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Last night I found myself searching in deepest SE16, through dark, dripping railway arches and anonymous industrial estates, for a man who washes cheese in beer. A few years ago I might have considered this rather out of the ordinary but of all the strange places this blog has led me over the years, from a Finnish church in Rotherhithe that had an attached sauna, to a meal involving the dissection and consumption of an entire roasted sheep's head, this almost counts as normal. I was looking for Mootown, a company that imports small-farm Welsh cheeses and distributes them to the best London cheese shops but has recently launched its very own product and invited me along to learn more.
The story goes that Mootown once shared "office" space (actually just one of the aforementioned railway arches with a door on the front) with brand new craft brewery Kernel, who were making quite a name for themselves with their punchy, hoppy IPAs. As with any brewery, there's inevitably some wastage with bottling issues and technical problems, and at the same time Mootown noticed that one of the cheeses they were selling, Golden Cenarth by Carwyn Adams, tended to arrive quite young. So in one of those wonderful moments of serendipity, Mootown decided to start ageing and triple-washing the rinds of the Golden Cenarth in the Kernel spoils, and selling the result on as Bermondsey Spa. It's a fantastic story, of course, but would mean little if the new product wasn't worth all that extra effort.
Fortunately, Bermondsey Spa is a great little cheese. The rind is orange and sticky like a fine Epoisses, but interestingly (possibly due to the pasteurised milk; Epoisses is raw) the taste of the flesh is more like a Camembert - it has bags of creamy, salty flavour but it's not harshly sulphuric, nor does it smell like a dead animal. It's very well balanced, refined and carefully constructed and whilst isn't demanding in the way that some of the stronger versions of this style are (Stinking Bishop perhaps, or Ardrahan) is nevertheless hugely enjoyable and dangerously edible. The two of us polished off the best part of an entire 250g box in about half an hour, a task that I'm not sure would have been quite so easy with a similar amount of anything stronger, although I've been known to underestimate my abilities in this department somewhat.
So, Bermondsey Spa comes highly recommended; your next job is finding it. I know of two shops that may stock it on occasion - Neal's Yard, and also posh butchers Moen's in Clapham - but with such a small rate of production, limited both by the rate at which the original base cheese arrives in London and the rate at which they can be washed by hand and stored in that railway arch in Bermondsey, it will most likely remain a rarity. But I imagine that will just add to its appeal; keep your eyes open and a space on your cheeseboard, and if you ever see it for sale (RRP is £10-ish I believe), snap it up. Oh, and it probably goes without saying, it matches very well with a bottle of cold Kernel beer.
8/10
Many thanks to Brad of Mootown for showing us round, and for the free sample.
In common, I'm sure, with many other borderline-autistic foodies, I obsessively crave the new, the rare and the unique. In restaurants I will gravitate towards the more unusual ingredients and preparations, in bars I will order a pint of whichever looks the most likely to be shocking and/or disgusting, and I very rarely say no to any mysterious dark spirit placed in front of me at the end of a long night. These compulsions frequently end in disaster, of course, but that's not the point - for every deep-fried bull's testicle or raw rabbits brains there's that tantalising chance I may discover something really wonderful. And even if I don't, at least I can say I ate raw brains. Breaks the ice at parties.
When it comes to cheese, though, something rather strange has happened - I have become a creature of habit. After spending a couple of years working my way around the spread at Hamish Johnson, I seem to have whittled down my preferences to the same 3 or 4 usual suspects that I pick up nearly every time I visit - an Epoisses, a Roquefort, a Spanish goat's and perhaps some sort of hard Spanish mountain cheese. I know I like them, they work together well on a cheeseboard and I'm never disappointed. It's all rather tragically predictable. So last week, mindful of the effort I usually make to "eat local", especially regarding beef, I made the conscious decision to purchase a board of 100% British cheeses to accompany an autumn barbecue. And amongst them was a lovely little sheep's cheese called Redesdale.
Having already selected a soft, washed-rind cheese (what else but Stinking Bishop) and a creamy Stilton (Cropwell Bishop, review coming soon), I was after something harder and cleaner of texture to provide a happy medium between the other two. The staff at Hamish Johnston first steered me towards something called Berkswell, from Warwickshire, but I wasn't that impressed - it was quite bland and needed something to lift it above its straightforward texture. But Redesdale, from Northumberland Cheeses, was much more interesting. Just the right side of waxy, with a nice acidy tang to balance the dense, sweet flesh, it was impossibly easy to eat. I think it took the four of us barely ten minutes to cut it right back to the rind.
Thanks to a quick Google, I can report that Mark Robertson has been making Redesdale at his farm in the Rede Valley since 1984, and over the years it's gathered quite a collection of prizes. All richly deserved, of course, and as I've mentioned it was definitely a hit on my cheeseboard, but I have two issues with Northumberland Cheeses. Firstly all their offerings seem to be pasteurised, which probably makes them easier to deal with (and export) but I've begun to really notice the lack of that deep, farmy flavour from a pasteurised product. I'd really like to try an unpasteurised Redesdale - I'm sure it would be even nicer. Secondly, and less forgiveably, they in common with some other otherwise reputable small-scale producers, seem to have a bizarre compulsion to bring out special "flavoured" editions of their flagship product. As well as displaying a worrying lack of confidence in the cheese itself, it reeks of lazy opportunism to add (bleugh) apricot or (aargh) garlic instead of expanding your range in more inventive ways. After all, why go to the expense and effort of creating a new cheese if you can just chop up some cherries into the one you've already got?
That minor rant aside, there's no reason why anyone wouldn't enjoy the unblemished and un-meddled-with Redesdale sheep's cheese. Ignoring for a moment any of the more esoteric varieties from Northumberland Cheeses, this definitely stands up in its own right as an interesting and moreish member of a cheeseboard. I do warn you though, if I ever see a kiwi-flavoured Stinking Bishop or a galangal-infused Stichelton, I'm starting a campaign.
7/10
I don't blame you if the scene above looks familiar. Ardrahan is a soft, pungent, washed-rind cheese and is certainly not the first of its kind on this blog. However, it is the first Cheese of the Month ever to come from Ireland, and specifically Co. Cork, which has a reputation as a culinary capital of the country and hosts the annual Taste of Cork food festival (sister event to the prestigious Taste of London in Hyde Park). If I'm perfectly honest, although I'm sure the Irish have a perfectly decent culinary heritage, I'm pretty far from an expert on it. The best I could come up with after a very unscientific poll of a few mates was Guinness, Oysters and some bar in Dublin which apparently does nice chicken wings, but that's probably more down to ignorance on our part than a lack of anything to eat over there. For someone who really does know what they're talking about, try here. Meantime, I've got some cheese to taste.
After the disappointment of last month's mail order fiasco, it was a blessed relief to be back in a proper cheese shop (Whole Foods in Kensington, whose selection seems to actually improve every time I visit, if not their service) where I could see the products up close before I handed over the cash. We had actually dropped in for some Gubbeen (a house favourite which for some reason I've never got around to reviewing) but the Ardrahan caught my eye partly for the novelty and partly because I'd had a lovely pie made out of it in the Prince of Wales in Putney last year, and if there's one thing I admire in a cheese it's versatility.
The benefit of the personal touch made itself evidence once I had unwrapped and brought it to room temperature later that evening. This is a cheese in perfect condition - glorious, billowy, bouncy flesh without a hint of chalkiness and coated in a delicate layer of sticky orange rind. Also, like other cheeses of this kind, although it smells like something dragged up from the seventh level of hell, in the mouth the aroma is reduced and a satisfying, earthy, farmy flavour comes through. But most of all, it's the texture that I love about Ardrahan. It's firm enough to cut and display neatly on the cheeseboard but is spongy on the bite and the salty, rich flavours dissolve generously when eaten.
Although Ardrahan is a safe choice in some respects - I knew I'd like it and I did - let's not pretend for a second that cheeses like this are easy to make, and I don't want anyone to think I'm getting blasé about yet another washed rind cheese being nice to eat. Ardrahan, like Stinking Bishop, has been produced by one family for the last fifteen years, from a small herd of specifically bred cattle, and a tight rein is kept over quality control at every stage of the process. The Burns family, at their farm in Kanturk, Co. Cork, clearly make cheeses because they love making cheeses, and the fact that the product available in your local cheese shop is a triumph is most definitely not an accident - it's the result of years and years of hard graft and attention to detail. So well done them, and lucky, lucky us.
8/10
