BBC News Magazine has a nice article on the International Cheese Awards.
Leerdammer
There is cheese and then there is cheese. In terms of French cheese I have tried many different kinds. With Dutch cheese my main cheese if choice is Gouda. Though I have eaten Edam in the past I haven’t really touch it for years now. One Dutch cheese I do buy now and again is Leerdammer. This is a *new* cheese in that it has only been around since 1977 and in some ways is quite a modern style of cheese.
It has a nutty flavour with a hint of sweetness. Like Gouda it has a soft creamy texture but will slice easily. There is a mature version which I prefer but isn’t that easy to get hold of.
I use it in the main in sandwiches.
Not a fantastic cheese, nor one I would put in a cheeseboard however as a sandwich cheese it works well.
Ossau Iraty
Since Christmas I have been trying a few new and different cheeses. One I have particularly liked was Ossau Iraty, a traditional ewes milk cheese from the Basque region of South-West France.
It’s a firm cheese with a sweet, fruity flavour.
Cenarth Organic Caerffili
Over Christmas I ate a fair bit of cheese and tried some new cheeses out. One I particularly enjoyed the Cenarth Organic Caerffili from Sainsbury.
It was a mild lemony cheese with a buttery and silky texture. It came in a (proper) wax layer and was delicious.
Ambassadors at Bloomsbury Part Two
I was recently up in London and stayed at the Ambassadors Hotel in Bloomsbury. Staying with friends we had the Christmas dinner at the Number Twelve attached restaurant. I started off with the Chestnut Pasta and had the Ribeye steak for my mains.
For my desert I had the cheese.
Well don’t get me wrong it was a very nice cheese, but as that it? Three small (half) slices of Stilton.
Hmmm.
Cheese straws
Considering how easy these are to make and taste so much better fresh I am surprised that people don’t make them more often.
Take some puff pastry.
Now here’s a question? Am I hypocritical for being surprised that people buy cheese straws but then go ahead and buy ready made puff pastry to make my own? Is that not just the kettle and the pot calling each other names?
Well yes I did use ready made puff pastry. I usually make straws after using the puff pastry for something else and there is some left over.
So I rolled it out, grated some parmesan onto it, folded it over, repeated twice more.
I then cut the cheesy pastry into strips about six inches long and half an inch wide.
These I then twist, hold each end and twist your hands in opposite directions to get a twisty cheese straw.
Brush with egg and scatter some more grated parmesan onto the top.
Bake in the oven for around eight to ten minutes.
Delicious.
Wife of Bath
Sometimes when I get a cheese I like it, and sometimes I don’t. I seem to blog more often about cheeses I don’t like though or cooking with cheese, must change that and start to blog about the cheeses I do like.
Well this is a cheese I think is okay, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to buy again.
I was at a farm shop and they had a nice looking cheese called Wife of Bath, it looked and sounded interesting and was sold on that. I should have asked to taste some first but I thought it looked really nice.
Well.
I got home and to be honest it was quite bland and lacked substance. It reminded me of Doux De Montagne and if you recall my views on that I said:
To be honest I didn’t think that much of it. The flavour was too mild for me, though I did like the texture. If you like Edam or Port Salut then you will probably enjoy this cheese, though expect the flavour to be quite mild in comparison.
With the Wife of Bath cheese, my views are almost the same.
This is a harder cheese but still lacks “oomph”. It might make an interesting addition to a cheeseboard, but otherwise nothing to go out and try and find.
Pizza, hold the cheese!
An amusing look at the online ordering system at Domino’s pizza.
But what I’ve become obsessed with is that when you only want a particular topping on half of your pizza, they make you specify WHICH HALF. LEFT or RIGHT.
I had ordered from them a few times but never paid attention to see if they got the halves correct. I was curious to see if it really would arrive the way I ordered it.
Last night I performed a test.
Can you really order a pizza with NO cheese, NO sauce and NO topping?
Mozzarella Salad
This is a quick and easy salad or starter.
Take a mozzarella ball and cut into thin slices, arrange on a plate.
Add some sliced tomatoes, I actually used halved cherry tomatoes. You can either interleave the tomato with the mozzarella or place the tomato halves in the middle of the plate.
Scatter some small basil leaves across the cheese and tomato.
Dress with some white wine vinegar, some fine olive oil and freshly ground black pepper.
Serve.
Risotto disaster…
Last night I decided to cook a risotto to go with the shellfish I was cooking. I have done this in the past usually using white wine, lemon, rocket and parmesan to flavour the risotto. Alas I had no white wine, no lemon and no rocket, though I did have a block of parmesan to hand. Little piece of advice here, never buy pre-grated parmesan this is usually grated from dried out pieces of old parmesan or so an old Italian friend of mine once said. Though as it is usually cheaper than the solid stuff I am inclined to believe her! So there I was cooking this risotto and wondering how I should flavour it. Well I had mushrooms and they always work well in risotto, I had some red wine, and I had some chicken stock. There we go, good to go, or so I thought.
Basically it didn’t work quite as well as I hoped. Firstly it came out a grey lilac colour rather than the rich red brown I was expecting. Well that was down to the red wine, lack of dark stock and the mushrooms. Secondly it was rather bland, it had no bite. I think it could have done with a splash of balsamic vinegar.
Most of it was eaten so either we were hungry or it wasn’t half as bad as it looked.
Having said that, the scallops wrapped in pancetta were delicious.