Creating cheeses

 Sue in Suffolk is on a cheese mission, to taste those 'Artisan' cheeses beloved of farm markets.  So I decided to get down one of my favourite books -  Dorothy Hartley's Food In England, written in the 1950s.

Hartley wrote a book of such depth on how food was prepared that perhaps we should return to it.  Yesterday there was a meeting to talk about the shortages of certain food in Britain and of course how to handle the shortage because of Brexit (I will not go down that path), we seem to produce about 60% of our food, the rest imported.

And I see another book recommended is Henry Dimbleby's book 'Ravenous' on the horrors of all our over manufactured food which is slowly poisoning us apparently, with the chemical use of additives, etc.

Hartley talks in that romantic voice of a past era when where you pastured your cows would flavour the different cheese.  A geographical flavour.  It reminds me in 'Tess of the D'Urbervilles' when the cows must have eaten the garlic flower and tarnished their milk. the plant shows at this time of the year, though garlic butter would have been quite delicious. 

Transport of course killed off all the small cheesemakers, home made cheese slowly became a thing of the past, as the farmers poured their milk into churns and left it at the bottom of the farm for it to go off to the larger cheese centres. Also given the event of the Milk Marketing Board (does that still exist) local cheese became a rarity.

It is interesting to read that cheese making relied on the seasonal time of the year, here I quote "moorland cheese was only made in spring, hay-fed cattle went out and grazed the scented alder and new grass on the mountains.  'Hay cheese' was never the same as 'Dale' or 'moorland' cheese.

Hartley goes on to say that factory made cheese became rubbery, the cream content lower, the summer cheese was the only decent cheese.

Of course, and don't tell my granddaughter this, is the whole flavouring of cheese not only came from the bacillus but in the olden days from the spores floating around which was also deeply ingrained in the wood and part of the individual farmhouse offerings.

Stilton cheese was first made in 1600, and found originally at a manor house in Quenby, Leicestershire and it was known as Quenby cheese, though before it had been known as Lady Beaumont cheese, made by Elizabeth Scarbrow.  Her two daughters grew up, got married and took the recipe with them, one in marriage to the Landlord of the Bell Inn at Stilton, where it later took its name we know it as now.  Somerset cheese was the best, those rich meadows produced good milk.  Apparently you can make potato cheese .

5lbs of potatoes boiled and pulped, 1lb of solid sour milk.  Knead together and press into small square rush baskets.  It apparently produces a soft white cheese but does depend on what 'the old cheese kit' is infected with!

I went to the Mighty Tod organic shop today, and they have great selection of vegan cheeses, none of which I have tried yet, but guess it must be flavoured from the nutritional yeast I sprinkle over my soup.