Cheesy!

[Eric]

You know I'm always promoting the Baltics. What about this then?

Latvian 'cheddar' now outselling the original - Telegraph (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/6568567/Latvian-cheddar-now-outselling-the-original.html)

This is where Ireland and the Baltics unite (along with New Zealand) to give Brits what they want.

They import "cheddar" in big blocks, chop it up into smaller pieces, and the Brits are so gullible that they think it's local. Lovely con-trick.

Maybe they should do the same with novels from abroad, chopping them up into short-stories, and selling them to British magazines.

No wonder the so-called "English" cheddar I buy in Dutch supermarkets tastes phoney. Not bad, just not like real cheddar.

[Clarissa]

What are you doing buying Cheddar in Holland? In Rome do as the Romans etc - in Holland buy Edam or Gouda! :)

[beelzebubbles]

Mmmmmm cheeeeeese! :D

Have you ever been to the US and had American cheddar?

[saliotthomas]

Betwin different flavored-rubbers that some of you shamelessly call cheese,i understand it is hard to make a difference.

Before Latvian or Chinese can produce that.

http://www.vitalkochen.at/Portals/2/kaese/vacherin-mont-d-or.jpg

I will not be tomorrow,or the day after.
Call cheese a cheese.

[hdw]

What are you doing buying Cheddar in Holland? In Rome do as the Romans etc - in Holland buy Edam or Gouda! :)

Have you ever eaten Edam or Gouda? I can see why Eric tries to get Cheddar.

Harry

[Eric]

Clarissa should learn a thing or two about the structure of cheese counters in Dutch supermarkets. The top secret fact is that even the Dutch must have got really fed up of the endless similar types of home-grown cheese which are sold in their young, matured and very matured versions. Half the cheese counter is this sort of yellow cheese, divided up by age. The other half, thankfully, is lots of cheeses from France, Greece, Denmark, Switzerland, sometimes Italy, and very occasionally England.

Dutch cheese is very nice; it's just that you don't want to eat it all the bloody time. They have an Emmenthal-type of cheese called Leerdammer, which is a bit different, and their cummin cheese makes a pleasant change. But otherwise, it's vast swathes of yellow near-sameness.

All I have in my fridge right now is a packet of sliced Gouda (pronounced "khowda" for the connoisseurs), and a mouldering piece of Saint-Agur, which was mouldy right from the start. But I often buy Brie, Camembert, and so on. And about once a year, smoked cheese. When in Sweden, I buy Norwegian mesost, a caramel-like brown cheese, rather sweet, not to everyone's taste. Good on digestive biscuits.

Here ends the cheesy lesson.

[ferns_dad]

Cotswald, Double Glouchester. best cheezeburgers ever

[Eric]

Gloucester and double, yes, Fern's Dad. But how sophisticated does the cheese have to be, if all you're going to do is melt it into goo?

[hdw]

Gloucester and double, yes, Fern's Dad. But how sophisticated does the cheese have to be, if all you're going to do is melt it into goo?

Speaking as a mere Scot, I must say that for me English cheese beats them all, and I mean English, not British - i.e. Lancashire, Wensleydale and Cheshire for crumbly cheeses, and a nice bit of mature west-country Cheddar for a firm cheese. However, as a committed internationalist, I'm prepared to eat the occasional bit of Scottish, Welsh or Irish cheese too.

For the first time in recorded history, cheese is now being made on a farm a mile or so inland from my home village in east Fife, so I suppose I ought to give it a go some time out of local patriotism if nothing else. Maybe I'll hint to my big sister who still lives in that neck of the woods that she can slip a bit into my bag of Christmas goodies.

Controversy rages over the best kind of cheese for toasting, i.e. making Welsh rarebit. Personally, I think Lancashire is ideal for toasting, but some people swear by Cheddar. I don't mind toasted Cheddar, but if you leave it just a fraction too long under the grill it gets quite leathery.

Harry

[miercuri]

All the Gouda and Emmenthal I tried tasted like rubber, even the more expensive ones. What are they supposed to taste like exactly? Because I find them disgusting while my mum seems to like them just fine...

[Clarissa]

Trouble with Cheddar, really good farmhose is so hard to find - even in England. Supermarkets have a wide choice of industrialised factoryproduced mousetrap but you really do have to hunt for the real thing. Easier to find farmhouse nonpasteurised goat's cheese than a decent Cheddar.
And noone seems to have mentioned Stilton. Yummy!

[hdw]

Trouble with Cheddar, really good farmhose is so hard to find - even in England. Supermarkets have a wide choice of industrialised factoryproduced mousetrap but you really do have to hunt for the real thing. Easier to find farmhouse nonpasteurised goat's cheese than a decent Cheddar.
And noone seems to have mentioned Stilton. Yummy!

We're lucky in Edinburgh with many good food shops and delis, including specialist cheesemongers. You can get the best English farmhouse cheeses here, lovingly cared for by experts.

My former boss was a bit of a foodie, and I remember him being shocked once when I said I preferred Danish Blue to Stilton. I did, and do - I like its saltiness and tanginess and crumbliness compared to the blandness and creaminess of Stilton.

Harry

[Eric]

Glad you mentioned Cheshire, Harry. I was thinking about writing about it, but got distracted. This was my favourite cheese as a child and early teenager, rating it higher, for some reason, that Cheddar. I suppose it's a more solid form of cottage cheese really, but I liked the bitter-sour quality. And the crumbliness you mention. I'm not as well acquainted with Wensleydale and Lancashire.

Isn't the exotically named Welsh rarebit really cheese-on-toast?

Edam (the one with the red wax covering) is, in my opinion, superior to Gouda, but you don't see so much of it around nowadays, even in Holland.

Talking of mousetraps, I don't trap mice - I feed them. I found one in the garage of my previous home and thought _ "Damn, vermin!". Being a pacificist in this area alone, I bought a catch trap rather than a chop-its-head-off trap. But the mouse didn't bite.

So I thought of a brilliant idea - feed it instead. The garage was quite full of boxes of my books. So I thought if I fed the creature, it would not start gnawing at my tomes which, in any case, already housed silverfish. And it worked perfectly. The mouse would arrive in October or November, be fed until Marchish, with it's own bowl and a pleasant variety of food, and quietly leave as the year grew warmer. This happened four years in a row, with one year missed out. Why, I do not know. Such is my relationship to fieldmice, loners, not ones that bring whole families in to breed. The f?ces were not a problem, as the mouse tried to shit in roughly one place. Very civilised. This ain't Beatrice Potter, this is real life.

N.B. you can only do this if the garage is made of concrete and hermetically sealed from the rest of the house. Those with wooden floors and hollow walls should not adopt this method.

[hdw]

Glad you mentioned Cheshire, Harry. I was thinking about writing about it, but got distracted. This was my favourite cheese as a child and early teenager, rating it higher, for some reason, that Cheddar. I suppose it's a more solid form of cottage cheese really, but I liked the bitter-sour quality. And the crumbliness you mention. I'm not as well acquainted with Wensleydale and Lancashire.

Isn't the exotically named Welsh rarebit really cheese-on-toast?

Edam (the one with the red wax covering) is, in my opinion, superior to Gouda, but you don't see so much of it around nowadays, even in Holland.

Talking of mousetraps, I don't trap mice - I feed them. I found one in the garage of my previous home and thought _ "Damn, vermin!". Being a pacificist in this area alone, I bought a catch trap rather than a chop-its-head-off trap. But the mouse didn't bite.

So I thought of a brilliant idea - feed it instead. The garage was quite full of boxes of my books. So I thought if I fed the creature, it would not start gnawing at my tomes which, in any case, already housed silverfish. And it worked perfectly. The mouse would arrive in October or November, be fed until Marchish, with it's own bowl and a pleasant variety of food, and quietly leave as the year grew warmer. This happened four years in a row, with one year missed out. Why, I do not know. Such is my relationship to fieldmice, loners, not ones that bring whole families in to breed. The f?ces were not a problem, as the mouse tried to shit in roughly one place. Very civilised. This ain't Beatrice Potter, this is real life.

N.B. you can only do this if the garage is made of concrete and hermetically sealed from the rest of the house. Those with wooden floors and hollow walls should not adopt this method.

Yes, many people subscribe to the theory that garages are far too useful to put cars in.

The old boy across the garden fence from us used to put out food for the pigeons, if you can believe it, and before long rats appeared from nowhere to take advantage of the bounty. The neighbours had a quiet word with him.

Harry

[saliotthomas]

The old boy across the garden fence from us used to put out food for the pigeons,


That might be him.... Feeding The Pigeons, One Last Time (http://feedingthepigeons.wordpress.com/)

[Eric]

Harry, I hate the tendency nowadays to build inadequate dwellings, so people turn the garage into a kitchen, then park their car(s) outside, ruining the little grass strip between pavement and road. But I didn't have a car to put in the garage, and a mouse was far more interesting, except that I only saw it a few times. A little black-furred individual with blindish-looking eyes from all that darkness. But even though I seldom saw it, my rational mind told me that when my little mouse's silver foil bowl emptied most days, this was not on account of fairies or poltergeists, but that he had eaten his dinner.

I was afraid of all the things most people are: mouse droppings, rats, more mice, pigeons, germs, you name it. But as I have said, this one lone creature never did me any harm, so I reciprocated. Although there was a door directly into the hall of the house, this mouse kept his bargain and never crossed the threshold, or tunnelled, making a nuisance of itself. It ate the grub and slept. Only once did I read "Wee sleakit beastie.." to it aloud. And there was, predictably, no response whatsoever. Perhaps my accent was unconvincing.

[hdw]

A little black-furred individual with blindish-looking eyes from all that darkness.

Black-furred, huh? Sounds like a specimen of rattus rattus whose gift to European civilisation was the Black Death. If it comes back we'll know who to blame.

Harry

[ferns_dad]

stilton and apples
gorgonzola in salads

mmmmmmmmmmmmmm hungry

[beelzebubbles]

I like feta in salads and cheddar with apples.

Mmmmmm tired. Going to bed.

[Eric]

A field mouse or house mouse is not rattus rattus, which is often fattus fattus, in the same way that van Rompuy is not Tony Blair. (Casting aspersions on our loveable grinner? Of course I am.) This was the sort of thing, life-size, not a two-foot sewer rat:

http://all-propestcontrol.com/yahoo_site_admin/assets/images/house_mouse.60220827_sq_thumb_m.jpg

But with black fur. So much I saw.

Returning to cheese like all good mice, I bought some goat's cheese with honey the other day. The thought was rather disgusting, but I was pleasantly surprised. I couldn't resist finding out whether it was horrible. I'm not a great fan of the strong goaty-sweaty flavour, but given some of the sweaty-feet smells you get from some cheeses, this was definitely rather more sophisticated. And honey is nice under all circumstances. Also in beer. One of my favourite Belgian beers is a honey one.

I eat feta now and again too. That isn't so overpowering.

[hdw]

A field mouse or house mouse is not rattus rattus, which is often fattus fattus, in the same way that van Rompuy is not Tony Blair. (Casting aspersions on our loveable grinner? Of course I am.) This was the sort of thing, life-size, not a two-foot sewer rat:

http://all-propestcontrol.com/yahoo_site_admin/assets/images/house_mouse.60220827_sq_thumb_m.jpg

But with black fur. So much I saw.

Returning to cheese like all good mice, I bought some goat's cheese with honey the other day. The thought was rather disgusting, but I was pleasantly surprised. I couldn't resist finding out whether it was horrible. I'm not a great fan of the strong goaty-sweaty flavour, but given some of the sweaty-feet smells you get from some cheeses, this was definitely rather more sophisticated. And honey is nice under all circumstances. Also in beer. One of my favourite Belgian beers is a honey one.

I eat feta now and again too. That isn't so overpowering.

It was the black fur that made me think of plague-spreaders. The more common brown rat is if I remember aright rattus norvegicus. Maybe we can blame the Vikings for him.

"Ratty" in Wind in the Willows (got to mention a book occasionally) was actually a water-vole, and after a sticky period they are supposed to be on the increase in the UK.

I usually prefer straightforward cheeses without foreign bodies inserted into them, but my wife and I are relishing Sainsbury's Wensleydale with added cranberries. M.&S. do a variant with blueberries which is also nice.

Continuing the fauna and food (or in this case, drink) theme, my wife discovered some time ago that an efficient way to kill slugs - which feast on the hostas in our garden - is to offer them a beer, so she started buying a few cans of cheap stuff to annihilate these garden pests. I intervened to ensure that only decent imported Continental lagers were purchased so I could get my share as well, as I seem to be immune to its venomous properties.

Harry

[Eric]

I agree, in principle, about cheese that is all of one substance. When I tasted another piece of the sweaty-armpit goats' cheese with honey added, last night, I was less enthusiastic.

Emmenthaler is naughty in this respect, in that the added holes do suggest either oxygen added or the mice got there first.

I am a great fan of both bilberries and cloudberries. But you don't have to put them in cheese for me. It's like garlic ice-cream - a trend to sell things new to jaded palates (never tried to eat jade or soapstone...).

I used to kill slugs. But after seeing what looked like agony after slug pellets, I have mellowed in this area too. In my last house I let the garden run wild; so, no need for mass murder on an industrial scale. The worst thing was crushing, by accident, a stray and foolish snail hidden between the garden door and the jamb. Nor do I wish to waste Westmalle Tripel on slug-slaughter.