Burt's Blue Cheese - Altrincham, Cheshire

It's British Cheese Week; the time of year which fromageophiles such as myself use as an excuse to stock up on the good stuff, retreat indoors and only emerge after the last gooey globlet has been wiped out of the fondue.

So taking a break from the annual face stuffing, I'm resting my mandibles and sitting down to write a piece about the one cheese you should be searching out this week.

Burt’s Cheese is the new kid on the artisan cheese block. Handmade with all natural ingrediants by Claire Burt in Altrincham since 2009 it's since gained such critical acclaim that the cheese took Gold in the Specialist Cheese Makers Class at the International Cheese Awards 2010 in its first year and is now featuring on the menus of some of the best restaurants in the North West.

Claire Burt with her gold award

Focusing on quality rather than quantity, Claire Burt hand makes the cheese herself in small batches with pasteurised milk from the local dairy co-op, in a small dairy one mile from her house. The cheeses are pierced during maturation, which encourages the blue veins to develop, along with the cheese's flavour.

So, what's it like? Burt's is a small cheese; a dainty blue truckle, with an interesting blue mould bloom covering the surface. Each cheese comes in an individual paper wrapping and sealed with the date it was made and when it will keep to. On opening you are presented with a very pretty, lopsided, circular cheese with a faint aroma of mushrooms. As Burt's is handmade in small batches, each one tastes slightly different and looks unique. If you can face cutting open something of such beauty, revealed is a beautiful off-white, soft cheese with blue veins running through the middle.

Burt's Blue - with thanks to Smell My Kitchen Blog

This isn't a knock your socks of piquant blue that you can smell from the other side of the room; it's far more subtle than that. Burt's Blue is very creamy and soft, with a luxurious mouth feel. After the initial heavy dose of cream, there's a marked sharp top note, followed by a salty, warmer finish.

The creamy density and slight sweetness of Burt's Blue is great with the sharp fruit around now, some cox apples went particularly well, as did the slightly under ripe pears I 'borrowed' off the tree at work. I wouldn't suggest you pair the cheese with overpowering flavours, but sitting on top of an oatcake really shows off the full range of flavours in the cheese. Chef Jason Palin has also come up with quite a few recipes for cheese including the Welsh RareBurt - proving it's versatile as well as tasty. However, for me, simple is the best - wedges of Burt's on its own – pure and delicious.

Burt's Blue showing blue veins

So impressed was I with the cheese I managed to pin Claire down in between cheese batches and caring for her young son Noah to give me a brief insight into how Burt’s got started.

How did you get in to cheese making?
I was working for Dairygold Food Ingredients in Product Development and was lucky to be sent on a cheese making course, plus got to visit dairies across Ireland, UK, Italy and Denmark. I got really interested in it, then I made some cheese in my kitchen and it started from there.

What was your first cheese like?
It actually turned out like a cheese! But I didn't unfortunately get to taste it as I'd just found out I was expecting, so my husband had to be my guinea pig. Luckily it didn’t do him any harm so I carried on.

How it all starts - the curds and why of Burt's Blue

So how do you get from cheese making in the kitchen to a proper product on shelves?
I kept making cheese at home and when I worked out it was something I wanted to do, I spoke to Environmental Health about a fit for sale product. From there it was about getting into the local shops and luckily both Red House Farm and my local deli in Goosegreen, Altincham were impressed enough to take the cheese on. I did go back to work as I'd been doing this on my maternity, but my heart wasn't in it and now I produce Burt’s Blue full time.

Do you still turn out the cheeses in the kitchen?
No! I've been very lucky to find a small room that adjoins the Cheshire Cookery School just up the road from my house, which is very handy. I had a few false starts finding places, but this is my permanent home now. I've kitted the room out with plastic wall cladding, vats, moulds and all the other cheese making paraphernalia. It's a proper dairy. The cheese is both made, matured here and packaged here.

Any disasters?
Thankfully not too many and not what you term proper disasters. We initially used a single farm to produce the cream and the milk, however they couldn’t change their rounds to suit us and this was a big problem in the warm weather. We now buy off a local co-op instead and this suits us much better. I think the only proper has been during the cold weather all the pipes froze so we had no water to make the cheese with. As they thawed they burst and we had considerably too much water!

Burt's Blue at four weeks old

What have you learned in the last year?
It’s been a massive learning curve and I learned so much, each day I’m learning new things and think I always will. Finding the right suppliers, working with stockists, getting the cheese right, all the different coats on the cheese; it just carries on. However sometimes you realise things are beyond your control. There's a saying that cheese never sleeps; I think that goes for the cheese maker as well! I still very much feel like a beginner and am very excited about what the future holds.

Ps The cheese is suitable for veggies too, so we can all enjoy!
Burts is now stocked in the following places: Cheese Shop, Chester; Cheese Hamlet, Didsbury; Barbakan Deli, Chorlton; Cheese Emporium, Altrincham Market; Red House Farm, Altrincham; Cheshire Smokehouse; Good Cheese Company; Pendrills, wholesaler (supplies into Northcotes); Sam's Fresh and Local, Bramhall; Cheerbrook Farm Shop; De Fine, Sandiway; The Hollies Farm Shop, Cheshire; Hopley House, Middlewich; Williams & Sons, Holmes Chapel; Yellow Broom, Twemlow; Sextons, Lymm; Pokusevskis Deli, Heaton Moor; Ken's deli, Westhaughton. And you can catch Claire at the Altincham Producers Market, held every third Saturday of the month.
Burt’s Blue Cheese, 14 Grosvenor Close, Altincham, Cheshire WA14 1LA –
07709 394292 – Claire@burtscheese.com – Twitter

http://www.burtscheese.com/

Bolton Market

Foodies have long heralded the farmers' market; fair trade jute bag in hand, chatting to the suppliers over ears of freshly harvested corn and handmade gluten free cupcakes.

However we need to remember that the raise of the farmers' market is not just a modern phenomenon, but an extension of the traditional market that has been the mainstay of the populace's shopping experience for the past thousand years.

Bolton market is very much a product of the town's industrial past, housed in a Victorian market hall it's all tile, brick and iron. The town has held the charter to hold a market since 1251 and I can happily say this tradition is still going strong.

Last Saturday I did my usual shop at the market accompanied by the excellent food photographer, Christelle Vaillant (whose wonderful photos illustrate this edition of the blog - more of her work can be found on http://easydoesitrecipes.blogspot.com/). We spent a very enjoyable morning at the market, which won praise indeed from Christelle who hasn't seen such a market outside of her native France.

We've started shopping at the market after becoming increasingly depressed wandering round brightly illuminated isles, being over-charged for intensively packaged shiny fruits in the supermarket, or not being able to find much on the farmers' market in our price range - lovely for a spot of browsing or picking up something specialist; but not great at filling the shopping basket for the whole week.

Bolton's a usual mixed market, split in two; with general wares in one section and food in the other. You'll find the food market by following the fresh fishy smell and shouts of "seabass for for a fiver." Get ready for your senses to be assaulted as you're greeted on all sides by amazing sights, smells and sounds.

First stop is the fish stalls - there's a great selection at HJ Grundy; a good looking stall with spanking fresh fish. There's always the usuals, including staples such as cod and seabass, but it's also a great place to pick up the unusual. Last Saturday there were razor clams, live brown crab, prawns the size of my forearm, catfish and many others I've neither seen nor tasted before. The staff at Grundy's will clean, fillet and give you any bones of the fish you want. They're also very helpful when asking questions about what's fresh and when certain catches have come in. AND they stock local potted shrimps (Southport), something I stock up on at every opportunity!

On to Meat and Poultry for large, free range duck eggs and then over to Choice Cuts where you can get a good big slab of pork belly including nipple, a proper black pudding (Bury no less) and a cheeky chat with the guys on the stall. There's a handful of meat and fish suppliers here, so there's always plenty of choice for anything you need, including pigs feet and boiling chickens. As Bolton has a large ethnic community there are also a couple of Halal meats stalls with one specialising in super fresh Halal offal.

After the meat and fish you pop through to the fruit, veg and bakery section; which really is a riot of colour. Browse amongst the stalls for the best fruit and veg - most providers have grown savvy to the current localism trend and now mark on whether the stock is from the UK and even where about it's from; one of the stalls has some cracking Hesketh tomatoes at the moment. There doesn't seem to be one veg stall that's better than the others; it's a case of browse them all, picking up the freshest and the best. However there is a stall right at the back that's overflowing with chillies, fresh dates, Asian vegetables and humongous bunches of gorgeous herbs adding their heady fragrance to an already mind blowing shopping experience.

Special mention needs to be paid to Purdons cheese stall, selling a wide range of European cheeses and a large selection of local ones - this week I purchased a cracking Garstang Blue, which I decided upon with the help of staff (who kindly let me try quite a lot of samples).

Also worth a mention is Unsworth Deli, a places where real bread reigns supreme and you can pick up specialities like proper pancetta - not the flabby, little, flavoured lardons you pick up at the big four; but  a whole piece of cured meat off which you're sliced a lovely hunk. Plus the boy is very happy with their selection of pies (well he is Northern).

And last but not least Sweet Treats, found in the general side of the market. It’s a small, white sweet shop, but the only place you can find cream soda, plus you can put in a request for something you can’t find anymore and they’ll try to track it down for you. It’s recognisable by the yellow trays of Swizzles Matlow sweets reminiscent of the corner shop when you were eight.

Bolton Market's a brilliant alternative to the weekly big shop, you can sort all you food out but can't get everything there (such as toiletries); there's plenty of choice, the food's fresh and it's good to know that your money stays local.

Ps - Bolton Market has a market kitchen where they host cookery demos, even the Hairy Bikers have cooked there and they won Best Indoor Retail Market 2010. Even more reason to pay them a visit!

Pps - there's no parking at the market, however park at Sainsbury's on Trinity Street, parking's free for two hours. The train station is a five minute walk from the market and there's plenty of buses running in from the surrounding area.

Bolton Market is open Tue, Thurs, Fri and Sat - 9am-5pm. There's a second hand section on Friday and a car boot on Sunday.

Bolton Market, Ashburner Street, Bolton BL1 1TQ.

All photography in this blog has been taken by Christelle Vaillant, Food Photographer - check out more of her wonderful work here and here.

Vive le Cheese Tasting, Soup Kitchen - Manchester

Anyone who has read by blog or tweets will agree that I am completely addicted to cheese. It can happen to the best of us and it's happened to me. So imagine my delight to find Vive le Cheese; the people who have the job of promoting French cheese (can I  have a job there please?), were holding a cheese and wine night and had invited me to attend.

Held at the Soup Kitchen in Manchester's Northern Quarter, the night kicked off with an introduction to the 'Roving Fromagiere' Phoebe Weller, a large glass of wine and then we were straight in to cheese number one.

Making her way around a 12 cheese plate, Phoebe introduced us to a mix of good friends; Brie, Emmental; some smelly eccentrics such as Epoisses and a couple of newbies I hadn't had the delight to taste before (new to me not new to the world, as per usual each cheese exhibited was steeped in French tradition and only made in one cave by two monks and their goat's wife...).

Some of the many cheeses

Working her way through the plate, Phoebe introduced us to each cheese - instead of wolfing it down and discussing the tasting notes we were encouraged to touch the cheese, roll it around in our hands, note its texture, warm it up and smell it before getting anywhere near tasting it.

Whilst getting over friendly with our cheese, Phoebe built up the story behind each, throwing in little grenades of interesting facts such as: Gruyere is just an Emmental that hasn't made the quality grade, it's illegal to take Epoisses on public transport in France and that Reblouchon comes from 14th century peasants and is the fattier, second milking of the cow- it resulted from them conning their landlords out of milk (which is what their lease used to be paid in).

The stars of the show for me were a gooey, melting Saint Marcellin; which was nutty, yeasty and soapy - and went brilliantly with the grapes on the table. The other star was a new cheese to me, Pont-l-Eveque - which smelled of that lovely musty smell of a well ridden saddle and the pine tar so redolent of Finland. The taste was sweeter than the smell with an undercurrent of woodsmoke - utterly divine.

Pont l-Eveque - smells like Finland

The night was a success - the most interesting and engaging cheese tasting I've been to. Phoebe's wonderful energy suckered us in, pulled us all along and brought the story of every cheese to life.  It was enjoyable to attend an event with a great variety of cheese (though they could have snuck in one or two more blues); plus one where they let you take cheese home - I was snacking on Pont l-Eveque for the rest of the week!

Ps The Soup Kitchen also does their own food as well as hosting other people's - more on that in a couple of months.

http://www.vivelecheese.co.uk/home @vivelecheese

The Soup Kitchen, 31-33 Spear Street, Manchester M1 1DF, 0161 236 5100 - http://soup-kitchen.co.uk/
@SoupKitchen_Mcr

Butler's Cheese - Lancashire

Cheese - loved by many, loathed by the boy, obsessed over by me.

I remember the day I actually fell in love with cheese: I was three years old and my parents had laid out a classic 'bits and pieces' (basically a Saturday night off cooking for my Mum so we had a pic-nic in the lounge - blanket and all) and unusually for small village Wales there was a very ripe, creamy, oozing Camembert included in the spread.

My Dad, being a Dad and rather unmannered in my Mum's eyes, dipped his finger into the oozing cheese and thrust it into my little mouth (said same mouth that until that moment had only eaten Dairylea, Red Leicester and Cheddar) and I was in love - full blown obsession in fact. (Note: this evening was also the evening I fell in love with kabanos, hummus and tomatoes and developed my life-long hatred for rollmop herrings).

Although I loved cheese, my love for the blue stuff didn't come for a very long time. I may have eaten myself through all the hard and soft cheeses that the United Kingdom, France and other parts of Europe could churn out (slight dairy-ish pun intended) - but it wasn't until a cheese rolling competition on behalf of Stilton that I became addicted to this mouldy, smelly milk derivative.

When I first moved to Manchester I became aware of the North's fine cheeses, mostly helped along by visits to the old Love Saves the Day delis (remember them?) and it was here I first tasted Blacksticks Blue - much to my delight this is no longer a cheese confined to delis; but instead has won both critical acclaim (indeed Glyn Purnell just used it on the Great British Menu) and the love of the masses too and can now be found in the cheese aisle of the larger supermarkets, along with other Butlers stablemates.

Blacksticks Blue is an unusual cheese - it's blue yes, but it's also not creamy white, but a rich amber colour. The taste is subtle to start, with a soft and creamy mouth feel, then the nutty flavours start to creep in and by the end of the mouthful you have a delicious tangy punch and are begging for more.

My recent cheese feast inc Blacksticks Blue, Blacksticks Creamy and Creamy Lancashire

Blue is a cheese that makes a wonderful addition to a cheese board - it's a wonderfully unusual colour, doesn't stink the house out and has a sharper, tangier flavour than some of the conventional blues on the market. My favourite way with Blue is usually just on it's own snaffled out of the packet, but it's equally good on oatcakes or paired with fresh apple (a sweeter one) or even pear.

If the thought of a tangy blue cheese isn't your thing, then Butlers have jigged about with their original white blue cheese and brought out Blackstick's Creamy. This cheese has an even softer and creamier mouth feel than the Blue - it's almost decadent how the cheese melts on your tongue. Once again the flavour of the cheese creeps through, but there is no punchy tang, rather a sweet flavour that caresses your taste buds. This is the Butlers cheese to add to sauces, or to toss through pasta, add to salads and melt in the tops of frittatas (very good actually).

You don't just have to cook with Creamy; the cheese also lends itself well to the cheese board and is again great with fruit or even celery. There's nothing I like more than squashing Creamy into the middle of a stick of celery and crunching my way through it (it's got veg in it so it's one of your five a day!).

Butlers isn't all about blue cheese (though it is what they're famous for) - on my travels to my local retailer (read Tesco) I picked up some Butlers Creamy Lancashire - it certainly is creamy; it's also buttery and very smooth. This wouldn't be a cheese I'd usually eat as if I'm going for a hard cheese I tend to opt for a Cheddar that's going to blow my head off, but this made a welcome change. Unlike other low strength hard cheeses Creamy Lancashire still has plenty of taste and isn't a watered down cheap version of something, but a quality product in its own right.

Blacksticks Blue and Creamy - with thanks to Smoking Gun PR

The taste of Butlers Creamy Lancashire is very subtle at first, almost not even there; then a buttery milkiness fills the mouth, coupled with a slight sweetness that makes the cheese dangerously edible (I ate half the block in the first sitting). This is a cheese suited to eating as a cheese, rather than putting in a sauce where the delicate flavour may be lost. I found the best way was with sharp apples or on top of oatcakes and livened up with a small amount of Mr Vikki's Chili Jam (the BEST chili jam in the world - go get some!) or homemade chutney (I make quite a sharp one, I don't think it would pair too well with something you buy at the supermarket as they are usually over sweet). This is also an excellent cheese for butties - I made a very good one with the first of this season's tomatoes and thick slivers of the Lancashire in between some crusty white bread.

I'm glad Butlers are now gaining the success and the distribution that they deserve - hopefully this won't change their careful production methods. According to their website they hand make all their cheeses in individual moulds using milk from their own family farms and those in the surrounding region (within 10 miles or less) - certainly you can taste the care and attention that goes in to their cheeses, let's hope it continues.

Ps - Butler's also produces a sheeps milk blue cheese called Velvet and a goats milk called Silk - I have yet to taste either but will report back when I do.

Pps - Butlers is also running a cheese recipe competition - you can win a break in Lancashire and (more importantly) some of their lovely cheeses! Send your recipes to media@smokinggunpr.co.uk or check out the website.