How do you choose your cheese?

As we generally food shop at our local M&S we buy their own branded cheese. Most of the time this is West Country cheddar – strength 3 to 5. We enjoy the strongish taste in sandwiches, with biscuits, on toast (grilled or fresh), in omelettes, as a general purpose cheese . Occasionally we’ll have Brie, Lancashire and Cheshire for a change. Parmesan in the fridge for pasta. See no point in freezing cheese, just buy it in the weekly shop.

Cheese (Cheddar particularly) goes well with many things – fresh fruit, apple pie, fruit cake, raspberry jam in a sandwich, as examples. Perhaps be good to hear other people’s cheese favourite “pairings” for this versatile food.

A good mature farmhouse cheddar is my preference, especially with celery, but a lot of the big brand cheese producers seem to think we need it to be sharp. In my view this actually spoils the taste, and ruins the enjoyment of a cheese and cucumber or tomato sandwich. Double Gloucester is an easy-going cheese with a mellow flavour, and we also like Red Leicester, Lancashire, and Cheshire. Small portions of Shropshire Blue and Stilton are good on crackers and biscuits for cheese. Brie makes a pleasant change with a salad and a glass of Riesling, and some of the English Bries are rather good. Of course, for the connoisseur there are Dairylea cheese triangles with their unique taste and distinctive texture; very good with a 2016 Lambrini Bianco or a cup of tea even. We often stray into the continental selection so each week we tend to have something different from Germany, France , Italy or Greece, and occasionally from Holland, Portugal or Scandinavia. It will be interesting to see how leaving the EU might open up more choices from around the world and make some of the popular, but not necessarily better, cheeses from Europe more expensive.

Usually we buy our cheeses from the cheese counter in the delicatessen where we can sometimes do a taste test and also have cheese cut to order for the amount we want. What I do not like about the pre-cut and wrapped cheese on sale in the chiller cabinets in the dairy aisle is that all the Cheddars, and many of the other hard cheeses, are cut as slabs, and sometimes rather thin slabs, where the ratio of the sides and ends to the top and bottom is out of proportion, so to cut a nice flat section for a sandwich is nigh on impossible – you have to make the cheese layer up from slivers cut from the sides. Perhaps we need to buy one of those expensive professional cheese-wire gadgets [probably good for the unintentional finger nail as well].

I like to buy cheese I like, for Cheddars it tends to be stronger tasting more mature but I don’t like blue cheese and some really old Cheddars can have a blue taste, even if only in part. But it is fun to be able to taste cheeses and ask the “experts” for advice. (Tesco, hang you head in shame for putting a non-cheese eater on the counter – and a veggie on the meat counter). Waitrose does really well hear with having knowledgable people on their counters who also enjoy the products they are selling.

I also use the farmer’s markets and although we have favourites sometimes a new product is available.

But price is also a factor, if a cheese we like is on offer we may buy a bit more. Or try something different if it too is on offer and we would probably like the cheese.

The Rockfort from Aldi is nearly half the price of that in Waitrose and is still pretty good if a lttle most from being pre-packed. Other specified source matu cheddars are extremely good value at Aldi. The only cheddar wih any taste in Asda is Canadian 250 g packs. M & S does has some tasty cheeses at a generally higher price.