Living for the Weekend Cheese: Tymsboro

Cheese, like people, comes in many different shapes. However, unlike cheese, society seems to be fixated on a particular ideal shape, whereas cheesemakers employ numerous shapes in their craft and not all that are ideal. When cheese eaters consume too much cheese, they tend to also share a particular same shape, which is perhaps not society’s ideal. But it is the cheese eater’s ideal to be eating cheese, and as cheesemakers aren’t fussy about shape, then it’s best to consume both product and associated ideology, relax, and loosen your belt.

This message was paid for by Type 2 Diabetes.

I’ve written about Tymsboro before, but as anyone who has eaten Tymsboro will tell you, you can’t have too much of a good thing. In these pictures is the creamy fresh version rather than the aged, way goatier Portrait of Dorian Grey variety that you can also pick up. The pictured is like goat’s cheese ice cream, cool and clean – a lemony, almondy siren song to the tastebuds.

Tymsboro is named for Timsbury, a village not far from Bath, where it and other cheeses are made on Sleight Farm by the just and wise Mary Holbrook. Holbrook was one of the lynchpins of the UK’s 70s artisan cheese recovery. Ditching her gig as an archaeologist, she toured Europe unearthing mad cheese skillz instead ( the farmhouse ways had been lost in much of Blighty at this time).

Tymsboro’s shape reflects Holbrook’s travels. In Valençay, central France, the Frenchies have been churning out truncated pyramidal cheeses till the goats come/came home. Indeed, according to this Neal’s Yard Dairy write up, Holbrook scored the recipe that forms the basis of Tymsboro from a ‘cheesemaker’s bible’ while at a “goat conference in Tours”.

There doesn’t seem to be a practical reason for the shape of these cheeses, however, there’s a story concerning Napoleon of which various versions are told. Conflating two sources, apparently the diplomat Talleyrand had a pyramidal goat’s cheese made for Napoleon during his Egypt campaign. After the campaign went south, either Talleyrand flattened the top himself so as not to bum out Napoleon on his Valençay visits or Napoleon did it himself with his sword (got to be pretty hammered to attack the cheese course, but we’ve all been there).

Next week: Bath & West fun and games…

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Living for the Weekend Cheese: Ticklemore Goat

It’s May Day, Walpurgisnacht, or annual official opportunity for students to get half cut and wacky around bridges. However, there is good reason for celebration besides the slightly creepy fertility stuff that the ancients Britons left lying around  (I’m looking at you, Padstow). Apparently, we can expect the average temperature to rise by a whole three degrees on paltry April. Even better, the translation of the Old English name for May is the ‘Month of Three Milkings’… cheese production also on the up and up?

What a month.

May Day also marks the final post in this Fromology springtime procession of goat’s cheese (four cheeses a procession doth make, apparently). Today, let’s return to Ticklemore Goat.

Despite sounding like a misdemeanor, this is a very approachable, easy-eating cheese. Developed by artisan cheese hero Robin Congden of Ticklemore Cheeses in Devon, Congden offloaded Ticklemore Goat to his pals and current producers Debbie Mumford and Mark Sharman at nearby Sharpham Creamery (the skinny, apparently, was that Congdon was getting into the blues, the hard stuff, and didn’t have a fancy for no mo’ of that vanilla Ticklemore Goat manufacture.)

Fortunately, the Sharpham team took up the slack, and Ticklemore Goat remains on the shelves of our most sagacious cheese purveyors (including Paxton and Whitfield, Neal’s Yard Dairy, and Bath Fine Cheese Co. where I picked up this wedge). For me, it’s classic goat: light and refreshing. That makes it sound like I splash it on after a run, but, of course, I mean splashed on the palette. Gentle floral and herbaceous flavours – if this wasn’t pasteurised, it’d be a significant life event. Comes away in slightly moist, feathery slices. No crackers required. As it stands: simply a delicious cheese. A sliver between courses would make for a classy palette cleanser. Better than that sorbet crap.

Listen up, restaurateurs!

Next week: something other than goat’s cheese…

Living for the Weekend Cheese: Cerney

Apologies for the overlong gap between this and the last post. I’ve been cheating on GB cheese with the many (obviously inferior) delights of Lombardy for a week, especially toothsome Taleggio, transfixing Gorgonzola, and a bewitching Bergamo (exact name to be discovered). There’s some handsome country to gaze upon while eating your cheese, such as Lake Como as pictured here with Bellagio in the foreground.

But enough lake-gazing – it’s back to Blighty: aggressive nesting gulls, chill April winds that curdle the hopeless soul… and the fresh taste of our springtime cheese crop! This week, we’re focusing on the much ballyhooed Cerney (or Cerney Pyramid, according to its passport).

Made in Gloucestershire, the pyramid shape suggests Valençay influence. Developed by the canny Lady Angus of Cerney, it looks very dashing in its ash and sea salt coat, and a first glance might suggest a lighter goat’s cheese. But as soon as you get tactile, you find it’s moist, and it begins sticking to your fingers and slate as soon as you’ve unwrapped it from its award besmirched plastic wrap.

At first, I didn’t get it. I’d heard about this cheese for a while, and here it was being creamy, yes, smooth, yes, but… what else? Let it be known that there was a slab of Ticklemore on the table as well, with all of its immediate goaty flavour. With the Cerney, the fresh taste was delicate, elusive, almost overwhelmed by all of that sticky full fat texture.

But as the evening progressed, the Cerney became first choice. It’s the texture that develops and subsequently beguiles. At first Cerney seems all “come and get me big boy”, but really it wants to engage you, coyly show you its diary, maybe read you some of its flowery sonnets and share its, uh, lemony notes. It’s all about the subtext, and once you’re hooked, you’re hooked. Lady Angus, you have my attention. Best on water biscuits with maybe a large glass of Sancerre. Hell, why not a pint?

Next week: Ticklemore or less…

Living for the Weekend Cheese: Dorstone

Dorstone is a village and a cheese. Apparently the village is very nice, set in the picturesque Golden Valley of Herefordshire and home to an annual sloe gin competition where the winner is crowned ‘Grand Master of the Sloes’.

But let’s be honest here: none of us are ever going to go to the village of Dorstone except by happy accident, so let’s focus on the far more accessible Dorstone cheese that emigrates regularly from the artisan cheesemaking facilities of Neal’s Yard Creamery, Dorstone Hill, to the UK’s luckiest urban centres. Confusingly, Neal’s Yard Creamery in Dorstone is named for cheese purveyor Neal’s Yard Dairy in London. Creamery used to be a part of Dairy until it upped sticks to the south east in ’96 to independently produce cheeses of the goat and of the cow.

No identity crises surround Dorstone the cheese, however, which is a fun little wrinkly grey tower of goat – no more, no less. The handsome blue grey rind is the result of a covering of ash, and the commingling of various white, blue and green moulds that develop during the two week aging process and which we try hard not to think about while we’re enjoying our cheese. The pristine white interior draws a striking contrast to the exterior, and has a lemony, zesty freshness when shoved in the mouth. The texture is fluffy, apparently the result of pre-draining the curd.

Dorstone was the tower of power on my Christmas cheeseboard last year. Even if you’re not a huge goat’s cheese fan, you’ll get on alright with friend Dorstone. Nice with a drop of honey. I suppose you could call it the ‘Grand Master of the Easygoing Goats’, although that could sound quite dubious out of context, so probably best to just call it Dorstone.

Next week: more cheese

Cheeses call spring: seasonal cheese suggestions

This was taken last spring

Well, some say spring is here, but if it was really here would I be typing in fingerless gloves beneath a blanket? We look to other signs: the spring equinox has passed (20th March), and cheesemaking blogger Mary Quicke has decreed that spring only arrives when grass growth outstrips her cows’ appetites… which apparently should be around now. As her Devon fields aren’t visible from my North Somerset sofa, we could go with the equinox. But spring is more than just longer days, as a deep feeling poet such as e. e. cummings enlightens:

[in Just-] – e. e. cummings

in Just-

spring          when the world is mud-

luscious the little

lame balloonman

…

Let’s run with the equinox. Or, better: the arrival of long-awaited springtime cheeses infused with the optimism of the gambolling lambs and tumbling kids from whose eager suckling mouths we’re diverting all this nourishing, life-giving liquid known as milk for something to go with our crackers and stout. Here’s a few that I’ve been obsessing over through the wet winter months:

Tymsboro

Made near Bath by Mary Holbrook – one of the pioneers of the UK artisan cheese renaissance that we currently find ourselves enjoying – Tymsboro is a pyramidal goat’s cheese similar in style to the French Valençay (no coincidence: Holbrook learned her craft back in the 70s by travelling Europe and picking up tips). The unpasteurised cheese is coated in grey ash, and starts creamy and light before getting richer towards the dense centre. According to the World Cheese Book, it tastes of almonds and lemon. Fiona Beckett calls this cheese, “A modern British classic“. Also see: Cerney Pyramid. (pic above: Mary’s goats on Sleight Farm, Timsbury (the town for which the cheese is named)

St. James

With thanks to Gourmet Britain for this St. James image.

While the majority of my cheese intake involves cow’s milk cheeses (cheddar lover, year round supply), some of my favourite cheeses are made from sheep’s milk (or the faintly ridiculous tag of “ewe’s milk”), such as Manchego, Berkswell, Ossau-Iraty. However, St. James, a previous winner of the James Alridge Award for Best Unpasteurised Cheese of the Year (2005), is rumoured to stand alone, to be quite unique on these shores. And by unique, I mean to say it has a flavour reminiscent of bacon (McDonald’s has probably been trying to perfect this for years). The texture, from the picture, looks like Tallegio, but apparently it can be crumbly and creamy. It’s available from Cartmel Cheeses and Neal’s Yard Dairy, however having been informed it was available at the start of March, it may have already sold out… cursed Maccy Ds.

Ticklemore

The only pasteurised cheese on this list, Ticklemore makes the cut due to its provenance and obvious popularity. The creation of Robin Congdon (another pioneer in the Mary Holbrook mold), it’s now made at Sharpham Estate in Devon by cheesemaker, Debbie Mumford. Again the World Cheese Book’s extra-sensory palette comes up trumps, describing the flavour profile of this UFO-shaped cheese as “herbaceous with a hint of marzipan”.

Next week: a goat’s cheese with a ghoulish exterior, but an interior like seventh heaven…

Living for the Weekend Cheese: Rachel

Rachel is a washed rind semi-hard goat’s cheese made by White Lake Cheeses, Bagborough Farm, Somerset.

The name was a wooing tactic. It didn’t work. White Lake has a habit of giving cheeses girlish names: another cheese is called Katherine, after the Welsh mezzo-soprano Katherine Jenkins. And there’s a third called L’il Eve which you’ll be relieved to learn is a shortening of ‘Evolution’ rather than anything to alert Operation Yewtree about.

They do good work at Bagborough. I’ve never been a big fan of goat’s cheese, but Rachel’s very tasty. A gateway goat. Subtle, mild, nutty, creamy. Didn’t last long.

Buy from:

http://www.thecheeseshed.com/products/cheese/goat/item/rachel

http://www.paxtonandwhitfield.co.uk/index.php/rachel.html

http://www.finecheese.co.uk/rachel.html