are delicious, delightful All Natural CHEESTRINGS original flavour. The tasteful purple packaging proclaims them to be 100% natural cheese, but STRETCHED, just like mozzarella. Mmm, mozzarella. Inside, each of the sticks of cheese comes sheathed in its own little wrapper, like condoms or, we muse, glowsticks. (Resident raving expert D tries glowsticking using them, and reports that they’re comfortable to use; soft, so as not to exacerbate his rave-calluses, but possibly a bit short, and with a tendency to bend.) (Also they do not glow.)

When I peel away the plastic wrapper, my cheestring droops flaccidly, looking quite pathetic; a quick peruse of the packaging informs me that cheestrings should be kept refrigerated, and these have been affining at room temperature for a few days now.

How to prepare a cheese string: peel slivers of cheese from the stick. The slivers are wriggly, and sticky, and feel rather unpleasant.

How to eat a cheese string: chew and chew and chew and chew. Be baffled by the utter lack of flavour. Chew some more, marvelling at the odd, plasticy texture. Fail to taste anything at all.

Even Sidney T, the greediest dog I know, seems underwhelmed by their lack of flavour.

An extra-creamy French raw milk cow’s cheese, with a layer of fresh truffles running through its centre. I bought this from the truffle stall Tartufaia Truffles.

Brillat Savarin alone is a tasty cheese; rich and creamy, subtley mushroomy, and incredibly indulgent. So how much better (and oinkier!) can the added-truffle version be?

Once I nearly blubbed into my dinner in a very posh restaurant, because my truffle-based dish tasted so good. It would have been a shame; it was a perfectly-seasoned dish and did not need my salty tears. But that’s how much I like truffles. I like to think that I”ve been very patient, waiting until now to try this cheese, but actually, it’s mostly because this little cheese is not always available. Truffles are seasonal and so is the cheese.

Anyway! The cheese! We have a quarter of a round, with a fuzzy white rind and a rich creamy interior that’s liquid towards the rind, and more solid in the middle. A line of dark fungal goodness bisects the wedge.

The rind tastes slightly vegetal, and juicy; sweet and fruity. Under the rind the cheese is liquid cream, with just a hint of mushrooms and the slight tang of yoghurt or buttermilk. In the centre – truffles! There are slices of the fungus itself – little thin slivers of chewy joy – but the rich flavour has also infused its way out into the cheese, and so the cheese is richly scented with the savoury mushroomyness, and rich earthy taste of the truffle.  The cheese is delicious, the truffles are delicious, the cheese and truffles together are delicious, too. Brillat-Savarin, for all its creamy indulgence, is a mild tasting cheese, and doesn’t overwhelm the truffle’s subtle flavour. There’s a delight in the way that the mushroom tones of the cheese mingle with with those of the truffle. I love this! My cheese-eating chum does too – at any rate, he fights me for his fair share of it. I’d have cheerfully eaten it all, and more, myself.

Pecorino Pepato

A hard Italian sheep’s cheese, dotted with peppercorns. Bought from a mystery stall.

This cheese is fissured and crumbly, a very pale cream in colour – almost white – and scattered with black peppercorns.

It’s got a texture not unlike pressed ricotta; both crumbly and chewy all at once, with a tiny hint of squeak. It tastes salty and peppery. Peppercorns are liberally scattered through the cheese, but their taste has infused out; even the corn-free bits have a peppery bite. The peppercorns themselves have been mellowed by their time in the cheese. Their flavour, while still intense, is not alarming. They’re not as crunchy as peppercorns eaten straight from the jar, but they’re great fun to bite into. The cheese itself is spicy – obviously – and also salty, sweet and juicy. It would be a tasty cheese even without the pepper, I think, but the spicy addition is delicious.

Cheese-eating chum says that this feels like a meaty cheese to him; we wonder whether this is partly because it tastes a bit like pepper-sauce, which is most often found atop a steak.

When the film opens their mother’s still an inhabitant — if an airily insubstantial one — of their tiny isolated shack. She sits at home or wanders the garden as the brothers prowl the wilderness hunting. (There’s lots of grunting involved, especially when dragging home the deer they bag. Hunting is SERIOUS MANLY BUSINESS.) Once the mother dies — wandering out of doors at night — she’s boxed up in a homemade coffin and lugged through forests, floated along a river, to a forest hollow, to be buried. It’s a journey that takes several days and an obscene amount of grunting and gurning.

You’d think, wouldn’t you, that *any* film in which a dead, be-coffined body’s being shoved up and rolled down ravines, and floated — almost used as a raft — along a river would have black comic potential. But not here. There’s no funny patches in this film at all.  There’s a pretty grim in-grave foot-meets-coffin moment near the end that could have been horribly, unwatchably hilarious in another film. No chance of that here; just grim stony-faced silence interspersed with yet more grunting. In a tauter film this lack of laughs could end up very uncomfortable; here the tension is dispelled with lingering, soothing shots of river, sky, trees. A sudden pigeon movement, one third in, almost elicits a laugh. Almost.

My cinemagoing chum recommends that I reference Apocalypse Now/Heart of Darkness. I’ll do that, then! I can see where parallels might be drawn — a difficult river trip, the lush denseness of the forests — but while Heart of Darkness sounds the depths of the human soul, there’s very little access to these brothers’ internal lives,  and no glimpse of their moral compass. They seem to be driven more by instinct than calculation.

Visually this was a treat, shot on something low-contrast and unsaturated, warm and soft and smooth. It’s very wildernessy; lots of forest, lots of green things growing green and large, almost engulfing the tiny patch of humanity we’re watching. Lots of dreamy slow abstract shots of sky or ground or leaves, and lots of nice closeups of decay and death on the forest floor. And the soundtrack was similarly woozy; several times I tranced out of noticing what what happening on screen at all. (I don’t think I missed much! This film is sparse on action.)

I just wish they could have been less GRUNT MANLY GRUNT about the whole kaboodle.

Hatesfun rating: 7.5/10

And here, in reverse order, are the best cheeses so far, and how they rated with my tasters.

No 6: Cardo

Cardo’s a washed rind cheese, representing brevibacterium linens, the beast which also makes feet stinky. When cheese smells of socks, it’s the b.linens to blame. Cardo’s perfect when it’s ripe and runny and gloopy and silky, and the Cardo for sale when I was doing my shopping wasn’t liquid enough yet. St James stood in for Cardo; it’s a little stinkier than Cardo, and not as luciously silky, and, while Cardo is made from goat’s milk, St James is a sheepy cheese. What did my tasters think of it?

om nom nom  EEEUUGH it does taste like socks :(

The saltiness of this gets my attention; it’s almost unpleasant.

No 5: Tomme Crayeuse

This cheese is representing the regular bacterial action – the Lactococci, Lactobacilli and Streptococci present in all cheeses. It’s also, with its weird ocher-patched rind, representing the minority fungi of the cheese world.

Lovely and creamy and perfectly suited to my dairylea-lovin’ palate

Tom cruise is a cheese of two halves. intitially dull but the gooey rind shows improvement. when eaten along with a gulp of BEER it could add a few points.

No 4: Persillé de Malzieu

Penicillium roqueforti (and its sibling Penicillium glaucum) are the delicious blue-green moulds that give blue cheese its spicy bite, and spicy, salty Persille de Malzieu has a huge helping of these.

Nom nom nom nom nom nom nom nom

Shock blue crystals with a mild fizz! the sweetness approaching the rind knocks a few marks off.

No 3: St Tola

St Tola is two cheeses in one; in the centre, it’s fresh lemony goat on the inside, but the outside is covered in a wrinkled rind caused by Geotrichum candidum, which also causes the lucious liquid breakdown underneath the rind, and gives it such a sweet nutty taste.

Amazing fluffy goat of gorgeous. If I was building a house of cheddar bricks this would be the cement.

Love the pillowyness of this.

No 2: L’Etivaz

The holes in swiss cheese are caused by Propionibacterium freudenreichii – a relative of the bacteria that causes acne. Not all swiss cheese develops the holes; I think that the temperature the cheese is kept at during ageing affects this. L’Etivaz isn’t a holey cheese, but it’s still got a rich nutty taste.

Sparkly fizzy vampire spacerock cheese. <3

I’m still tasting it now, lovely lingering complex taste, which initially appears straightforward but is deceptive!

And the winning cheese is….

No 1: Flower Marie

Flower Marie’s like a little mouse, covered in the fuzzy furry mould of Penicillium candidum. Flower Marie’s delicious, soft and oozing under the rind, and chalkier in the middle. Rich and creamy – it’s a sheep’s milk cheese – it tastes of herbs and mushrooms.

Oooh lovely, nom nom

Is like the most awesome brie ever

Nice MOUSEfeel! if it was possible for wine to be buttery and still taste nice I expect it might be like this.

Some quick points;

• The quick-calculating sharper-eyed amongst you will notice that L’Etivaz and Flower Marie came out a tie. I got a casting vote. My cheese competition, my rules!
• It’s not really surprising that the more extreme cheeses fared less well; they alienated some folk with their stenchy, prickly, mouldy habits.
• There’s an unopened packet of marmite cheddar in my fridge. What should I do with it?

Thank you to all tasters, who generously gave up their Saturday night to drink beer and eat alarming cheeses! I’ll start writing up the next 100 cheeses

Tomorrow I’ll be revealing my favourite cheeses from the 100 I’ve written up here, and I’ll be harnessing the powers of drunken chums science to work out the Supreme Winning Champion Cheese. But for now, here’s cheese 100.

Montgomery’s Cheddar

A hard raw-milk cow’s cheese from Somerset, bought from Neals Yard Dairy.

Monty’s is a real beast of a cheddar; strong and dense and farmy. I think it’s my favourite cheddar, and it’s definitely a classic. The rind of our wedge is pale biscuity white, imprinted with the pattern of the cloth it was bound in. It’s smattered with fissures of a powdery beige – these remind me of lunar craters, but are the work of the cheese mite. Cheese mites love cheddar!

Inside, the paste’s a good, bright patchy yellow colour, with occasional bright patches where crystals have formed. It crumbles and cracks as I cut a slice.

In my mouth, it feels solid – good and chewy. It tastes rather epic; the sort of flavour that goes on for days, progressing and developing. Here’s a rundown;

• First, a sweet, slightly nutty mellow flavour.
• Then it opens out and becomes salty.
• Next, a sudden top -of-mouth sharpness appears, bright, cheerful and fruity (kumquats and pineapples), and very acidic.
• This expands outwards, making me drool a bit and suck my cheeks in.
• Another whomph of that almondy milky sweetness, in the centre of the sharpness.
• A developing undertone of ‘farmyard’; poo and silage and mud. Not very subtle.
• There’s a dense, rich meatiness to this as well; like french onion soup on a cold day.
• The back of my throat feels warm and prickles when I swallow.
• A lingering, mellow taste of farmyard and milk hangs around in my mouth and throat.

And, of course, while all of these tastes are doing their thing, there’s also the slow softening and crumbing of the cheese in my mouth, and occasional moments of glee when I crunch into a lactic acid crystal.  (Hurrah for lactic acid crystals! They’re so much fun!)

The mite-pitted rind is chewy and slightly sweet, and tastes of cowpat and dettol. It prickles my mouth a little. It’s not really for eating.

(Monty’s also makes delicious cheese straws, macaroni cheese, and cheese on toast. Its wilder tendencies are curbed, a little, when it’s cooked, but it’s still got a deep, rich intense flavour.)

A small Italian goat’s cheese from The Tasting Room

This round little goat’s cheese comes sitting in its own cupcake wrapper. A label sits directly on the cheese, depicting a hairy, horny goat. The cheese underneath is a pale cream colour, with big, squidgy geotrichium wrinkles and a smattering of white bloom peeking out around them. When I cut a wedge, there’s a sticky, gloopy liquid layer underneath the rind and a solid white chalky centre.

It’s sticky and luscious, tasting milky and nutty, and with a hint of warm dry straw. The soft skin of the rind prickles my mouth just a tiny bit, and tastes of mushroom soup and almonds. The hard centre of the cheese has a touch of moussyness to it, and is slightly sharper; it tastes of salt and lemonpips.

Gorgonzola Picante

A blue cow’s milk cheese from Italy, also bought from The Tasting Room.

Green craters and cracks, rich with powdery mould, are scattered all over our wedge of this cheese. Underneath, the paste is pale primrosy yellow, turning orange towards the rind.

It’s soft like butter too long out of the fridge. It tastes quite intensely blue; mouthwateringly warm and spicy, with a mineral hardness. There’s a gentle menthol-ish vapour up my nose, and the back of my mouth tingles from the mould. The intense spiciness is balanced out by a good helping of salt, and there’s a mellow milkiness that keeps everything grounded. Lurking towards the back is one of those elusive, nostalgia-triggering aromas; I think it’s lemon curd, despite there being nothing very lemony about this cheese.

The rind is also delicious; it’s not so blue, but is cheerily sweet, buttery smooth and mellow, with just a touch of astringency and a musty, woody undertone.

Blu di capra

A blue raw milk (I think) goats cheese from Lombardi, Italy, bought from Gastronomica.

The pale, almost grey paste of this cheese is smatterd and scored with a green mould. The rind’s a bloomy mix of white and biscuity colours, with occasional patches of the same mould. When I cut into the cheese, it crumbles slightly.

I’m surprised by how chewy this cheese is; even the melty liquid centre of the wedge gives some resistance underneath my teeth. The edges of the cheese crumble, and a sticky liquid fills the mould-lined piercing veins – when I try it alone, it prickles my mouth. In sensible portions, though, this cheese is sweet and mellow, tasting of caramel-toffee, with a gentle blueness and a rich, dense, indulgent-feeling texture. Its goaty origins are also in evidence, with a touch of that distinctive farmyard tang and a undertone of herbs. The goaty bite and mellow blue tastes are very much distinct from each other, yet get on surprisingly well together; I think it’s the over-arching sweet milky and toffee flavours pulling them together. The rind is hard and chewy, with a hint of bubblegum.

Scamorza affumicata

A smoked cow’s milk cheese from Italy, also bought from Gastronomica

For ages I’ve been curious about these little bundles of smokiness, but smoked cheeses do always feel like a bit of a risk; what if they taste of nothing but smoke and are a huge disappointment? I bravened up, and we tried this after gorging ourselves on the blue cheese above.

These little cows-milk mozzarella-alikes are tied around their bellies with ribbon, making them pearshaped, before being hung up and smoked to a soft brown hue on the outside. When I cut into ours, it’s a pale yellow inside, with an elasticy texture.

More like a skin than a rind, the thin outer layer comes away easily, and tastes incredibly, densely smoky, strong and lingering.  Isolate the paler, slightly crumbly innards, though, and it’s much lighter and subtle, with a sweet, cusp-of-sourness milky taste, rich and creamy, and just hint of splintery, woody smokiness.

We keep back half of out little cheese bulb to try on a pizza the next evening. Melted and mingled with mozzarella, ricotta and pecorino, it’s absolutely superb.

This is a little leaf-shaped nugget of cheese, covered in a pretty wrinkled geotrichium rind. It’s been dusted with ash, top and bottom, and is a lovely charcoal-grey colour under its wrinkles. The sides are paler and less ashy, but still have that brain-wrinkled rind, pale creamy yellow with a white bloom.

When I hack a wedge from this cheese, underneath the rind is predictabley, and delightfully, stickily liquid. The centre of the cheese is a bright white, with a crumbling open texture. The ashy patches of this cheese have a slightly bitter taste, offset by the sweet, milky almond liquid layer. Where there’s less ash, the  rind is sweeter, and mellow, with a fragrant herbal undertone.

There’s an incredibly flaky and light texture to the centre of this cheese; it makes me think of lovely, buttery puff pastry. It melts away to nothing, and tastes typically goaty – creamy and sweet, with a light acidic lemon tang.

Andeerer Bergkäse
A hard cow’s cheese, bought from Käseswiss

We have a slice from a large wheel of this cheese. It’s got a pale biscuit-coloured rind, criss-crossed with tiny basket-weave indentations. Under the rind, the pale yellow paste is smooth and silky.

The rind tastes sweet and nutty, and very mellow. The silky, supple texture of the cheese dissolves away very quickly, in my mouth . It tastes of hazelnuts and cream, rich, sweet and smooth, and with a slight back-of-throat tang. It’s a pleasant cheese, but not very exciting or interesting, and it’s a little too mild, and too mild-mannered, for me.

A soft-ish blue cheese from Nottinghamshire, bought from Neals Yard Dairy

Coming south from hence we pass’d Stilton, a town famous for cheese, whch is call’d our English Parmesan, and is brought to table with the mites, or maggots round it, so thick, that they bring a spoon with them for you to eat the mites with, as you do the cheese.

So wrote Daniel Defoe in 1727.¹ Maggots and mites! Our wedge of cheese – bought to savour with a piggerish civilised after-dinner port – harbours no visible wildlife, unless you’re counting the mould. The rind’s a crusty pale biscuit, with a soft white bloom. Inside, the pale yellow paste’s scored and splattered liberally with green-grey Penicillium roqueforti. (P. roqueforti is guaranteed a place in my Top Ten Fungi List, if I ever make a Top Ten Fungi List.)

The stilton is is soft and buttery, melting in my mouth. Where clusters of mould have gathered, there’s a crumbliness like that of clumps of damp toast crumbs; granular, and slightly ticklish. It tastes very blue², quite salty, slightly sour and tangy, and with a peppery hit to the back of my throat, numbing and prickling it slightly. It’s gloriously rich and creamy – every mouthful seems liken a pleasingly greedy excess. There are subtle fruity notes; a sharp lemon, and something sweeter and darker – ripe plum? Underneath the rind there’s less mould, and and subsequntly a sweeter milky, nutty flavour, and an even richer and creamier texture. The rind itself is crumbly, with a gentle pleasant mustiness and the aroma of hazelnuts.

Cheese-eating chum P suggests that it would be improved by the addition of vanilla, white chocolate, peach and orange rind, and by the removal of the pretty green mould.

I normally prefer Stichelton, and I was really delighted with how delicious this was. It tasted much richer and softer and deeper than I remembered it being; my wedge must have come from a well-loved, well-aged truckle.

1. I hunted this up for the mention of Stilton, but it’s all-round, all-over FASCINATING! Everyone should go and read it right now.

2. What does blue cheese taste like? It’s the cheesy element that I have most trouble describing – resorting to vague words like peppery, spicy, piquant, when they tell only half the story. Saying ‘tastes blue’ feels cheating. Focusing too much on the tang and the fruit and the salt feels deviously avoidant.

This is what happens when you dip a cheeseburger in hydrochloric acid. I want to try this at home!

Terschelling Schapenkaas

A hard, pasturised sheep’s cheese from Terschelling, in the Netherlands, bought from Boerenkaas.

We have a wedge of this hard sheep’s cheese. Its interior is an opaque pale creamy white, smooth-looking, and dotted with uneven little holes. Towards the rind it becomes translucent and a little darker.

It’s slightly softer than I’d imagined, looking at the solid wedge, and silky smooth. It tastes bright and tangy, and wonderfully creamy, rich and luscious; lots of yoghurty and buttery flavours and textures. There’s tinge of gentle hazelnut to it, and also an unusual blueberry aroma. The rind’s harder, quite chewy, and reminiscent of pineapple. This is a good, gentle, balanced cheese; the yoghurty bite cuts through the sweet richness of the sheep’s milk and the fruity and nutty tones are restrained and very civilised.

Oude Remeker

A raw-milk cow’s cheese from Lunteren, also in the Netherlands, and also bought from Boerenkaas.

This is a different animal, entirely. We’ve bought a similar sized and shaped wedge to the soft sheepy cheese above, but this beast of a cheese is a dark yellow-orange colour, wrapped in a deep red wax rind. It’s liberally speckled with caesin crystals almost the size of my head – huge, they are! It tastes rich and dark and dense; of coffee, and beef gravy and yeasty beer, and of the sticky sweetness of raisins, prunes and dried dates. The texture’s meltingly buttery, and slightly crumbly, and the crystals explode like popping candy under my teeth.  This cheese means business, and although I like it very much, its relentless crunch and intense taste are almost overwhelming. Too much of this and you’d need to have a quiet lie-down.

And while I was there, I noticed that Asda also sold something billed as the Ultimate Chocolate Cheese – Wensleydale with Belgian milk chocolate liberally scattered through it. So I sorta, umm, ended up buying that too.

The stilton looks pale, and is liberally scattered with chunks of dark orange fruit. It’s got a very soft, quite crumbly texture, reminding me slightly of putty. I taste some, and it’s incredibly, tooth-curlingly sweet. Despite the moussy insubstantial texture, it’s got a damp cloying mouthfeel that I find quite unpleasant. The lumps of orange rind are like a tiny Christmas pudding invasion – unseasonal and unwelcome – in my mouth. The pieces of peach are flabby, fibrous, and (again) sickly sweet. The white chocolate chunks are indistinguishable from the surrounding over-sweet mess. The obvious comparison to this is cheesecake, but it would be a disjointed, unpleasant, and over-busy concoction, and actually, I like my cheesecakes less sugary than this.

The Ultimate Chocolate Cheese was very similar in texture, crumbly and sticky and damp, and just as horribly sweet; I was getting accustomed to the sickly sugariness at this point. It was a disconcerting shade of pale brown, scattered with darker chocolate chunks. It tasted nothing like a Wensleydale, but rather a lot like the unpleasant chocolate yoghurt that used to appear in my school lunch box.

I’m an insufferable food snob who dislikes dried fruit, doesn’t approve of cheese-with-bits-in, and can’t abide over-sweet things. (Also, I consider white stilton a rubbish non-cheese – a sop to people too afeared of the tasty Penicillium roqueforti to sample the real thing.) I might not be best placed to appreciate the great things that these cheeses have to offer. But it wasn’t just me that recoiled in horror – FT’s own Pete tried the summer stilton, and shortly afterwards scoured the skin from his mouth and tongue with a particularly harsh century egg.

In cheese-with-stuff-in news I sorta want to try this. Would anyone like to watch and laugh join in?

L’Etivaz

A hard, unpasturised, alpine cow’s milk cheese from Switzerland, bought from KaseSwiss.

This is a slice of pale yellow cheese. The brown rind tastes dark and musty – not an eating-rind, really. The cheese is slightly soft, and scattered with tiny white spots of crunchy potential

The paste crumbles gently, and lactic crystals crunch and ping around my mouth. Crunchy cheeses make me giggle. The cheese tastes dense and darkly fruity, like pieces of apple picked out from a jar of mincemeat. It’s sweet and nutty , tasting of almond, toasted hazelnuts, and something like I imagine acorns to taste; smooth, cool, slightly green, and gently milky sweet. (The internet says that raw acorns are actually very bitter.) There’s a subtle pine-needle freshness, and a smidge of rosemary and thyme – a refreshing, slightly astringent grassy herbal flavour. There’s a rich, meaty aspent to this cheese, as well – marmite and mushroom ketchup, and just a hint of yeast. I can also taste just the merest touch of woodsmoke  - this combines with the rich buttey, toasty, measty flavours to make a wonderfully hearty, warming cheese.

I didn't even have a knife for cutting the cheese - you don't expect me to have a PHOTOGRAPH of it for you, do you?

A hard unpasturised goat’s milk cheese, made in Somerset and bought from Neals Yard Dairy.

Kat joined me for an impromptu picnic lunch, and we bought a wedge of this. (Note to self: next time choose a SOFTER cheese if you have no knife!) It’s a very pale parchment-coloured cheese, hard and smooth and with a smattering of tiny gaps, covered in a crumbly wrinkled light grey rind.

It starts off sweet, juicy and buttery, and slowly develops a tang reminiscent of cheddar. It’s not too sharp or farmyardy a cheddar flavour; it’s sweet and mellow, salty and creamy, subtly almondy. Bright citrussy lime notes give a glimpse of a younger goat’s cheese, and there a hint of something dark - coffee grounds or maybe cocoa powder – in the finish.

The rind’s great, too; it’s hard, crumbly, and chewy. It tastes smooth and mellow, with a bit of sparkly pineapple fruitiness, a touch of straw, and lots of damp earthy composty mushroom flavours.

Kat says that the rind tastes like the cupboard under her stairs!

The chalky centre of the cheese crumbles away to nothing in my mouth. Light and fluffy, it’s almost mousse-like; cloudy, airy and insubstatial. It tastes tangy and fresh and sparkling bright; of sherbert, butter and yoghurt. Under the rind, where the cheese has broken down, the butteriness is more intense. It’s saltier here, and smooth, tasting a little bit like a toffee sauce, and a little bit like mushrooms.

The rind looks damp and dark and musty, and it tastes that way too. It tastes of damp earth and minerals, reminding me of compost, leaf mould, undergrowth and damp garden sheds. This is delicious – do not fear the damp, dank rind. It’s one of the best bits.

When I am attempting to be civilised – i.e. not simply breaking chunks off the wedge of cheese and eating them gleefully from my fingers – this cheese is fantastic in a fresh baguette, with a scraping of butter, salted slices of ripe tomatoes, and a smidgen of pepper scattered over it all. I usually eat it straight from the paper, like the savage that I am.

Sorry! This is Stinking Bishop - they look very alike! I neglected to take a photograph before scoffing the cheese.

A washed rind cheese from Gloucestershire, bought from Neal’s Yard Dairy.

Very exciting!  An FT cheese exclusive! I can’t find a mention of this sheep’s cheese anywhere on the internet. It’s a new cheese by the people who create Stinking Bishop. A variation on their infamous washed rind cheese, it’s made of sheep’s milk and it has a wonderfully surreal name. Apparently, once upon a time, the nuns of Caen had a bit of a yen for Double Gloucester, and it was shipped over to them regularly. This cheese is from Gloucestershire. It’s a spurious connection, but the name makes me grin.

Covered with a soft, damp orange rind, this cheese is pale – almost white – inside, and dotted with little holes. I don’t have to get my nose too near the cheese to get a snoutful of its aroma. It’s got a pungent, foot-ish whomph, cut with a boozy, alcoholic note that gets up my nose when I inhale too deeply. When I eat some, it’s soft and smooth in the centre, coating my mouth but not clinging too long. The rind’s crumbly. It tastes wonderful – the extra richness of the sheep’s milk means that it’s wonderfully creamy and luscious and sweet. It tastes of salted cream fudge, and butter, and apples and pears (I bet it’s washed in the same perry as its ecclesiastical sibling.). There’s a very mellow, soothing woodiness around the edges. Its smell (and it’s not the whiffiest of cheeses, I promise) is very much worse than its taste, stench-wise. This cheese is smooth and sweet and mellow, and incredibly more-ish.

Inside this wedge of cheese the paste’s a bright yellow, scattered with the white dots that promise lactic acid crunch, and with cracks running the length. The rind’s crusty and brown, covered with a white residue in patches.

The texture, when I break a piece off, is somewhere between crumbly and elastic. As I chew, I can feel and hear the cheerful cracks and crunches of all the little crystals under my teeth. Taste-wise, it’s like a gouda, or possibly the creamier end of Comte. There’s a rich heartiness – plummy and slightly meaty – and smooth caramel sweetness, which develops into a slightly sharp tropical fruityness; pineapples, passionfruits and mango. There’s a hint of a green grassy flavour towards the end, and a smidge of olive.

The rind doesn’t look too appetising; brown, crusty and crumbling, and I was expecting it to be one of those rinds that’s not really designed for eating, but it’s surprisingly tasty. It’s got a slightly sandy texture. The taste of olives is magnified here, and there’s also a touch of sweet washed-rind pungency.

Hurry up if you want to try this, though! Raw-milk-management inconsistencies between the US and the EU mean that the wedge I had was from the last batch of it to sneak into the UK, for the moment.

Confession! I bought this from the non-Borough Market Neal’s yard dairy!

A pasturised goats cheese from Hertfordshire, bought from Neal’s Yard Dairy.

Childwickbury always makes me think of the moon; it’s a round of pure white, incredibly young cheese. It’s damp and crumbly, an adolescent creature existing in some hinterland between fresh curd and a grown-up cheese.

In the mouth it’s both creamy and acidic – first off, the sweet, milkiness appears, and then it opens out into a huge bright zesty lemonish explosion, reminding me of really tart lemon curd. It sparkles, almost fizzes, in my mouth. There’s a tiny, hidden sniff of grass and herbs somewhere in here as well, lurking deep below the lemon.

Cheese-eating chum says it has a wonderfully fresh mouthfeel. In a fit of hypocrisy, I laugh at his using the word mouthfeel. But he’s right! This cheese is like fresh green grass and bright warm sunshine after a spring shower. It’s delicious, and refreshing, and incredibly cheerful, and it always makes me grin when I eat it. I’m grinning now just thinking about it.

(We made a lovely cheesecake from this once; cornmeal and oregano base, covered with a mixture of childwicksbury, lemon juice and icing sugar, and topped with a slice of sugared lemon. And it’s my number one top cheese for eating with figs.)

A beer-washed, paprika-covered spiced cows milk cheese from France, bought from Une Normande a Londres.

Boulette d’Avesnes is also known as suppositoire du diable – you can translate that yourself. It’s a pointed, conical little round of cheese, and comes in its own little plastic dome. It’s a deep, fiery, damp powdery orange on the outside – a result of being rubbed down with hot paprika – and when I cut into it the paste is pale, soft and crumbly, and liberally speckled with herbs.

It tastes very interesting, but not very much like a cheese. My first impression is that it’s sausagey, and subsequent tastings do nothing to dispel this. It tastes hot and smoky – the paprika rind, especially, is really quite intense. It’s strongly flavoured, but not in any very cheesy way; it’s very peppery, salty, and meaty. Spread on crusty bread, it makes an excellent dairysausage sandwich.

I’d not list this in my Top 10 Cheeses – I’m not entirely convinced that it’s a cheese at all. But it’s interesting and fun, at least in moderation. I’m not sure I’d like to try eating an entire one. And as an example of a cheese-with-stuff-in, it’s definitely nicer than most. The internet suggests pairing it with beer and I think that it would go very well with something cold and hoppy.

photo by Ewan-M

The Royal Oak is wonderful because it is such a perfect example of an ordinary pub. It does nothing extraordinary or alarming. It is a Proper Pub, with small rooms and nicely mismatched furniture, and random plates and pictures on the walls. Here are some of the reasons that I love it:

The beer: Harveys’ beer is delicious, and the Royal Oak has a full range of it on tap. It’s one of the few pubs in London where you’re pretty much guaranteed a pint of Mild. (I have seen them run out of the lovely dark brew, but I have usually contributed to its demise.) In winter, they do a good smooth sour Old, and there’s always delicious hoppy, happy Harveys’ Best. Tucked away behind the bar are tiny bottles of Imperial Stout, and the Christmas ale – appearing on tap every December – is nearly as lethal. May is Camra-approved Mild month, with bonus extra milds to quaff. February features the seasonal ale ‘Kiss’ (and I’m certain that the bar staff never tire of the utterly hilarious variations on ‘Give us a Kiss please’). This seasonal run of beers is very comforting to a creature of habit like me.

It’s not such a great pub for those fools who spurn the warm, flat goodness of real ale; provision for the keg-drinkers is very limited. As is my sympathy. Drink some ALE instead! It is much, much tastier.

The food: This is the antithesis of a gastropub. The Royal Oak’s menu features PIE, PIE and PIE, with some pudding, and maybe a stew or two, and huge doorstep sandwiches. The portions are vast; I am AFRAID to have the steak and kidney pudding after seeing it defeat more qualified pudding-eaters than me. I have, however, scoffed down the fish pie (with an egg in!) and the veg and stilton veggie option, and can recommend them both. I’ve also been led astray many times by the wonderful salt-beef sandwich – meltingly tender beef, lots of mustard and gherkin – delicious, and excellent at soaking up the many pints of mild.

The toilets: Usually, if someone says ‘Oh! You must see the toilets! They’re the best bit of the whole pub!’ I assume that they’re talking about one of those terrifying city Wetherspoons bank conversions, where the toilets occupy the entire of the basement, and have a water feature in place of a sink, and every time you need a wee you feel vague guilt because this vast cavern could house twenty families in comfort. Anyway. I love the toilets in the Royal Oak, but they’re not actually the best bit, and they’re definitely not vast. They’re quite small, and covered in lovely dark green glossy Victorian-style tiles. The sinks and toilet, and high-up pull-chain cistern, are embellished with blue-painted flowers, and made by Vernon Tutbury. The toilet in the ladies’ is called CHARLOTTE! (This name’s painted inside the bowl. I don’t know what the toilet in the men’s is called. Can anyone illuminate me?)

The moustaches: Heading to the toilet, the observant drinker will encounter a collection of portraits of dudes sporting fine, fine moustaches.

The tiny charity shop in the corner of the back room: Here, you can purchase dubious paperbacks for the princely sum of 50p each, or three for £1. Except I bought all the Jilly Cooper and Jackie Collins paperbacks last week.

Late-night opera: One night a few of us were drinking late-night porter (this  pub has a relaxed attitude to chucking-out) when a small portable stereo was popped onto the bar, and opera blazed out of it. In our tipsy state it was nicely surreal. I think this is the only time I’ve heard music playing in there.

Take-out beer: The tiny tasty Indian restaurant across the road doesn’t sell beer, but you can buy whole jugs of the stuff from the Royal Oak to drink with your curry.

The tiling on the outside: It is orange and glossy and most appealing! Tiled pubs make me happy.

Drawbacks to this fine hostelry are:

• NO PUB CAT! I have met a pub-dog who appears downstairs at closing time but everyone knows that cats are better than dogs. (Actually, the pub dog is quite nice.)
• Can get a bit crowded at past-work-o-clock. (Which is fair enough. It’s an awesome pub. EVERYONE should want to be here.)

A small raw goat’s milk cheese from Somerset, bought from Neals Yard Dairy

This little squat, disc-like little round of cheese is covered in a bloomy grey and white mould. The centre’s bright white. It’s soft and creamy, slightly fluffy, wth a grainy fine-sand texture.

It’s an intensely creamy cheese, with a subtle fresh fruityness, fragrant and citrussy – lemon zest and orange flowers, I think. The bright fresh milkiness makes it feels like a very clean, clear cheese; it makes me think of tall glasses of fresh, cool milk. A touck of acididty gives a very slight hint of yoghurtiness. The rind is soft and sweet, with a touch of dry dustyness; henna powder, or dried, sun-warmed straw.

Danegeld

A cows’s milk cheese, made in Somerset and bought from Neals Yard Dairy

This cheese is very yellow, like a slice of sunshine; our wedge is bright yellow inside, and veers between a vivid gold and softer sand on the outside. Uneven little holes are scattered throughout the paste – smaller and less even than the eyes of a typical swiss cheese.

The cheese has a slightly tacky texture, and initially tastes fruity, nutty and sweet, like a Gouda. It’s a soft and comforting cheese, for a moment, and then I realise that my mouth is tingling and prickling slightly (pleasantly). My cheese chum does science, with aid of a stopwatch, and claims that it reaches peak intensity 25 second after starting to eat the cheese, and fifteen minutes later my lips are still gently tingly. It’s like having a surprise party in my mouth!

One side of the rind is covered in paper, and tastes of musty paper. The other, paper-free side tastes musty, I think this rind is not designed for eating.

1. it looked like congealed vomit
2. it looked disgusting and
3. I sorta wanted to try it.

And, lo! I stumbled across it today, and shamefully concealed it at the bottom of my shopping basket and so I can confirm that;

1. it does look like congealed vomit
2. it is pretty disgusting and
3. I am slightly regretting trying it

Its reconstituted nature gives it an insubstantial, lumpy texture, which isn’t improved by the addition of stringy, tasteless slivers of pepper.It tastes of very thin factory cheddar, with a hint of chilli – not good heat, but a subtly throat-irritating sort of thing – and a very unpleasant garlic powder aftertaste that has me wishing for my toothbrush. And most unpleasantly, the mix of white and annatto cheddar colours, and the scattering of pieces of chilli pepper make it look entirely vomity.

My co-worker – who claims an in-depth knowledge of the world of McDonalds – says that it tastes just like McDonalds red salsa sauce. Sadly, I can’t find a picture of this sauce anywhere, and can’t tell if it looks more or less appetising than this cheese.

And after all that, I had totally forgotten that it came in two strengths, and I had thought ‘ooh!’ to the Worlds Hottest Cheddar In The World (™ ), but came away with just the regularly-spicy one, which isn’t very spicy at all.

Erm, anyone want most of a block of it?

I can't find a picture of this cheese anywhere. Here's a cute baby goat instead!

Brique de St Jean

A small goat’s cheese from France, bought from Mons

We have half a brick of this pale goat’s cheese. It’s covered in a velvety, slippery, cream-and-white Geotrichum-wrinkled rind (reminding co-cheese-scoffer Sarah of brain). Inside, it’s soft and white, chalky towards the centre and slippery and liquid underneath the rind.

It’s smooth, and melts quickly, slightly grainily, in my mouth. It’s wonderfully sweet and milky, a touch almondy, soft and comforting, with just the slightest hint of a green, bitter spinachy leafiness. Sarah takes huge snout-filling sniffs of this cheese’s delicate fragrance, and declares it the winner of the Best Smelling Cheese Award.

Lingot de St Nicolas

A small, raw goat’s cheese from France, also bought from Mons

This is another little goats-cheese bricklet, made by monks following a secret recipie. It’s even smaller than the Brique de St Jean, and we have a whole one to eat. It’s not as wrinkled as the St Jean – it’s paler and slightly velvety, and there’s not so much liquidy gloop lurking below the rind.

I think it smells of Campbells cream of mushroom soup. (This was once my cold-banishing comfort food of choice, made with all milk and with several more RDAs of salt added.) It does has a creamy taste, with a hint of mushroomyness, but the overwhelming taste of this is a herbal one. The goats of St Nicolas have been gorging on rosemary and thyme, and so this cheese tastes like a creamy, piney forest floor.

Ossau Iraty

A hard pasturised sheeps cheese from France, bought from Mons

Our wedge of this cheese has a wrinkled grey rind, and a pale, alightly crumbly hard paste.

Sarah says it smells like jam tarts made with homemade pastry. I take a snort of the cheese – there’s a biscuityness to this, and a hint of burned butter. After smelling so sweet, it tastes surprisingly tart and tangy. There’s a smidge of pineapple, and Sarah detects a bit of grapefruit, and I think there might be some pickled lemons hanging about – sharp and acidic fruity flavours. As I nibble towards the rind it becomes smoother and sweeter and toasty, tasting of butter and nuts. The rind itself has is deliciously walnutty and just slightly bitter.

We have a wedge of this – an old favourite of mine – for lunch. The crumbly rind is a pale peachy, biscuity orange, and the paste inside’s gloriously liquid and drippy, oozing out and making puddles on the paper.

The cheese is wonderfully smooth and silky, and it tastes salty, nutty, and caramel-ish sweet. There’s a hint of rancid butter, smidges of yeast and mushroom, and a bit of chewy pungent meatiness. But there’s a more delicate flavour underlying the typical hearty washed rind – a mysterious and delicate taste that reminds me of roses, and my cheese-eating chum of tangerines. The rind’s got a grittiness that makes me think of cheesecake base and digestive biscuit crumbs – and it’s in the rind that those mysterious floral notes come to the fore. It tastes of turkish delight and buttercups, kumquat rind and wild strawberries. These are fragile flavours. I’m impressed that they manage to stand out against the mighty, meaty pungency of Brevibacterium linens‘s washed rind sockish whiff, and I’m delighted with the unexpected – and delicious – contrast.

Bleu d’Causses

This is a cow’s milk cousin of Roquefort, and it looks the part; a moist damp slab of cheese riddled with big greeny-grey pockets of mould. It might be a tad yellower than a Roquefort, but that’s the biggest difference in appearance.

It tastes spicy and salty and intense, numbing my mouth and ruining my tastebuds for the next cheese. The texture’s buttery and smooth. The rind tastes less fiercely blue, and is slightly pungent with unexpected peachy flavours.

FT’s very own Pete declares that it ‘tastes like Big Mac special sauce – in a good way’. (I, of course, have never tasted Big Mac special sauce.)

Brie de Melun

We’ve met this cheese before, but I don’t see it in London very often, and I wanted my Brie-ambivilent partner-in-cheesing to taste it. Our slice has a white-fuzzed mould exterior, with hints of damp orange emerging underneath it. Inside, the paste is soft and silky.

It tastes hearty – meaty and mushroomy. There’s a touch of vegetal bitterness, a good saltyness, and lots of sweet dense fudgey flavours. It’s fruity; plummy, but with a bright hint of sharp green apples. My cheesy companion likes it better than the average Brie.

Crottin of Mystery

This is a round of goats cheese (crottin translates directly to ‘little dropping’), covered in a very pale grey-green mould. It’s dense and goaty, very salty and surprisingly savoury. It’s smooth in my mouth, with a tang that reminds me of cheddar, but it prickles the back of my throat with spiky, nettley needles.

(I’m know that this cheese has a name beyond just Crottin, but my note-taking suffers when I get too excited by the surfeit of cheese, and the receipt has long disappeared.)

Aiguebelette

Another goats cheese, our slice of Aiguebelette is a pale yellow, and slightly translucent, covered in an intensely bright yellow mould. The rind is slightly crumbly. It tastes bitter; of dense damp undergrowth, composted greenery, and stagnant pools covered in algae bloom and pondweed. In contrast, the paste is mild and very gently sweet and floral, with an elusive subtle tang. Between the bitter rind and the sweet centre, there’s a layer of cheese that tastes of twigs.

I can’t recall the name of the beast that causes the bright yellow rind on this cheese, but it’s unique to alpine cheeses, I believe, and I’ve met it before on a Tomme Crayeuse.  (And comparisons with pondweed aside, I think this my favourite of these cheeses.)