Fromage ! (cheeses)

Here in the East Midlands its cheese country- a lot off it my view has gone off i.e. Stilton, Colston Bassett yuk yuk - its BAD!!!! I used to live in Wensleydale a cheese I did enjoy but I liked the Swaledale more BUT the favourite locally was another smelly gone off thing - Stinking Bishop!!! Aargh!!! generally I like a nice mature cheddar or other well flavoured hard cheese and here is the heresy Somerset Brie not French! I think I like cooked cheese dishes more but my all time horror is bloody broccoli and Stilton soup!!!!!!!!!!!! I can hear the shouts already

Heresy indeed- how could you! And you live in Melton Mowbray of all places doh ;) ;) ;) And Stilton and broccoli soup is one of the very best imho. Hey, each to their own, as in all things.

What a shame Cheddar totally missed the boat with protecting its cheese with an AOC- it really does go from the sublime to the ridiculous. Wisconsin cheddar is awful!

Stinking Bishop is excellent and so is Somerset Brie and many more.

There is a young guy in Zurich who, after marrying a Swiss, found it difficult to find a job- and started importing British cheeses into Switzerland- coals to Newcastle. Very difficult at first, but he has made a real success of it- and now imports and sells British Ales too. Well done to him. British Cheese of Switzerland is at the Viadukt market in Zurich and is owned and managed by Michael Fontana-Jones. Bravo.

I like Stinking Bishop, Camembert, Brie and Cambozola, Gruyere and Emmental, in fact probably any cheese apart from strong goats cheese.

I prefer a little of strongly tasting cheeses rather than namby-pamby 'mild' cheddars which taste of very little.

I love the opportunity to taste new cheeses

DH is type 2 diabetic and has just been told that having a 'matchbox-sized piece of cheese' was weekly, not daily; he's not a happy bunny!

White Stilton is the love of my life cheese wise. Sadly, need to stick to the old half-fat cheddar on a daily basis. the cheese makers are getting very good at low fat stuff though, so can't complain too much. I do like a bit of cheese!

When visiting Corsica, I enjoyed a fine selection of local cheeses - mainly sheep's milk - that never see the light of day away from the island. They were really strong and all seemed to have their own distinctive flavour. DS1 was at the time working as a chef for a holiday company and his cheese board was always highly popular.

Loopylou- don't quite follow why your DH should not enjoy a little more cheese than a small piece once a week- because he has Type 2 Diabetes?? Unless he has to lose a lot of weight quickly. Surely better for his diabetes than a piece of cake or high carbs???

Forgot Bleu de Gex- I suppose the closest to a Stilton, but from a bit further south than me, nearer Geneva.

Talking aobut half-fat, and too often tasteless cheese, I'd rather have a small piece of the best, than a larger piece of the not so tasty.
Hard enough cutting carbs without also cutting out taste.

Hi gj, what was the program called? I'd love to watch it. We love Comte and there's another one the name of which escapes me now, that my children always carry in when they're coming for a meal. We are off to France soon and I'm looking forward to bring home some cheese.

His clinic nurse is very diligent and he follows her every word granjura, I call her 'She Who Must Be Obeyed'! I don't understand it either, we eat a pretty healthy and varied diet.
I greatly suspect DH scoffs things he shouldn't when out driving [rolls her eyes] as he's put on weight over the last 6 months (he swears the scales are faulty!)

Cathedral City Mature, 30 per cent lighter, Cheddar, is absolutely delicious. I know. I have just enjoyed a morsel.

A cook abroad, episode 4

youtu.be/Va5HXNvfkEQ

Our Jura is not touristy at all, despite being so beautiful- so it was lovely to see Monica so enthusiastic- but her husband, chef sommelier at Le Gavroche, comes from around here, as Raymond Blanc does too.

When you think of the name of that cheese, come back to tell me.
The Morbier cheese has a dark line through the middle, but it is not mould. Made in winter by farms up the mountain, they didn't have enough to make a full cheese every day. So to stop a crust forming, they would throw a small layer of wood ash from the fireplace an top, and make the second half the next day. Mont d'Or is a winter cheese- again, small for the same reasons- and best eaten as a Boîte Chaude- take the lid off, make a cross on the top, slide some slivers of garlic in and then pour a bit of local white wine on top- put lid back on, and enclose the box in 2 layers of foil and bake in the oven for about 40 mins- then dip small potatoes in the molten mixture... delish.

Hi loopy that made me smile (but not really funny!) - I discovered when my husband had a heart attack that he had started smoking again "only at work" - and also that he was having a fry up every day! This was because I happened to be there when a very stern nurse was cross-questioning him in the hospital prior to his angioplasty. As sick as he was, I think I may have glared at him.

That's it (Morbier) I didn't read the list in your OP properly...

As an aside, having said the Jura is not touristy (which we love)- I was once waiting for the TGV fast train to Paris, very early in the morning, at our local French station (Pontarlier) when I had been visiting my parents (still lived in Leics) and I was totally on my own. Then I heard THAT voice... and I turned round to find, yes- Prunella Scales with her husband Timothy West and teenage kids. I was dying to say something, but guessed they were so happy to be incognito, and probably chose our area for thise reason- I kept quiet. But I was tickled pink and would have loved to ask what they thought of the area- where they had stayed, etc.

Sil and bil arrived to stay with us from the south of France, and said 'brought you some cheese I bet you've never tasted, it's wonderful' and handed over this nice piece of Morbier- oh how we laughed ;) and took them to visit one of the 'formagerie' where they make it, lol.

Fromagerie even! BTW Comté cheese fromageries are strangely called 'Fruitières' but it has nothing to do with fruit.

morbier is not too high in fat actually

It's rather strange Grannyknot that I'm kept away from his car boot; DD and I were giggling recently at his furtive efforts at 'tidying' its contents, without us seeing what was put in a carrier bag and buried under the bin bags in the wheelybin ...we suspect plenty of crap unhealthy food wrappers

He's his own worse enemy, silly man

loopy

gjura thanks for the link.

This is the official advice on the right diet for diabetics (Diabetes UK/NHS) www.diabetes.co.uk/diet/nhs-diet-advice.html and it says nothing about restricting consumption of cheese.

It still recommends a high carbohydrate diet, which surprises me. DH has very mild diabetes and he has both lost weight and got his diabetes very much under control on a diet lower than average in carbohydrate and higher in protein, including a lot of (low fat) cheddar cheese.

I should have added that we are a family of cheesoholics. When in France we eat a lot of the hard mountain cheeses that &granjura* mentioned. In England it is mainly cheddar and quark, but Christmas is always used as an excuse for an extensive English regional cheese platter.

I have doubts about DH's 'matchbox' size judging how fast cheese vanishes! I suspect he exaggerates size when it suits like many men!

I'm perfectly happy with a small portion of really flavoursome cheese.

DD's Somerset cousin makes one of the well known Cheddars (starting with an M, ) supplying people like Neals Yard etc and when his mother was still alive she used to send the some of the cheese they had taken a test "plug" from to be sold on the WI stall at the local farmers' market. She confided that the cheeses she judged not good enough for the WI stall, went to Tesco who marketed them under the label "Tesco's Finest"!
So sad that the name Cheddar can be applied apparently quite legally to any old " mousetrap".

A friend of mine, many years ago, worked for a food processing company and said it put her off 'cheddar' for life if it came in a supermarket pack. She wouldn't divulge what went on but told me to avoid processed cheese