I spent much of my time in a country with 365 types of cheese. And yet every Christmas I spend here, there's one cheese that I want, and it's not French: it's Stilton.
France has many blue cheeses, but none of them are quite the same as Stilton. Roquefort is creamier, slushier; it oozes on to the plate, it doesn't have the crumbly, dry texture of a good Stilton. Fourme d'Ambert is too unctuous. (And don't get me on to the monstrosities known as 'blue Brie' - nothing to do with real Brie - and 'Danish blue', an acrid nastiness added to a base of what seems to be Kraft processed cheese. Ugh.)
Stilton mixes the edginess of a good mature Cheddar with the sharpness of the blue. It's punchy, with a certain nuttiness to the flavour as well as a good salty tang, and a really good Stilton will have a nice tartness to it as well. Getting all those tastes to work together, without one overpowering the others, isn't easy, but the result is wonderful.
When you smell Stilton, your nose should prickle. There's something of the stable or the farmyard in that aroma, and behind it, there's a hint of cream and richness. Again, different and indeed mutually contradictory aromas work together to create something complex and unmistakably good.
And unusually, indeed uniquely, for an English cheese, Stilton is geographically protected. The milk must be produced and the cheese must be made within a specified area of Derbyshire, Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire, and must also be made according to a specific recipe and ageing procedure. (More on this at Gourmet Cheese Detective.)
I love my Christmas Stilton. It keeps for the whole twelve days of Christmas, and indeed longer, and when we get nearly to the end of it, I make potted Stilton, mixing it up with butter and the heel end of a bottle of port. Some people add mustard, and Heston Blumenthal adds mascarpone, but I keep it simple - just butter and port. It's a great way to use up the little crumbs that try to escape, and it really doesn't need a recipe, just mash up roughly two to three parts of Stilton to one of butter and add enough port to make it easily spreadable (and alcoholic). Then stick it in the fridge and allegedly it'll last a month or more. I wouldn't know; it always disappears far more quickly than that.
Coming up to Christmas. The pudding is made, the cake is ready, the goose is ordered and the chocolate brownie recipe is at the ready. I have checked the cellar and all the bottles stand marshalled in their order. But I have a horrible feeling that I've forgotten something...
This year, darn it, I forgot to buy my Stilton.
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| Look at that marvellous texture, and the way the 'blue' is almost black. Superb. |
France has many blue cheeses, but none of them are quite the same as Stilton. Roquefort is creamier, slushier; it oozes on to the plate, it doesn't have the crumbly, dry texture of a good Stilton. Fourme d'Ambert is too unctuous. (And don't get me on to the monstrosities known as 'blue Brie' - nothing to do with real Brie - and 'Danish blue', an acrid nastiness added to a base of what seems to be Kraft processed cheese. Ugh.)
Stilton mixes the edginess of a good mature Cheddar with the sharpness of the blue. It's punchy, with a certain nuttiness to the flavour as well as a good salty tang, and a really good Stilton will have a nice tartness to it as well. Getting all those tastes to work together, without one overpowering the others, isn't easy, but the result is wonderful.
When you smell Stilton, your nose should prickle. There's something of the stable or the farmyard in that aroma, and behind it, there's a hint of cream and richness. Again, different and indeed mutually contradictory aromas work together to create something complex and unmistakably good.
And unusually, indeed uniquely, for an English cheese, Stilton is geographically protected. The milk must be produced and the cheese must be made within a specified area of Derbyshire, Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire, and must also be made according to a specific recipe and ageing procedure. (More on this at Gourmet Cheese Detective.)
I love my Christmas Stilton. It keeps for the whole twelve days of Christmas, and indeed longer, and when we get nearly to the end of it, I make potted Stilton, mixing it up with butter and the heel end of a bottle of port. Some people add mustard, and Heston Blumenthal adds mascarpone, but I keep it simple - just butter and port. It's a great way to use up the little crumbs that try to escape, and it really doesn't need a recipe, just mash up roughly two to three parts of Stilton to one of butter and add enough port to make it easily spreadable (and alcoholic). Then stick it in the fridge and allegedly it'll last a month or more. I wouldn't know; it always disappears far more quickly than that.
Coming up to Christmas. The pudding is made, the cake is ready, the goose is ordered and the chocolate brownie recipe is at the ready. I have checked the cellar and all the bottles stand marshalled in their order. But I have a horrible feeling that I've forgotten something...
This year, darn it, I forgot to buy my Stilton.
