Asda’s summer stilton might be the pinnacle of cheese-with-stuff-in wrongness. It’s white stilton with – can I remember this? can I ever forget it? – white chocolate, vanilla, orange peel, and peach. I needed to try it.
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.
proof, if proof was needed, that cheese with bits in is PLANE RONG
Yes! Proof SO STRONG that I might be exempt from eating any cheese with stuff in it ever ever again! (truffle exemption applies)
This explanation of Pete’s eggwar on his own mouthfeel parts is mindscience at its best.
The texture was just not cheese which was, actually, one of the oddest things about it – once you can accept it’s not cheese, you could almost accept the chocolate (except it is vile). I’d say it was texture of playdoh except that is DOING DOWN the noble ‘doh…
(this comment for the ultimate choc cheese, I couldn’t face the other one).
I think I had eaten the egg first, but it was only starting to work its centuries old Chinese magical damage to my mouth when this secondary abomination entered my gob. Imagine if you will a Tommy in World War I, lying with legs blown off in No-Man’s Land. Perhaps phantom limb syndrome has set in, and he cannot see his own lack of legs in the wisps of mustard gas. Then imagine a friendly Frenchman coming over and proving that his legs weren’t there by dabbing the stumps with a moldy giant lollipop. That was what eating this was like.
Brutal stuff, but I just love it. Enjoy the blog and thank you for the excellent piece on our manky blue (I tend to agree about the soapiness around the rind, buggered if I know how to get rid of it. Kind regards. Ruaraidh (Strathdon blue)
Never too proud Rory, one of your best traits. Strathdon Blue remains almost as good as Highland Blue in my opinion, and both are much tastier than when you had that useless southerner helping out.
Martin (that useless southerner)
Jo is keen for me to point out that we are, in fact, planning on having Strathdon blue on our Cheese Wedding Cake.
Martin
Marriage! Bloody hell, she’s brave. You can have the cheese for free just let me know when you want it, indeed give me six months warning and I will ripen it somewhere damp, dark and dingy for the full Strathdon blast. Rory