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This page contains an archive of all entries posted to 365 Cheeses in the England category. They are listed from oldest to newest.
Denmark is the previous category.
France is the next category.
Many more can be found on the main index page or by looking through the archives.
© 2008 Kirk Samuels
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England Archives
You either love or hate blue cheese. I love it. I love it by itself. I love it on bread. I love it cooked or baked with other cheeses. Neal's Yard Dairy Colston Bassett Stilton does not disappoint.
The colors of this blue cheese are not milky white with bluish streaks but a gradation of brown to buttery yellow speckled with gray to green pocks of mold. The cheese crumbles into large pieces making it great for bread or salads. We ate it last night in a green salad with pear and walnuts, a classic pairing for blue cheese. The cheese was wrapped in plastic from the store and when unwrapped the Stilton had an overpowering odor that I mentioned in the Fourme d’Ambert article. But this time I let it sit out unwrapped by itself for about 20 minutes and the obnoxious smell had evaporated and the cheese tasted great.
This leads to my general rules for the best storing and serving cheese:
1) Whenever possible store firm cheeses in paper instead of plastic. Cheese needs to breathe and plastic wrap can suffocate a cheese. I don’t always follow this rule, in fact, paper wrapped cheese is currently the exception in my fridge but I can see the difference in how well it works.
2) Allow cheese to come to room temperature before serving. Unwrap the cheese and let it sit out. Ten to twenty minutes is usually enough. Cold cheese hold on to its flavor instead of releasing it in your mouth. If the cheese gets too warm, fat may come to the surface or it may dry out. Unwrapping the cheese lets any built up odors or “cheese exhaust” escape and should return the cheese to a state of balance.
Overall the Stilton from Neal’s Yard Dairy Colston Basset had a great flavor and texture and when properly cared for, produced great results.
Name: Neal's Yard Dairy Colston Bassett Stilton
Type of Milk: Cow, Pasteurized
Type: semi-soft, blue
Produced in: England, Colston Bassett, Nottinghamshire, Colston Bassett & District Dairy, by Richard Rowlett & Billy Kevan
Date Produced: Unknown
Date Purchased: 10/23/2006
Date Eaten: 10/24/2006, 11/5/2006
Purchased Where: United States, North Carolina, Raleigh, Whole Foods
Price: $17.99/lb.
Lancashire is called the "best toasting cheese in the world". It melts easily without dissolving into a pool of oil and curd. Its melting quality make it the traditional choice for Welsh rabbit, which to us Americans is simply melted cheese on toast. We can use it for grilled cheese to great results. It is similar to white cheddar in appearance a taste. The piece I bought was crumbly but not overly dry. The flavor was cheddary with fresh dairy flavors. A good cheese.
Name: Trotterhill Lancashire
Type of Milk: Cow, Pasteurized
Type: semi-hard
Produced in: England, Lancashire, Inglewhite
Date Produced: Unknown
Date Purchased: 10/23/2006
Date Eaten: 10/24/2006
Purchased Where: United States, North Carolina, Raleigh, A Southern Season
Price: $13.99/lb.
Wensleydale is one of Wallace and Gromit favorite cheeses. Wensleydale is also the name of the store owner in the Monty Python "Cheese Shop" sketch. The cheese itself is good. It has a pale yellow color. The texture is crumbly but not physically dry. The flavor is milky like fresh cheese curd and very pleasant. Wensleydale has a fresh balanced taste.
Name: Wensleydale
Type of Milk: Cow, Pasteurized
Type: semi-soft
Produced in: England, Yorkshire, Wensleydale
Date Produced: Unknown
Date Purchased: 10/23/2006
Date Eaten: 10/24/2006
Purchased Where: United States, North Carolina, Raleigh, A Southern Season
Price: $10.99/lb.
Yes! This Red Leicester is a beautful cheese and so far my favorite new cheese I discovered this year. Not too sharp. Perfect bite. Lingering flavors of delicious cheese. Port wine flavors. "Addictive and distinctive" says Fleming. "Not a phony cheddar, it tastes like what cheese should taste like--really great cheese!" I agree.
Seek this cheese out this holiday season. You will be hooked.
Name: Rothbury Red Leicester
Type of Milk: Cow, Unpasteurized
Type: semi-hard
Produced in: England, Rothbury
Date Purchased: 12/082006
Date Eaten: 12/09/2006
Purchased Where: United States, North Carolina, Chapel Hill, A Southern Season
Price: $15.99/lb.
Farmhouse cheddars are some of may favorite cheeses. "Farmhouse" typically means two things: the milk is unpasteurized and comes from the milking herd of a single farm. This kind of cheddar produces complex flavors with distinctive farmyard flavors. It is hard to really describe "farmyard flavors" if you've never set foot on a farm but if you have and try this cheese it will bring back many different sense memories. Milk, of course. Hay, straw, grass. Earthy tones. Musky, leathery cow aromas that are not unpleasant to the initiated.
The cheese I recently tasted had some onion- and chive-like flavors that are supposedly not a good sign according to the cheese books. Still I did not think it spoiled the taste and and just added to the layers of complex flavor. Fleming commented that this cheddar packed a ""one-two punch, both punches equally delicious".
I recommend this cheese though serve it in small amounts. A little goes a long way.
Name: Goulds English Farmhouse Cheddar
Type of Milk: Cow, Unpasteurized
Type: semi-hard
Produced in: England, Somerset, EFJ Gould & Co.
Date Purchased: 12/08/2006
Date Eaten: 12/09/2006
Purchased Where: United States, North Carolina, Chapel Hill, A Southern Season
Price: $13.99/lb.
First thing I noticed about this Goosnargh Gold Double Gloucester cheese is how good looking it is. What a handsome cheese. It looks like a solid, fine, upstanding, leading-man cheese. The marbled brown outer rind fading into a rich orange, layered center. Nice.
Double Gloucester comes from only whole milk wheres his little brother, Single Gloucester is produced from skimmed milk and served a little younger. Both come from the English county of Gloucestershire and were originally made solely from the milk of Glouster cattle, a breed that almost went extinct.
The taste is delicious. Earthy, complex, but still mild.
Name: Goosnargh Gold Double Gloucester
Type of Milk: Cow, Unpasteurized
Type: semi-hard
Produced in: England, Gloucestershire
Date Purchased: 12/08/2006
Date Eaten: 12/09/2006
Purchased Where: United States, North Carolina, Chapel Hill, A Southern Season
Price: $/lb.
The Borough Market is London's oldest farmers' market, selling organic produce, artisinal food products and farmhouse cheeses. This wonderful Stilton from Neal's Yard Dairy is named after and often sold in that market. Like all Stilton, Borough Market is a blue cheese made from cow's milk curd that have been injected with Penicillium cultures of mold to produce blue-green-gray veins. The texture of the cheese itself is firm and almost cheddar-like, though not too dry. Like other blues, this one pairs perfectly with sweet white wines, walnuts, and arboreal fruit. Stilton is the King of British Cheeses and like the magi traditionally sows up around Christmas. Hope you find some Borough Market Stilton in your Christmas stocking beside the fruit and nuts.
Name: Borough Market Stilton
Type of Milk: Cow, Unpasteurized
Type: semi-hard
Produced in: England, Neal's Yard Dairy
Date Purchased: 12/22/2006
Date Eaten: 12/25/2006
Purchased Where: United States, North Carolina, Chapel Hill, A Southern Season
Price: $11.99/lb.
In the United States most people think of blue cheese as a white cheese spotted with veins of blue mold. Some of my favorites are the orange blue cheeses like Blacksticks Blue. Smooth and spreadable as opposed to the crumbly blues, Blacksticks goes well with warm baguette or melted into warm buttered pasta. The orange cheese is creamy and the blue mold is piquant but not overpowering. A real treat.
Name: Blacksticks Blue
Type of Milk: cow's, unpasteurized
Type: semi-soft, blue
Produced in: England, Butlers Farmhouse Cheeses
Date Purchased: 01/11/2007
Date Eaten: 01/13/2007
Purchased Where: United States, North Carolina, Chapel Hill, A Southern Season
Price: $13.99/lb.
I love the way this English Cheshire from Neal Yard Dairy crumbles. Not like a cheddar with large curd, Appleby's Cheshire has curds like a cottage cheese--small pressed orange lumplets that cling to each other for dear life. The color is an uneven pale, natural-looking orange. The flavor is complex but not difficult to munch on. An easy snack cheese made by master cheesemakers, the Appleby family. Check out the great photos on the cheesemaker's, Neal Yard Dairy, web site.
Name: Neal Yard Dairy Appleby's Cheshire or Appleby's Cheshire
Type of Milk: cow's, unpasteurized
Type: semi-hard
Produced in: England
Date Purchased: 1/11/2007
Date Eaten: 1/16/2007
Purchased Where: United States, North Carolina, Chapel Hill, A Southern Season
Price: $18.99/lb.
When the word "geography" comes up in conversation about cheese it usually has to do with where a cheese is produced or where it originated. But the geography of Borough Market Cheddar can be found within a wedge of this remarkable cheese. There are different continents of flavor in this cheese. Areas closer to the center have a pure, raw, sharp English Cheddar flavor, slightly complex with lingering aftertastes that continue to please. Moving closer to the dark, cloth-wrapped edges the cheese itself gets darker, more complicated in flavor but still easily enjoyable. As you almost reach the cloth binding that restrains the outer limits, rivulets of blue-green oniony mold spring up but do not flood their banks into the Hinterland and truly add a wonderfully exotic note to this cheddar's chord.
If you think you know what cheddar tastes like by only eating American supermarket version, do yourself a favor and seek out this amazing Cheddar from Neal's Yard Dairy's Borough Market shop in London. Comparing it to most American cheeses of the same name is like comparing something really sophisticated and beautiful to something plain and unimaginative.
Name: Borough Market Cheddar
Type of Milk: cow's, unpasteurized
Type: semi-hard
Produced in: England
Date Purchased: 7/3/2007
Date Eaten:7/4/2007
Purchased Where: United States, North Carolina, Raleigh, Whole Foods
Price: $15.99/lb.
It can be confusing when cheeses of the same name are produced by different dairies or manufacturers. My research show there is another Doddington made by Doddington Dairy, which sounds like it may be similar to Neal's Yard Dairy Doddington. An interesting cheese with qualities of a fine gouda and also of a farmhouse cheddar. I really like this cheese's unique flavor. It is on the pricey side but worth it for a change of pace.
Name: Neal's Yard Dairy Doddington
Type of Milk: cow's, unpasteurized
Type: semi-hard
Produced in: England
Date Purchased: 7/12/2007
Date Eaten:7/14/2007
Purchased Where: United States, North Carolina, Raleigh, Whole Foods
Price: $29.99/lb.
My wife Fleming calls Yarg one of her favorite cow's milk cheeses. "Cow's mik cheeses are not my favorite but this one has so much flavor." The cheese she is talking about is a pale yellow cheese with a distinctive green leaf wrap. Yarg wears a coat of nettle leaves, stings removed, which imparts a pleasing vegetal quality to the cheese. My first description of the taste was asparagus but I decided it was really more like celery. After trying 150 other cheese I can say that I've never tasted one like Yarg and that taste is good.
I get annoyed when people talk about food or wine producers they've never met by name so I mention Allan and Jenny Gray who make Yarg because its name comes from theirs. Yarg is Gray spelled backwards. The Grays found a 13th century recipe for a cheese that had gone extinct and brought it back to life. Michael Crichton couldn't write a better story.
Name: Cornish Yarg or Yarg
Type of Milk: cow's, unpasteurized
Type: semi-hard
Produced in: England, Cornwall, Lynher Dairies
Date Purchased: 9/26/07
Date Eaten: 9/29/07
Purchased Where: online, www.artisanalcheese.com
Price: $30.00/lb.
Montgomery's Cheddar is a tradtional farmhouse cheese from southwest England's Somerset, home of the town of Cheddar. The Montgomery family are one of the last producers to still use calf's rennet to separate the curd from whey of the unpasteurized milk. Aged over 14 months the cheese has a brittle texture producing shards instead of clean slices.
This is an amazing cheddar. Fleming said this is one of her favorite cow's milk cheeses. Because of the active cultures the flavors can vary greatly from cheese to cheese and from tasting to tasting of the same cheese. Worth finding and keeping and tasting over and over again.
Name: Montgomery's Cheddar
Type of Milk: cow's, unpasteurized
Type: semi-hard
Produced in: England, Somerset, North Cadbury, Manor Farm
Date Purchased: 10/1/07
Date Eaten: 10/4/07
Purchased Where: online, www.artisanalcheese.com
Price: $30.00/lb.
Divas can be a handful. They can reach heights of beauty and produce outrageous joy. Divas also are demanding, tempermental, fickle, and hard to care for. Quicke's Cheddar is a diva. But so again is most any raw milk cheese worth its salt. Tasting it the day it arrived I found the flavors, oniony and chive-like. The next day after a two-hour airing, the flavors became less harsh, but still complex and brilliant. I sensed hints of celery. Quicke's required planning and attention to taste the cheese at its best. Wrapping the cheese in breathable paper, storing it and cool but not cold temperatures, and keeping it apart from other harsh flavored foods were only the start to getting this cheese at its peak. Quicke's Cheddar like most farmhouse cheeses has a labratory of microbes working on it, changing it, pushing it to evolve in the new directions. One wheel can taste different from another made with the same milk, and cheeses of different milkings and seasons can vary even more. If you want consistancy, these are not the cheeses for you. If you want the possability of greatness but are willing to deal with occasional disappointment, this cheese is worth the gamble. The texture is more moist. less brittle than Montgomery's but the same opportunity for a great experience.
Name:Quicke's Cheddar or BMF Quicke's Cheddar
Type of Milk: cow's, unpasteurized
Type: semi-hard, cheddar
Produced in: England, Devon
Date Purchased: 9/21/2007
Date Eaten: 9/22/2007, 9/23/2007, 9/28/2007
Purchased Where: online, www.artisanalcheese.com
Price: $17.25.00/lb.
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