the cheese wire hovering over a nice big slice. It seems mean, doesn't it, not to buy more? Well, no it doesn't because it means that you can go on buying cheese from that nice shop and don't have to end up buying block cheddar from the supermarket.

Here's a slice of Picos Blue I bought the other day for £1.20. Just 100g but it's a strong cheese so it was plenty for the two of us. No waste, either. For those of you who haven't come across it before it's a Spanish cheese from the Asturias that tastes a bit like Roquefort - only not quite as salty and a bit creamier (it's a cows' milk rather than a sheeps' milk cheese) I found myself wishing as I was tasting it that I had a bottle of sweet oloroso sherry open. No doubt I will next time.

A square blue. Now why did no-one think of that before?

News this week that the enterprising Evenlode Partnership has come up with a square blue cheese called Blue Monday, such a perfectly simple idea that you wonder why no-one thought of it before.

The brains behind the innovation are former Blur guitarist-turned farmer and food writer Alex James and Juliet Harbutt, organiser of the British Cheese Awards, an unlikely but smart-thinking pair who have already attracted a great deal of attention for their first efforts Little Wallop and Fairleigh Wallop.

The cheese is produced for them in Scotland by Ruaraidh Stone of the Highland Fine Cheese Co, producer of Highland Blue and Strathdon Blue and is made from cows' milk with vegetarian rennet. I gather it's milder than most blues with an extra-creamy texture but hope to taste it for myself later this week.

You should be able to find it in branches of Paxton & Whitfield from next week - and other specialist cheese shops before too long

Three days later . . .
Well I did manage to get to taste Blue Monday and very delicious it is too with an exceptionally creamy consistency and plenty of 'blue' character without any attendant bitterness. When I tasted it with wine back at home it even managed to survive a glass of red wine (a Marcillac) though it was better with sweet sherry (Gonzalez Byass Solera 1847) Rhuaridh Buchanan, Paxton & Whitfield's buyer and affineur told me that they'd served it with dry Australian riesling at the launch which had worked surprisingly well. The cheeses were bigger than I imagined though

Barkham Blue is the best cheese in Britain!

According to this year's British Cheese Awards the results of which you can find on The Cheeseweb. It also picked up the award for Best English Cheese and Best Blue.

These are not the first accolades for this creamy blue which is made by Sandy and Andy Rose of Two Hoots Farm in Barkham in Berkshire. It has picked up awards every year since they started making it in 2003

It also performed really well in a tasting I conducted for Decanter a couple of years ago where it ended up as one of the panel's top three cheeses for a Christmas cheeseboard. You can apparently now buy it in branches of Waitrose (though our branch in Bristol doesn't have it) and Paxton & Whitfield, along, I'm sure, with many other specialist cheese shops.

Other winners this year included Montgomery's cheddar and Fairleigh Wallop No. 2 which is made by awards organiser Juliet Harbutt and former Blur bass guitarist, farmer and food writer Alex James.

The best British cheeseboard went to Allium restaurant at Fairford in Gloucestershire.