Tag Archives: cheese

Nov25

Exercise your brain to help you lose weight

Posted on by
Exercise your brain to help you lose weight

According to new research from brain training website cannyminds.com, brain teasing activities, like crosswords and Sudoku, can help you lose weight.

Although, not nearly enough to make me spend my time doing Sudoku, as you would have to play for a whole hour just to burn off the calories in a biscuit.

I reckon I use my brain a fair amount each day, so would rather just spend half an hour cycling to work and back, saving money on public transport and burning enough calories to eat a good few slices of cake every day.  Or, if you are like me and prefer savory to sweet, loads and loads of cheese mmmn.

The one real benefit I can see though is for the elderly and those unable to take exercise. While they may struggle to exercise their bodies, brain training is easy and accessible and is key in helping maintain mental agility.

An article in today’s Daily Telegraph includes a list of snacks containing the same amount of calories you can burn in an hour’s brain workout – you clearly need a lot of time on your hands for it to make any real difference!

Oct21

Dentist says, “white wine no, cheese yes”

Posted on by
Dentist says, “white wine no, cheese yes”

According to Nutrition Research, drinking white wine can be seriously damaging to your teeth, but…wait for it…they recommend you eat cheese, yipeeeeee!

An article on the BBC website goes into more detail, but in short it is due to the PH levels of the drink, rather than the colour or the alcohol content.  According to Johannes Gutenberg University team, if you want to do some serious dental damage, hit the Riesling wines and other similar whites, mix them with fruit, then brush your teeth immediately after.

Red wines like Rioja are the least offensive, and if you add food to the cocktail, the saliva produced when eating helps neutralise the acid, and consequently lessen the damage.  The BBC article quotes Professor Damien Walmsley of the British Dental Association “If you’re going to have a glass of wine do so with your meal and leave a break of at least 30 minutes afterwards before you brush your teeth and go to bed.”

Most importantly though, according to the research team; “The tradition of enjoying different cheeses for dessert, or in combination with drinking wine, might have a beneficial effect on preventing dental erosion since cheeses contain calcium in a high concentration.”

So the moral of the story is to eat lots of cheese and avoid fruit…kind of…?

I can at least try to convince myself that in order to drink more wine, I need to eat more cheese, but given the amount I already consume, I am sure I will be causing some other damage to my body – humn, maybe the anti-oxidants in red wine will help?
White Wine on Foodista

Digg!

Oct3

A taste sensation at Hibiscus

Posted on by
A taste sensation at Hibiscus

As British Cheese Week draws to an end, and I sit here piling through a plate of Stinking Bishop, Ragstone, and Penyston, I have been trying to think of the most memorable ‘last course’ I have ever had in a restaurant in the UK. There is one clear winner – without a doubt, it has to be the last dish on the tasting menu I had at Hibiscus about 4 months ago.

I guess maybe it stuck in my mind so much, because we weren’t told what was on the menu until the plate arrived in front of us – all we knew was that this was the last dish on the menu, we hadn’t had any pudding or cheese, so assumed that it would be along those lines – Obviously I was hoping it would be a plate of gooey, smelly cheese…

This, it wasn’t, but oh, how I was pleasantly surprised!  I think you should probably see what it looked like first before I explain what it tasted like, you’ll see why…

Hibiscus

All the waiter said when the plate was placed in front of us was: “Before you taste it, I would like you to look at it, try and guess what it is, then when I come back, tell me what you think.”

So, we looked at it and decided that it clearly looked like Tarte au Citron, with vanilla ice cream and vanilla on the side -right..? Although seeing as the waiter had asked us to guess what it was, and knowing we were in the hands of Chef Claude Bosi, we were pretty sure it wasn’t this.

When the waiter came back, we told him what we thought it looked like, and with a rye smile, he replied in his rather sexy French accent “just taste it and let me know what you think…”

Humn, asparagus tart…amazingly light, but a powerful flavour at the same time. Then to the ice cream, WOW, goats cheese – What a taste sensation, tangy and wonderfully creamy and it went so well with the asparagus!  I still could not work out what the little black dots were, they certainly weren’t vanilla, nor licorice, what the hell were they…? We succumbed to the waiter, “black olive,” well, of course once I knew, that was clearly what it was but I guess I must have been duped by the appearance – who would have thought?!

The whole dish was well thought out.  Visually, it looked stunning, each flavour complemented the other perfectly, but more importantly it was a dish that teased me, it challenged me both in taste and in sight – and for that reason it is my most memorable last course.

If you are looking for a taste sensation, then head to Hibiscus. It may not be the warmest of atmospheres when you first walk in, looking more like a gentleman’s club, but the waiters and sommelier are incredibly friendly and accommodating; the wine list, extensive and the food, simply delicious!

Below are some other delights we sampled on the Hibiscus tasting menu:

IMG_0527

IMG_0530

IMG_0531

IMG_0534

Foie gras ice cream - amazing...

IMG_0537

(Please excuse the quality of these photos, they were taken on my phone)

Sep30

It’s British Cheese Week – heaven!

Posted on by
It’s British Cheese Week – heaven!

As you may have guessed from reading any of my previous posts, I love cheese, so how happy was I to discover that this week was British Cheese Week!!!

Even though I stuffed myself full of kilos of Raclette in Chamonix last week, I thought I would celebrate British Cheese Week in style, by heading down to Daylesford.   I picked a neat little selection: Dalesford’s Double Gloucester, Adlestrop and Penyston, some Stinking Bishop and a large Ragstone from Neal’s Yard, all of which we are having for supper later this evening – can’t wait!IMG_0582

Whilst in the shop, I noticed Daylesford was highlighting it’s success at the recently held British Cheese Awards.  This year, their Double Gloucester was awarded Gold, Adlestrop was given silver and Penyston received a bronze, so congratulations to Daylesford!IMG_0583

The Times Online covers the awards in more detail.

Looking at the awards website www.TheCheeseWeb.com, I came across the following information on how they organise the cheeses for the judges – I found it particularly fascinating, so I have copied and pasted it below.  Enjoy ;-) .

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

Unlike wine, animals and books, the character of a cheese can usually be judged by a glance at its cover or rind and an occasional squeeze.  From this brief encounter you can learn to judge its texture, strength of flavour, basic character and, with a little practice, its maturity.  Using the ‘rind’ method, you can categorise 99% of all cheeses into one of the following and it is also the system we use when organising the cheeses for the judges at the British Cheese Awards.

FRESH CHEESES  [No rind]
Examples: Cream Cheese, Feta, Mozzarella
Only 1-15 days old without time to develop a rind and only a subtle ‘lactic’, fermenting fruit flavour with a hint of green pastures.  Often wrapped in chestnut leaves, rolled in ash or covered in herbs to give them character.  Some are left to drain and dry out, gradually developing a delicate bluish grey mould, a wrinkled rind and a more pronounced flavour and are called Aged Fresh or Natural Rind cheeses and are usually made with goats’ milk].

SOFT WHITE [White Fuzzy Rind]
Examples: Tunworth, Flower Marie, Somerset Brie
The curd retains much of the whey, ensuring the cheese becomes soft and creamy and grows a white mould, Penicillin candidum.  Unpasteurised varieties develop a reddish-brown ferment on the rind whereas pasteurised versions are more ‘Persil’ white in appearance.  Those made by adding cream to the milk are outrageously luxurious in taste and texture.

SEMI-SOFT [Brown-orange to grey-brown]
Examples: Stinking Bishop, Keltic Gold, Gubbeen, Ardrahan
The moist curd is placed in moulds and lightly pressed to speed up draining.  Gradually various moulds develop, these are regularly brushed off building up a thickish rind, protecting the cheese and allowing it to mature.   Some are ‘washed’ in brine creating an orange/pink rind with a strong, piquant flavour and aroma.

HARD [Thick, dense rind often waxed, clothbound or oiled]
Examples: Cheddar, Wensleydale, Cheshire
The curd is cut finely, and then heated in vats before the whey is drained off.  The curd is cut again or even ‘milled’ and piled on top of itself to remove even more of the whey – this process is called cheddaring. The curd is salted, packed in moulds traditionally lined with cheesecloth and firmly pressed.

BLUE [Gritty, rough, dry or sticky]
Examples: Stilton, Barkham Blue, Shropshire Blue
The blue moulds, P. glaucum or P. Roqueforti are added to the milk but need oxygen to develop their colour.  This is achieved by piercing the cheese with rods [normally steel but can be wood or plastic], the blue then grows along the tunnel, cracks and trails between the roughly packed curds.

FLAVOUR ADDED [typically barely formed rind]
Examples: Smoked Cheddar, Wensleydale with Cranberries, Cornish Yarg
There are two types of Flavour Added Cheeses, those where the ingredients are added to the fresh curd so they aged together or the cheese is wrapped with an ingredient for example Cornish Yarg wrapped in nettles. The other type is those called blended or re-formed cheeses. These are made by taking a young cheese, typically cheddar, White Stilton or Wensleydale and
blending it with a variety of flavourings then pressing the cheese into a new shape. Flavours range from smoked to nuts, fruit, spices, herbs even salmon or ham.

Aug24

My new found love of British cheeses

Posted on by
My new found love of British cheeses

Anyone who knows me will tell you that I am completely addicted to cheese – anything smelly, gooey and running off a plate.

My real favorites have always been alpine cheeses like Vacherin Mont d’or, Raclette, Abondance, Reblechon or any cheese with a really strong flavour like a Munster, Epoisses or more recently an English Vintage Cheddar or Stinking Bishop.  

This weekend however, I stayed in the Cotswolds in a beautiful village called Oddington. I have always had masses of respect for british cheese making, but didn’t really think there was much competition to the French farms. Well, how wrong was I?  And how ignorant do I feel, seeing as I always thought I knew a fair amount about cheese…

So this weekend, I was introduced to some cheese from a farm in nearby Kingham, which interestingly belongs to Blur’s Alex James. That in itself warrants a taste!  I have to say I was gobsmacked and completely blown away by his cheese, especially his Stow Soft, which looks like a large goats cheese with its classic white rind exterior.  

Before eating the cheese, I  was instructed to slice the top off and then take a spoon and dig into the cheese…oh wow!  As I dragged the spoon out of the cheese, it dripped over the cheese board and I slurped it onto the side of my plate. Forget the biscuit, this was a time for indulgence so I dipped my finger into the cheese, which was walking itself off my plate, wrapped as much as I could around my finger and in it went – Such a complex and intense flavour, and just so gooey, that’s it, I have found my new favourite.  It may be the morning, but I am salivating just thinking about it – God I love cheese!  Then if that wasn’t good enough, I tried the Kingham Green, also from the same farm…where can I get some more of this?!

Forget French cheeses for the moment, I am on a mission to taste more of these British cheeses, and how happy am I to find that I can buy Alex’s Kingham cheese in London – and strangely enough I passed the very shop on Friday walking through Pimlico and thought I should get around to writing something about it.  Daylesford Organic http://www.daylesfordorganic.com/icat/cheese.  As well as Pimlico, there is also a store on Westbourne Grove.

If you are a fan of good organic food, this is the shop for you.  It just smells fantastic, you walk into the open-plan black and white crisp hall, and the food is just calling out for you to try some and take it home..okay so you need a new mortgage once you come out – but its soooo worth it!

logo_daylesford-1