Knaafeh: a most unusual cheesecake

The other cheesy highlight of my trip to the Lebanon was a wickedly delicious dish called Knaafeh which is commonly served for breakfast. It’s a bit like a cheesecake based on a rubbed pastry called mafrookeh and topped with a stringy cheese which tastes like mozzarella.

It is generally served with a syrup made from orange flower water and sometimes in sesame bread which would obviously add a fair bit to the calorific overload.


The pictures are of one we tasted in Patisserie Douaihy in the Place Sassine, a really friendly pastry shop and café.

I was planning to try and make it when I got back but having studied this recipe from Anissa Helou, a food writer who leads trips to the Lebanon, I can see it’s not that straightforward - unless you can order the pastry from a Lebanese shop. I may just have to head back to Beirut . . .

Lebanese breakfast cheese

One of the many fascinating discoveries of my trip to the Lebanon last week was the Lebanese breakfasts which - surprisingly for an intensely sweet-toothed country - were mainly savoury and based around cheese. There was usually more than one kind - a salty, feta style one (Akkawi), halloum (like halloumi) and labneh which is not strictly cheese at all but strained yoghurt drizzled with olive oil.



They were served with fresh tomatoes, crunchy strips of cucumber, olives and various kinds of flatbread of which my favourite was mana’eesh or mankoushe, a pizza-style bread which is dusted with za’atar (a mixture of thyme, sumac and sesame seeds) At one winery, Heritage, they also served home-made jams - apricot and a gorgeous fig one flavoured with aniseed.

You can also buy mankoushe on the go when they will roll it up like a wrap. Incredibly cheap at about 90p. And totally delicious.

Real Cheese Toasties

When you suddenly realise it's 2pm and you haven't thought about lunch there's nothing that hits the spot quite so successfully as a cheese toastie. Particularly one made with proper bread and real artisanal cheese.

The trouble is that since tasting the legendary Trethowan's Dairy's toastie my home-made efforts seem to fall woefully short but yesterday's effort (seen above, half-munched, before I remembered to take a pic of it) wasn't bad.

I used the last of the Sparkenhoe red Leicester, a French Roscoff onion (there's posh!) and two thinly cut slices of sourdough bread, assembled the sandwich in a frying pan into which I'd poured some olive oil, flipped it over a couple of times then gave it 10 minutes in the AGA. (Absurd. The whole process took far too long but at least the onions were completely soft and mingled seductively with the cheese). It would have been a lot easier to have made it on my contact grill but the idea of hauling it out and cleaning it afterwards just for one sandwich seemed a real faff.

Sometimes I use a bit of butter in the pan which I think helps crisp and brown the crust and adds extra flavour.

What about you? What's your recipe for the perfect toastie? Should we have a cheese toastie comp do you think?

Making cheese with cardoons

One of the most fascinating things i discovered at last weekend’s Cheese Fair was what cardoons look like - or at least what they look like in the form in which cheesemakers get to handle them. They’re widely used in Spain and Portugal and Mary Holbrook, who I referred to in the last post, uses them to make Cardo and Tilleys, which I’ve mentioned before on this blog (though managed to misspell).


Cardoons are a thistle-like plant which grow up to about 7 foot high. The stamens are picked and dried - a bit like saffron stamens. "You want cardoon with as much purple in it as you can get" said Mary. It’s traditionally used to make sheeps’ cheeses but she uses it with goats milk when she has a plentiful supply in the summer and believes it gives her cheeses a special flavour and texture. “It’s the cardoons, not my cheesemaking which give character to the cheese” she said modestly.

“We have to grind the stamens to break them then add warm water and infuse them for 20 minutes then filter it and stir it into the milk. You have to do this extremely thoroughly otherwise you can get parts of the milk coagulating and others staying liquid. The process is quite quick - it takes about the same time as making normal soft or hard cheese.”

Despite the trickiness of the process and the difficulty of getting hold of the stamens Mary thinks there’s no substitute for the raw ingredient. “I’m not looking forward to the day when they have liquid cardoon rennet” she said firmly.

Meeting some of Britain's best cheesemakers

Yesterday I went to Bath to check out the Fine Cheese Co’s Cheese Festival in Milsom Place, an opportunity to meet and buy cheeses from 14 of the best artisanal cheesemakers in the country. The Fine Cheese Co, which is run by Anne-Marie Dyas, is always a step ahead of the game: it was one of the first to sell cheese online, and to come up with matching biscuits and condiments for cheese which are still hard to beat for quality.



There were quite a few cheesemakers whose cheeses I was already familiar with such as Keen’s Cheddar, Bath Soft Cheese, White Lake, Sharpham, Ticklemore and Charlie Westhead of Neal’s Yard Creamery (above) but it was good to meet one of my heroes, Mary Holbrook of Sleight Farm, in person (top of the page) and taste right through her range.



I also got to meet Suzanne Stirke of Fortmayne Dairy in North Yorkshire (above) who makes Richard III, a fine traditional style of Wensleydale (and hope I've managed to persuade her to go on Twitter!).



And I discovered a lovely unpasteurised Red Leicester from David and Jo Clarke of the Leicestershire Handmade Cheese Co. The cheese hasn’t been made in the county for 20 years and not on a farm in the county for over half a century.

The event really underlined what magnificent cheeses we have in this country. I hope it's something the Fine Cheese Co. will sponsor every year.

Six Devon cheeses

I did a couple of cheese and wine matching classes at the Dartmouth Food Festival this weekend with local winemerchant Liam Steevenson of Red & White in Kingsbridge.

Fittingly we used six Devon cheeses. Two were familiar to me - Quicke's Traditional Mature Cheddar which we paired with Chateau Lezongars Premières Côtes de Bordeaux and Beenleigh Blue, a Roquefort-like ewes' cheese from Ticklemore Cheese in Totnes which we matched with a sweet Bordeaux, Domaine de Noble Loupiac. (I'm not sure about the vintages which weren't on the tasting sheet - sorry!)

There were two from Sharpham Dairy, also in Totnes - a very attractive creamy Brie which paired beautifully with a fresh-tasting Beaujolais: Fleurie 'La Madone', La Reine de L'Arenite and a new cheese called Sharpham Savour, a tangy mixture of cows' and goats' milk that was apparently created to celebrate the 50th anniversary of South Devon being designated an area of outstanding natural beauty. We matched that with an Urbino Rioja Crianza - the most successful of the reds for me.

The other two cheeses were Norsworthy, a hard goats' cheese which we partnered with a Domaine Jean-Claude Chatelain Sancerre and Curworthy, a mellow Cheddarish cheese which was paired with La Secreto Carmenère, a lush fruity red from Chile that I thought slightly overwhelmed it.

Although the people who came clearly felt most comfortable about red wine with cheese most were converted by the the goats cheese and Sauvignon Blanc and sweet wine and blue combinations. And I must say I was impressed by the cheeses. A tasting based on six from one county isn't bad.

How runny do you like your cheese?

I've been spending the past couple of weeks in France (hence the absence of posts), the last few days in Burgundy where smelly cheese reigns supreme.

This is the Epoisses they serve at a restaurant called Ma Cuisine in Beaune which, as you can see, is so ripe it forms liquid pools on the plate.

For me this is too ripe. I find cheese acquires a bitter note if it's allowed to mature this long which overwhelms its natural flavour. It also tends to knock the stuffing out of any accompanying wine - especially reds. (You can find the alternative pairings I suggest here.)

I also think it looks unappealing - like three large buttery cowpats. I prefer my cheese to retain its original shape.

But I'm aware I may be in a minority. Many cheeselovers, I know, adore their cheese to get as runny as this. What about you? And what do you drink with it once it's this far gone?