Barkham Blue - discus shaped nugget of cheese gold

Dad came over to the new house last weekend. He had been on one of those little mid-week trips away with mum to the Cotswolds. I already knew he had a little present for me because he rang me one afternoon out of a pleasant conversation with the owners of the Cotswold Cheese Company. He said they had a nice conversation about cheese (see what I've driven him to!) and had recommended a couple of blues that might take my fancy.

One of these was the Barkham Blue - named after the town where its producers - the Two Hoots Cheese Company - base themselves in Berkshire. Not too far away from me actually! It is made with milk from Channel Island cows, which is where it gets its rich and creamy flavour from.

It comes in the shape of a massive cheese discus, or massive mini-babybel (which I guess would not make it a 'mini'-babybel. A huge-daddybel maybe!? I digress). There is no correlation here between shape and flavour.... but it looks cool.

It reminds me quite a bit of the Cornish Blue that I have reviewed before. It is not hugely pungent, which would make it more attractive to the non-blue crowd and as I mentioned above, the cheese has a real creamy aftertaste and a really smooth and silky texture. Beautiful. Like cleansing your mouth with dairy gold! The Cotswold Cheese Company obviously knew what they were talking about so I couldn't wait to have a go at the other cheese dad had brought back. For now though I enjoyed this. I give it a 9. Definitely worth a try.

Comte - Lovely. Milky-milky!

Yes, I have been away for a little while. Naughty Chris! Bad boy! In your bed! Well, the last couple of months have been a whirlwind of moving house, changing jobs and eating cheese. I have lots to catch up on then, and there are lots of new flavours that I want to record.

The Comte was recommended from a good friend of mine who was insistent that I try it. He picked it up one afternoon whilst strolling around Greenwich market. It took me a while to get round to it, but I am glad that I did!

Tasting this one brought about an....interesting....reaction from me. I try to say the first thing I think of as it tends to be the most honest or 'raw' thought that I have about the cheese. When I put this one in my mouth and bit through its smooth make-up, I stopped, looked sideways to Zoe sitting next to me on the sofa, and said "It's really milky. It's like sucking on or licking a cow".

Now I don't want this to be misconstrued like it was at that moment by both Zoe and my dad who resorted to giggles and insults, cos I am not a vulgar man really. What I meant by this was that the cheese gave me a real taste of 'dairy'. Of the milk that made it up. Not of tasting beef or hide or any other crazy scenario your minds are conjuring up! It is a nice sensation instead. It's like sticking four mini-milk ice lollies into your mouth simultaneously or tipping a fresh tin-pail of milk over your upturned head.

In other words, it's nice. Comte cheese is made as one large round cheese. You tend to get it them in long thin slices, which is how mine came, fresh from Borough Market at London Bridge (see the picture below - its the big one at the top-right of the picture). When it is made it weighs about 50kg and is about 2 metres in diameter, and, it should not be surprising given my previous  rants, that it is made with between 500-600 litres of milk. It originates from the Jura mountains in France, where traditionally the cheesemakers would plunge their arms deep into the maturing liquid holding onto a  linen cloth, and then raise it out to remove the curdy lumps. Thank god some things change then ey!?

Rating time. Oh how I miss rating time. This is high on my list. I need to create a ladder to remember where I have placed the others. A bit like the one they have on Top Gear where smug leading drivers get misplaced every week. I do have extra space now in the new house. Hmmmmmm..... One for thought. I give this one an 8.5. Very enjoyable and it just brings something new to the table if you want to put out a variety. It is also one that I expect is enjoyed by non cheese fanatics as it is not very potent. Pure milky goodness.

'Puck' Spread - What the Puck!?

I think having started to do this blog, some people have started associating me with cheese. This is kind of weird for me even though I accept I rather like the stuff, because like I have said before, I have only been into it to this extent for the last year or so! So it was strange to go back to my family home in Essex and for my dad  to eagerly pull this out of the fridge...

...and say "Look what I bought for you from Hoo Hing [Chinese store in Chadwell Heath] Christopher! It's some sort of cheese spread thing". I gave my thanks along with a 'poker face' smile, like a father that gets another pair of socks for Christmas. Having been travelling a fair bit, I have come across quite a lot of random food stuffs, and not all of it is what its cracked up to be. I mean, what would you think picking this up, and the only information you had to go on was "Puck" and "spread?"

Surprise 1 - I read the back of the label: "A cheese spread alternative made with milk and vegetable oil". So it's not strictly cheese but still, it has milk in it I suppose.

Surprise 2 - It's from Denmark. Only a surprise because of the text on the label, which made me think it was from the middle-east or Asia.

Surprise 3 - It's not too bad!

Well, actually it's not astonishing either. I didn't know what to think of it for the entire time I was eating it as it doesn't have a very potent or distinguishable flavour. Maybe it's fatal flaw is that it isn't technically cheese. It is kind of the same in taste as the 'Laughing Cow' cheese spread that comes in little triangular segments, but a little more fluid and not quite as tasty. That said, it is not terrible - like I said - I was indifferent. It is a smooth cheese-like spread that would probably go well with something a bit stronger. Like in a bagel with some smoked salmon. On this basis then, it seems fair that I give it an indifferent score - 5 out of 10. I wanted to be able to say that its pucking good. But its pucking normal...

Cashel Blue - Salty Drug Cheese

It's a long way to Tipperary... so it's a good thing 'houseofcheese' deliver! The Cashel Blue grabbed my attention as I trawled through the list of goods on the website. I think the main reason it did so though was because it had filled a little bit of trivia pub knowledge for me by informing me that Tipperary is actually a place in Ireland. I owed it one.  I appreciate I may never get asked that question but you never know! I have been asked where Casablanca is before...

It is produced in Ireland then, by husband and wife, Louis and Jane Grubb who begin the process by heating the milk (provided by their healthy Friesian cows) in a hundred year old copper vat! Nice. I love the distinct local methods, and how perfect is their name for what they do!? It's like me working in Dixons and being called Chris Fridgeman...

This is a bit of a funny one the Cashel. I wasn't amazingly keen at first. It is a blue in the same sort of 'flavour village' as Danish Blue, which is not one of my faves. But somehow it has grown on me. I keep finding myself wandering into the kitchen, pushing a knife down into the centre of it, and just lifting it sideways to break of some crumbles. It is a salty cheese, which is why I was uncertain in the first place I think. But its also very creamy and mild which compliments it well. It kind of reminds me of the weird capuccinos that we get from the vending machines at work. I don't like them completely, but some lingering aftertaste and  combination of chemicals just keeps me coming back for more. It's like its a drug cheese or something! I'm sure there must be places in Ireland where they sell it on street corners to cheese junkies that need another hit of salty-crumble. Or people that try to ween themselves off it by wearing a Danish patch on their arm.

I digress. I usually do. This is actually a nice cheese but I'm not convinced everyone would like it at first sitting. I think you discover more about it the more you try it - like a good painting. I am going to give it a 6. Not bad, but likewise not really my cup of cheese. And I don't need another addiction (football and cheese take up enough of my time!). 

The Chaource - Smooth and Mushroomy!

I started writing this cheese blog so that I had a record of all of the wondrous flavours that I have tasted and so that I could remember them and EAT THEM AGAIN! Having tasted this one tonight I wanted to log-on and capture thoughts about it straight away so that I would remember it - but now that I have got going and my fingers tap-dance across the keys, I realise that I will remember it... cos it's ace! The more memorable cheeses are starting to stick in my mind like a thick, slow-flow honey that's hard to get out of crevasses.

The cheese is named after the northerly French town in the Champagne region of France from whence it came, created by the Lincet family, and is enjoyed at all of the stages of its maturity. The first thing I noticed was the thick rind and smooth creamy cheese as you burst into it. I was impressed by the raw....I want to say muddiness... of it. But the best was yet to come.

It is very distinct in flavour with some light undertones of a nutty kind. As you get with a few of the brie-like cheeses ['bloomy' cheeses - the ones that have the white fluffy rinds], this had a chalkier, harder centre and was super smooth and soft around the rind (please see picture). Oh baby! This is apparently because of  its thick rind which delays the speed at which it ripens all the way through. Love that texture, but what really stood out for me was the tingly, slightly salty, and earthy type aftertaste. There is also a slight mushroom fragrance and delicate bitterness about it.  Loved it. Loved it. 7.5 out 10 for me on this one.

P.S. - it's also good on bread:

Marmite Cheese - Love it or Hate it!

Even though this is not a classic cheese, I bought this one with high hopes. It was one of those situations when you inwardly prepare yourself for a rush of enjoyment. After all, I LOVE Marmite, and I LUUUUUURRRVVVEEE [Yahoo! Boom!! Brrrat-brat-brat! Boiiinngggg!!] cheese! (I’m sure you didn’t need me to impart that knowledge again!)

They say that when you eat Marmite, you either love or you hate it. My mum used to find me sitting on the side with my legs crossed and a tub in front of me, eating the gloopy black goodness with a spoon. I’d look up, twitching on a yeast high, “I know… I’m naughty…” my return glance would seem to say. To me it’s like black gold (thick black gold), Texas tea (I’m guessing they drink tea black in Texas). Throughout the years in between then and now, I have used it on dippy soldiers with my soft boiled eggs and in numerous sandwich combinations and it has never failed to improve what it was added to.

My presumption was obvious then. Marmite and Cheddar cheese fused together would more than equal the sum of its parts and create a new British beauty – just like the blue cheese flavours dispersed through a brie-like cheese gives you something like the Cambozola. This apparently is not always correct. Something not so perfect happens when they come together like this. It’s not that I hated or even disliked the cheese, but I would much rather jam a wedge of cheddar and a splodge [good word!] of Marmite into a bun. It is made with a mild cheddar from Somerset and I can imagine tastes very good melted in toasties, but I think needs to be 'suited' in that way. That said, when it was introduced to the British public during Christmas 2009 as a gimmic, it proved a great success, so don't just take my word for it!

That said, it was worth the try, and I would still probably give it a 5/10 on the basis that I love Marmite so much. The cheese puritans out there are probably laughing and saying “I told you so”. Well you win this round ‘pureys’! But some of these new blends give the ancient cheeses a run for their money. And I will seek and find them - mark my words...

Leerdammer - smooth and holey

Take yourself back to when you were a wee willy winky (young child). The world is new, magical and wondrous. Your experiences of life are made richer and more interesting every single day as you discover fresh new smells (like cut grass and petrol stations), weird consistencies (like jelly and blancmange) and some of those magical, inexplicable things that the infantile mind is intrigued by (belly-button fluff).

Your inquisitive and information-hungry young mind seeks input from any place it can. The most accessible sources of information tend to be drawn from (1) story-time before bed, (2) tales from friends on the school playground (which have usually been exaggerated beyond measure through Chinese-whisper), and, of course, my personal favourite (3) cartoons.

I may have become acquainted with Leerdammer cheese later on in life, but somehow I can still feel nostalgic about it. It reminds me one of the first impressions I had of cheese picked up from cartoons like Tom & Jerry. All the cartoons do it - yellow pungent cheeses full of holes, whose wavy scents usually lure mesmerised mice into mouse-traps. The only difference is that Leerdammer is not a strong cheese. It is semi-soft and quite mild, and although doesn't have the deep flavours of some of the blues,  I love it. Especially on crackers. And also, much as I have a soft spot for the Dutch football team who for so long have brimmed over with skills but underachieved in major tournaments (like England!), I find myself warmed to this one. Cos let's face it, the French and the English are the heavyweights in world cheese - it's good to see some other nations stepping up to contend. I'll give it a 6 out of ten. This doesn't mean that I don't rate it of course, but I have high expectations!

The other early association I made with cheese was the moon. I haven't yet found one that's like the moon though. There's still time...

Early Cheese Experiences...

I’ve always appreciated cheese, but it’s only been in the last year or so that I have actually jumped to ‘turophile’ status. It’s a little odd actually. It’s like the “Dragon du Fromage” has been awoken from a 32 year slumber within me and has now climbed through the cavernous parts of my under belly, through the claret and blue “Hammer Canyon” of my rib-cage and taken control of the flight deck. Now that he has control, I find myself looking into curdling habits, backgrounds and regions of cheeses, which beast’s udder it has come from (cow, goat, sheep, buffalo) and what it compliments. Even the recent android I made of myself recently is holding a bit of cheese. 

And why? It is after all just curdy, decaying milk – Martlet Gold certainly is! Strange, but I enjoy it and that’s what matters (also, you don’t mess with a dragon). Before the point that ‘Fromo’ the crazy cheese dragon had the controls, I remember a few early experiences and influences that founded my love for cheese like a well based limestone. These are some of them:

(1)   Mice in the house - My mum has always been a bit squeamish with certain creatures. She’s ok with the big ones like goats, but has never been a fan of worms or rodents. You can imagine her delight then, when, she began to go into the fridge in the morning during the early 80s to find bite marks in both the cheese and butter. Thankfully, before the exterminators were called in, my parents soon realised that they had a hungry early morning bubba on their hands rather than mice. It was hardly Arthur Conan Doyle inspiring detective work, as they would walk into the living room and see 2.5 year old me playing cars with mess around my face. They waited for me to wake up one morning and quietly followed me, dropping down the stairs one by one on my bottom. Upon entering the kitchen, they found me with a face full of cheddar and an expression of “What!? ….well you guys were asleep!”.

(2)   Flights to Colombia – having the larger part of my family (from my mum’s side) over on the South American continent, I have been flying there regularly since the age of 6 months. I have never been a fussy eater as such, but in the  first few years of your life, you must latch on to things that you like rather than go for strange meals served under space-age silver trays. I just couldn’t get enough of the little red-waxed packages of joy known as mini-babybel. It’s all I wanted to get me through the 13 hour flight, and as my aunt and godmother served as air stewardess on many of these flights, I had a running tap supply. It’s no wonder I was developing into a little porker!

(3)   Lunchtime after playschool – having been running around with little friends for most of the morning or learning how to colour cows (another possible influence), I would come home with mum and she would serve me lunch on my little table and chair in front of ‘Rainbow’ or ‘You and Me’. Even though only 3 or 4 years of age, I remember this vividly as an early memory. I wouldn’t get to choose what I got at that age, but my favourite was definitely Heinz™ Macaroni Cheese. I have moved on from it since and onto grown up cheese, but I was perfectly content sitting there listening to Rod, Jane and Freddy singing “a-pongo, pongo, pongo” while my taste buds were given early training on what cheese had to offer. 

Photo Shoot

If you have read the first blog of this cheese pack, you'll know that I started writing to capture a record of all the lovely blends of cheeses that I was discovering and devouring. It's also a chance for me to write, without the emotional restrictions of producing summaries, briefs, submissions or plans, which is required of me every day in the office. It's like a bit of a creative outlet much in tune with writing a diary or making a 'play-doh' castle - whether there's readers or not!

I've found though, that as I have got into it more and seen other cheese websites and blogs, that I have been compelled to make my own a little more organised and presentable and pleasing to the eye. Whether that's the Virgo in me (we are structured perfectionists...supposedly) or the geek in me getting excited about the options and capabilities of the technical side, I don't know. What I do know, Is that this morning I found myself doing a photo shoot with a load of beauties from the cheese box, playing with lighting and telling them to "give me more...love the camera Edam, love it! You're a tiger!...". It's great to work with professionals...

The shoot also gave me a chance to take my new burr-wood cheese board out and use it as the rustic platform on which Edam, Morbier, Blackstick Blue and the others would express themselves. After about half and hour, we had enough snaps to choose from and called it a wrap. I now had a handful of choices with which to create a panoramic background image for the title header on the blog home page. And you can probably see the winner at the top of the page you are on. 

The following was a close contender but wasn't quite there. You may notice that Bicallou, at the front, had his eyes semi-shut in this one and looks a drunken mess. We've all been there. Spoilt an other wise great shot but it wasn't his fault (apparently Leerdammer behind him had let one go. You don't expect that from a lady). 

We also tried another which was dubbed 'looking down on cheese valley from alkali mountain'. This one didn't get the votes for the job in question, but is one for their expanding portfolio nonetheless. 

So there we go. The blog page continues to evolve and increase in scope. Keep an eye out for add-ons and 'gadgets' as they pop into existence and as the experimentation reaches new levels. 

Martlet Gold - (with harmless mould)

I do try and keep an eye out for new cheeses when I can. I do it when I go round the supermarkets, but I really love it going round local farmers markets tasting local produce and fresh flavours and smells - you find some amazing stuff. Phwoaarrrrr! 


At the weekend, I wandered round the farmers market in Farnham. They say that you shouldn't go food shopping on an empty stomach, and for once, I had heeded that warning and had a big egg and cheese (!) toasted sandwich for Sunday breakfast. I walked round slowly, adamant that I wasn't going to leave with yet another bag of cheese. With a full tummy I passed the cheese stalls, local sausages of wild boar and black pudding, tongue tantalizing quinces and chutneys, and quietly laughing to myself "Hehehe... I win this round tasty food!! Sce-rew youuu". Then, just before leaving, a lonely stand selling goats cheese caught my eye. The blue tractor-ray beam burst out from the cheeses on the table top, locked on and I was a gonner. At this point my brain overruled the satisfied tummy - "well, ...I suppose we don't have any goats cheeses in at the moment". "That is true", said tummy "they look GOOOORgeous and I could really go a soft goats cheese on crusty bread when we get in". And it was done.

The Martlet Gold is a soft goats cheese with a pungent rind produced by Nut Knowles Farm in East Sussex. It's a new cheese of theirs and may look like it's been found in a dirty sock under the bed  growing a new mould friend called Herman ("Hey!! I found my Martlett and...oh....urgh, well....I shall call him Herman!") but the mix of the strong, smelly blue-ish cheese and the powerful goats flavours are such a good combo. I'm giving this a 7. To try it you'll need to catch Nut Knowles Farm at one of the many farmers markets  on their tour, but its well worth a try! Just keep telling yourself - it's meant to have mould, it's meant to have mould!

Trick or Treat! - Yorkshire Wensleydale & Apricot

I don't usually go for the cheeses that throw in a bit of fruit. I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm all for experimentation with foods - and even in cheese - but there is something sacrilegious about adding fruit to cheese. That said, it was with high Halloowe'en spirits that I decided to try this one. I was going to watch the Shining while eating it but Zo doesn't like horrors!

It wasn't the worst I've ever had, but I just find these cheeses really dry and too sweet (which I don't like associating with cheese). It's the kind that I would put on a party platter if people came round - but just to give people an option. And not on a SERIOUS cheese platter. That's Sunday best stuff.

I'll give this one a 4 out of 10. It was worth a dabble but I don't think I'd buy it again. I'll leave that for Herman Munster. He'll eat anything...

The creation of CHEESE!!

On day 6 God created land animals and humans. And that's where it all began. The two creatures came into being that I have to thank for the most wondrous and flavoursome food created. The cow took its first breath and was compelled to nosh into the lush green grass. Cud was chewed and reproduction led to the production of milk. Man came along, domesticated the cow for its own guaranteed nourishment of meat and fresh milk. One day, Keith (the man) went away on a long fishing trip having left a cup of his fresh milk on the side. He returned some time later, tired and miffed at the lack of fish. He walked to the sideboard where he had left his cup and, thirsty from his trip, took a swig of his milk. He fell to his knees as his taste buds vibrated with Mexican waves of delight.  And there, in that mud hut, the WONDER of cheese was born. God bless Keith...