Christmas Cheese School

It’s hard to be objective about events in which you’re involved but I thought our Christmas Cheese School was just lovely. About 20 of us sat round a long candlelit (and electric heater-lit, hence the red glow) table in the nave of St Thomas the Martyr a late 18th century church in the centre of Bristol. (I confess I didn’t know what this part of a church was called but found the answer within seconds when I Googled it. The wonder of WikiAnswers.)

We kicked off with a talk on winter cheese by cheesemaker Todd Trethowan who explained how his Gorwydd Caerphilly changes at this time of year (the cows feed on silage rather than fresh grass which results in a more intense flavour) why you sometimes can’t buy goats cheeses (if the cheesemaker lets the goats kid) and why Vacherin is now at its best (you only have to taste it to see for yourself). We also found it went wonderfully well with the mulled cider donated by local producer Orchard Pig.

Cheesemonger Alex Te-Strote valiantly talked about how to put together a Christmas cheeseboard through several layers of cold while Andrew Cooper of the Bristol Beer Factory persuasively argued the case for putting beer as well as wine on the table.

Then I took a different angle on matching cheese by pairing Joe Schneider's Stichelton (the amazing unpasteurised version of Stilton) with a Douro red, Monbazillac sweet wine, the Bristol Beer Factory’s Ultimate Stout, local producer Bramley and Gage’s Sloe Gin and Avery’s Bristol Cream sherry. (The most popular pairings seemed to be the Monbazillac and sherry though I was very taken with the stout)

The evening was punctuated with bursts of festive organ music played by one of the Trethowans Dairy cheesemongers Charlie Usher (below with mulled cider) who won the title of young composer of the year a couple of years ago. Talk about versatile . . .


The next all day Cheese School is on Sunday February 6th at Bordeaux Quay. If you're in a panic for a last minute Christmas present you can buy gift vouchers here!

Borough's night cheese market

After a bit of lull on the cheese front I’ve spent two consecutive nights at cheesy Christmas events. No, I don’t mean panto but Borough Market’s Evening of Cheese in London and our own Christmas Cheese School in Bristol about which I’ll report in a day or so.

I’d missed out on the Borough event last year so was determined to make it. Held in the Jubilee market it brings together all the cheese traders and shops in and around the market including Neal’s Yard (of course), French affineur Hervé Mons and a brilliant Swiss stand, Käseswiss which I’d been meaning to visit for a while. You could (and I did) buy mulled cider then wander around the stalls nibbling. There were so many great cheeses you don’t normally get the chance to taste of which the Bermondsey hard-pressed cheese (below) must be the most recherché.



Needless to say I spent far too much including a box of delicious but wildly expensive Elvas apricots I bought from a Portuguese stall together with a fabulous sheeps cheese called Casa d’Agua Levada, set with cardoons ...


... a good hunk of the most perfect Comté from the convincingly French-looking John of Hervé Mons (below) and L’Etivaz, a Swiss cheese made from summer milk.


There’s a full list of Borough Market’s cheese suppliers here


I was wondering, as I was nibbling, what is the best Christmas cheese. Stilton/Stichelton are obviously candidates. A good artisanal cheddar? An aged Comté? Vacherin Mont d’Or - although I associate that more with January? What’s your seasonal favourite?

Candlelit Christmas Cheese School

A quick plug for those of you who live in or can get to the West Country next week - we have our first Christmas Cheese School next Thursday (December 16th), a candlelit tasting at the wonderfully atmospheric St Thomas the Martyr church in Bristol.

This is a mini, seasonal version of our all-day cheese schools with three rather than the usual six elements:

* A talk about winter cheese by cheesemaker Todd Trethowan of Gorwydd Caerphilly - i.e. what sort of flavours you can expect from your favourite cheeses at this time of year

* A talk on how to put together the perfect Christmas cheeseboard by Ben Ticehurst, head cheesemonger of Trethowans Dairy

* and an exploration of different drink pairings with Stichelton and Stilton by me. Blues are one of the most interesting cheeses to match as they work just as well with fortified wines, spirits, beers and liqueurs as they do with still wines.

There are still a few tickets available (at £40 a head) but they're selling fast so get in quick! If you miss it we have another all day cheese event on February 6th for which you can buy gift vouchers on the Big Barn website (they also sell a number of the Trethowans' cheeses and their scrumptious new range of matching jellies)*. The last day for orders is December 18th.

* And no, just in case you were wondering, I'm not on commission!

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.