Not Quite Chocolate But Darn Near Almost (Stilton)

Name: jillmurphy

Hello doyoo user, You have to be logged in to use these functions... Login or register Close window

Send message to member

Product:	Stilton
Date:	19/07/01 (276 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: It's just about almost as nice as chocolate.

Disadvantages: It's just about almost as nice as chocolate.

You all know I like chocolate, don’t you? You’ve not missed that particular salient fact about me? Thought not. I do like chocolate. I love it. But I also love cheese. As I love all chocolate, just about, so do I love all cheese, just about. And, as with chocolate, with cheese I have my favourites. Stilton is one of them. What a lovely cheese it is. It's just so grand somehow. So creamy and veined and marbled with that brown, textured rind. It just looks so good sitting there on your cheese board, so, well, so smart and refined and, well, grand. It’s a proper cheese. It looks like a really good, proper cheese. Even the colours are strong but muted. It has good taste. (Oh my lord, I got so carried away I punned, poorly. Ignore it please and move along swiftly to the next paragraph).

And it tastes so nice. It’s rich and crumbly, yet while it crumbles it remains creamy. How does it do that? It’s a mystery to me, but a nice one. And when you eat it you get that rich, creamy flavour first before the sharp tang hits you. It runs you through the whole gamut of cheesy tastes. And it goes so well with that other favourite of mine, a nice glass of smooth red wine. I mean, why bother with all those other courses in restaurants when you could move straight on to the last two, the ones with the Stilton and the chocolate mints?

Did you know that real Stilton can only be made in England, in three counties? And that it’s actually the name of a small town? I do, because I thought I’d better give you some proper useful information and I looked on http://www.stiltoncheese.com. You can only call your cheese Stilton if you make it in Derbyshire, Leicestershire or Nottinghamshire and even then only six dairies are licensed to make it. There are all sorts of rules and regulations about making it to keep it just as grand as it does too, look, I’ll paste you a little bit from the same site:

“To be call
ed Stilton, each cheese must:

•be made only in the three counties from local milk which is pasteurized before use
•be made only in a traditional cylindrical shape
•be allowed to form its own crust or coat
•be un-pressed
•have delicate blue veins radiating from the center
•have a taste profile typical of Stilton.”

Gosh. You can freeze it too, apparently, although it’s never around this house long enough to bother with any of that sort of thing, thank you very much. What’s unpressed, anyway?

Ooh but there are so many more things to do with Stilton cheese other than whack it on the cheese board, majestic addition though it makes to that time in a meal. Branch out, be brave – Stilton goes with loads and loads of things. I’ll tell you some of my favourites non-cheese boardy ways to eat it. And all the things I do are easy, so don’t worry, because I can’t cook and I’m lazy, so if it’s not quick, easy and technique-free then you won’t see a mention here.

Ok, um… try this – slice up some streaky (has to be streaky or it crisps horribly and not rightly) bacon into tiny pieces about the size of a Micro Machines soldier (or half a little finger if you don’t have children but Micro Machines soldiers are good because they’re tiny but still jointed), and fry it until jolly crisp in a frying pan with some olive oil and a tiny bit of garlic if you like garlic. Even if you really like garlic don’t use too much for this one though, it spoils it. While the bacon is frying peel and chop an avocado into chunks the size of those pineapple chunks that go with other, more boring cheese, on sticks. Put it in a dish, one of those pasta dishes or a soup bowl. Take your Stilton – the white, most crumbly one works best, and crumble it, or sort of roughly chop it into pieces about a quarter the size of the avoc
ado pieces. When the bacon is all luverly and crispy and the fat has turned all golden and yumptious smelling mix it in with the avocado. Then sprinkle the Stilton on top of that, then drizzle some of the olive oil from the frying pan on top of that. Then run away with the bowl and hide, in case anyone wants to share. Mmm.

Or try this – get a nice mummy like mine, or learn how to cook, or check out the nice soups by those clever Covent Garden people. A nice mummy like mine is best because then you’ll get the best two soups of all; leek and potato, and broccoli. Anyway, get your soup of choice, best a similar flavour (do soups have flavours?) to one of those made by my mum, warm it through slowly and nicely and put it in your good old soup bowl (wash it first if you’ve just done the bacon and avocado thing though, please). Take Stilton cheese chopped or crumbled as above and drop into the soup the very second it’s served. Leave it for a minute or two while you cut yourself some gorgeous fresh bread in a great, big doorstep slice, and when you return you’ll see that it’s started to melt. Eat right then, while the soup’s still hot and the cheese is half-melted. Argh, I’m getting hungry now.

Oh, go on, have one more idea, after this you’ll just have to be inventive. Stilton goes brilliantly with apple and celery. Now, as I’ve said before, I’m lazy. So what I do is grab a few celery sticks, core and slice an apple and cut a wedge of the cheese. I whack it on a plate with some green salad leaves that have had a small trickle of vinaigrette or balsamic vinegar splished (only a little bit, so not splashed, you’ll have to pardon my ‘cooking’ lingo, sorry) on them. Then, I’m afraid to say, I eat it all with my fingers, preferably while watching a film. My clever-cook mummy does a similar thing only much more cookily and poshly; she makes a light mayonnaise dressing and
serves it as a salad on the side of a perfectly cooked steak, but I can’t do that. And anyway, it’d take too long I’m sure.

I’m absolutely starving now so that’s all you’re getting. I need to check the Stilton stocks in our fridge. It’s quite likely Conor and Kieran removed it and ate it while I wasn’t looking, in revenge for some chocolate theft or other of mine, I expect. If we have any though, I’m not going to do any of the above. I’m going to open a bottle of nice red wine, get an apple or some grapes and a nice big hunk of Stilton. And I’m just going to eat it all up. After that I might make some coffee and move on to the chocolate.

A bientot (in too much of a hurry to bother with character map)!

Summary: