In a time where instant gratification is the norm, Lynda Nash looks into the next great British pastime: cheese making.
Readers over a certain age will no doubt remember the big cheese glut of the nineteen-eighties. Catering size blocks of generic yellow cheese were doled out to UK households to diminish the growing cheese mountains and, presumably, help lower food bills while raising cholesterol levels. Grocery stores were inundated with slabs of cheese that people didn’t want. The ‘cheddar’ was tasteless and there are only so many cheese sandwiches and pies a person can stomach. But the country has moved on in terms of flavours, supermarkets stock a wide variety and the consumer is exposed to cheeses they might have once had to fly across the channel to taste.
With the price of dairy foods rising almost monthly, cheese isn’t the throw away commodity it once was – it’s now a delicacy. But why pay store prices when you can make your own for less and have fun doing it? Cheese-making kits come in various sizes and can cost just a tenner. Each kit contains full instructions and will make from two to eight different varieties. Just add milk.
If you don’t fancy messing up your own kitchen, cheese-making courses are popping up all round the country. Forget spas breaks or writing retreats, why not have a cheesy weekend out in the sticks. Cwmcrwth Farm in Llandeilo runs a cheese-making course and Food Centre Wales offers the ‘Principles of Cheese Making’ for those who’d like to study cheese production on a more professional level.
The art of cheese making – or caseiculture to give it its official name – dates back at least 5,000 years and The Cheesy Times has a wealth of information on how to use what you produce. Sliced with crackers and pickle will do nicely.
Cwmcrwth Farm, Llandeilo. Info: www.cwmcrwthfarm.co.uk
Food Centre Wales, Llandysul. Info: www.foodcentrewales.org.uk