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
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