Don't Pass the Stilton (Stilton)

Name: lamorna

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Product:	Stilton
Date:	17/08/01 (351 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: British, Protected, Exports Market

Disadvantages: Maggots, Mouth Ulcers, Mould

It was a hot Summer: July 1976: A drought had been officially declared, and although we needed the holiday visitors here in West Dorset, in order to boost the local businesses and maintain employment, they were using our precious water supplies, and there was a sense of siege in the area. This was the same year as the famous Cod Wars in the North Sea, but that’s another catering story.

Six days a week, from Monday to Saturday, I ran my busy hairdressing salon in Bridport, plus three evenings a week I was a part-time waitress in an busy Inn in Burton Bradstock where my Chef husband ran the restaurant and bar food enterprise. Added to this I had a very young daughter, who used to come with me on these three evenings a week, and get put into one of the pub bedrooms to sleep, then get rudely dragged out of her bed round about midnight to be driven home and popped into her own bed. As I write this I find it hard to recall how much energy I had, and indeed used in those far off times.

We only used fresh foods in the restaurant and bar, every meal being cooked to order, no micro-ovens or convenience foods for my very talented chef husband. This meant the refrigeration was working overtime to keep to the temperatures required for safety precautions in feeding the public in this extraordinary heat. We bought fresh provisions daily from local suppliers, including cheeses. In normal times, we bought a whole Stilton which would be kept in an old fashioned larder, but it was far too hot for this, so instead we shopped every day for smaller quantities of everything and kept them in the fridge. This is not recommended for cheeses as they should be served at room temperatures, but room temperatures in this hot, hot July were more like those of a warm oven, and food was ‘going off’ in frighteningly short time spans.

I had bought a pound of gorgeous looking Stilton from the local delicatessen this particular July Saturday lunchtime, placed
it in my fridge at home in the flat above my salon until my evening shift at the Inn, when I had put the Stilton and my dear daughter in the car, driven the short distance to work, and then put the pound of Stilton in the excellent catering fridge. At all times the Stilton remained wrapped. It did!

It was a very busy Saturday night, with all the tables in both the bar and the restaurant being occupied twice over during the evening, and the evening so hot that it wasn’t really inductive to cheese eating. Usually we had a fine Cheese Board made up ready and garnished, primed to take to a table when requested, enabling the eager diners to see the choices available, but had tactically decided to make a board up from the fridge on demand.

The last table of the evening wanted to see the Cheese Board to finish their meal with a savoury rather than a dessert , complete with Port and cigars. I made the board up in the kitchen, straight from the fridge, garnishing it with grapes, apples, nuts, nut-crackers, butter, biscuits and including my freshly purchased pound of Stilton along with other local cheeses. It was a long passageway from the kitchen to the dining room and I noticed nothing amiss on my way to the table carrying my selection.

I posed neatly with my cheese board (Can you see Julie Walters yet? Or perhaps Sybil? Or even Patsy?) the diners pointing enthusiastically at the Stilton and decided on a ‘good wedge please’. I opened the glass cover of the domed board, moved the Stilton slightly…and a seething mass of crawling, wriggling, vile, evil, swarming, teeming, heaving maggots shot out from underneath the piece of cheese and hurtled themselves over the entire board at an astonishing speed!!! I felt the suspended silence lingering in the air! Had they seen them I wondered?

“Excuse me Sir” I said prettily “ I seem to have mislaid my special cheese cutting knife” The diner very k
indly offered me a spare knife from the table! No!

“No Sir! I have to have my special knife!” and I wordlessly tore out of the restaurant as fast as I decently could and scuttled up the long passage way like a scalded cat.

The kitchen was in that particular end of session mood that, as any of you will know who have worked in commercial catering, is the norm after a very busy, and so far, successful evening. An incident free session is always greeted with relief. I was speechless, no words would come out. Was I hyperventilating? Yes! I threw the offending cheese dome on the stainless steel table and mouthed silently and hysterically to my husband “Maggots! Millions of them!” and then I fainted…I was revived very quickly with the strong vapours of a cheap glass of cooking brandy being waved under my nostrils. Got to keep me working as we were short staffed. No time for histrionics in catering. By this time my husband had remade up another cheese board, minus the Stilton, and insisted I went straight back into the restaurant.

“ The Stilton wasn’t up to our usual standard Sir” I muttered weakly, and proceeded to cut the table some local goat’s cheese. I have never been able to eat Stilton cheese since.

I somehow think my opinion on Stilton Cheese, the long hot summer, the rogue blue-bottle fly and resultant maggots won’t be doing a lot in promoting their sales so I shall now redeem myself by relating a few facts that I certainly didn’t know before.

· Stilton is a protected name, taken from the village of the same name in Cambridgeshire, but the cheese was never made there.
· Stilton can only be made in three counties. Derbyshire, Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire.
· There are just six or seven dairies licensed to make Stilton Cheese worldwide.
· White Stilton is also protected, and the reason its white is that no mould spores are added as in t
raditional Stilton.
· Stilton was first made in the early 18th Century in the midlands.
· In 1966 The Stilton Cheese Makers Association succeeded in getting “Protected Designation of Origin” status for Blue Stilton from the European commission.


One of the simplest and effective main dishes my chef husband would offer on our menus was Local Corn Fed Chicken Breasts and a Blue Stilton Sauce. The ease is because of the high milk/fat content used to make a Stilton, 136 pints of milk to one 17lb whole cheese, allowing the cheese to be heated and melt into a delicious, creamy, pouring consistency. Very classic and impressive and most importantly, a fast dish to prepare from fresh ingredients in a hectic restaurant.

Avocado pear with the flesh scooped out, mixed with crispy grilled, chopped bacon, put back in the empty half avocado skin, then topped with Stilton, followed with a fast blast under a hot grill was good, but sounds very ‘80s to me now. Aren’t some of the dishes of the ‘80s making a return to our menus?

This is an ‘80s style first course. Three different types of melon, the various coloured flesh sliced into fingers, arranged in a circular fan shape on a large plate, and dressed with Stilton cheese crumbled into real mayonnaise and served with plenty of watercress

I once burnt the inside of my mouth while on a Stilton binge, and have since discovered that I overdosed on a cheese that was too young for my delicate palette, and that the acidity which blistered me diminishes as the cheese matures and the taste is creamier and wouldn’t have burnt me at all. I wish I’d known that, as I was in agony for days, and nearly resorted to Germolene and gauze dressing on the roof of my mouth.

I personally think I should stick to a gentler cheese, but it is still a British Cheese to be proud of, and 10% of our Stilton production is exported annually, and very fort
unately not the Stilton I bought in my local delicatessen in 1976.

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