Lincolnshire Poacher cheese
CHEESE is often on my mind, especially since the heart attack. That unfortunate event sorely tested my enduring love of cheese on toast.
It had always been a weekly treat, sometimes more often. If a week is a long time in politics, it’s even longer to a man who craves cheese on toast again.
My previous level of cheese eating was discouraged by the cardiac nurse at home. The cardio physio (a real one and not a jokey disguise for my wife) suggested a matchbox-sized portion of cheese was fine, although in cheesy mitigation I would point out matches and the boxes containing them come in varying sizes.
Anyway, all of this is why a headline in The Observer caught my longing eye: “Stronger, stinkier, softer: how Britain fell in love with cheese beyond cheddar…”
In another life, I wrote headlines in that newspaper, and would have been pleased with that one, especially the air of deliquescent alliteration conjured at the start.
The closing dig is less worthy of praise, as a good cheddar is still for my cheese-buying moolah king of British coagulated milk protein, although stilton also has a mouldy claim to that title, too.
The story beneath that nicely whiffy headline was another of those food yarns promoted to the news pages. You know the sort of thing: we’ve all gone vegan; nobody drinks alcohol any more… words to be annulled at a later date when we learn everyone’s gone off being vegan and we’re back on the booze, possibly to dull the memory of all that vegan food.
The tasty nub of this one was that “British customers are more cheese curious than ever before”.
Some of us have always been cheese curious, all too eager to investigate the cheese platter.
What this report said is that sales of halloumi and cottage cheese are on the rise, while “burrata is working hard to supplant mozzarella”. That makes it sound like a race, the 100-metere cheese sprint, but I have no argument with what followed: “Cheeses like comté are now a standard part of a supermarket’s deli range.”
Ah, comté – that most glorious of hard French cheeses, nutty tasting and hits the spot every time. An unpasteurised cheese, as the good ones often are, including another favourite, Lincolnshire Poacher.
The report quoted Jonny Crickmore, the nicely named chairman of the UK’s Specialist Cheesemakers Association.
“We started making a brie-style cheese because we saw that even though brie sales were growing year on year, no one was making a similar soft cheese. Lots of small specialist cheesemakers across the UK are creating their own versions of classic international cheeses,” Mr Crickmore said.
Blessed are the cheesemakers, as that Monty Python misunderstanding put it all those years ago. British cheeses can now take on the world. We recently bought our eldest son a selection of five cheeses for his birthday – all local stunners from Yorkshire.
Something else drew my attention to that report in the Observer. It said research into the nutritional value of cheese, previously known for its high fat and salt content, has revealed something encouraging.
Prof Ian Givens, director of the Institute of Food, Nutrition and Health, said some data showed a neutral relationship between dairy foods and cardiovascular disease.
“Milk proteins can reduce blood pressure. Constituents of cheeses reduce the amount of fat we absorb, which, of course, moderates blood lipids responses – including cholesterol,” he said.
Be still my malfunctioning heart! Cheese isn’t bad for you after all. Just wait till I tell the cardiac nurse at home. I am off to seek out the biggest matchbox available.
Of course, the next food story to roll along may well say cheese is bad for your heart, but you don’t have to believe everything you read.