Let’s be honest – a good sandwich is hard to find in Doha. So many places get it wrong – bad bread, average fillings, no love. We’ve all had those dodgy white bread sandwiches with unidentified meat fillings. and of course – the cheese and mayonnaise abomination. When the team Meesh Cafe at Crown Plaza Doha (one of my favorite cafes and a regular haunt of mine), offered me the chance to create an awesome sandwich involving cheese – I couldn’t say no. The brief was simple – I had free reign to design this sandwich (provided the ingredients were available) and they would help me make it a reality. The design…
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12 Cheeses of Christmas – Cheddar with Horseradish
I’m on the record about not being a food snob, but I also have a healthy distrust of processed cheese. But my own rules are meant to be broken. On a recent trip to my local supermarket, I convinced myself to try this cheese from the US.Yes it’s processed but the horseradish had my attention. I’m always up for a new experience and I do like horseradish. The horseradish is apparently ground and added into the cheese making process. While it is an aged NY cheddar (they make good cheese in the great state of NY), it didn’t have the bite I was expecting. While I had it on a…
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Sharp Relief – Snowdonia’s Little Black Bomber
I’ve blogged before about the lengths my friends will go to in search of new cheeses for me. My friend Rachel (yes, we have thought about forming a girl band called The Rachels) found this beauty at Waitrose on a recent trip to Dubai. Hailing from Wales, The Snowdonia Cheese Company has been making contemporary cheese and more traditional types for several years now. This cheese is perhaps their most popular. They market it as a “cheddar with attitude” and that is very accurate. So sharp it could cut itself, it has what I call a “drawback factor”. That is “ooooooof that’s sharp”. It’s made from pasteurized cow’s milk with non…
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Cheese Release Me
Listen, I am not talking myself up, but I have always been ahead of the curve on many things. I just can’t think of most of them now…but here is some recent proof of my sage-like abilities. Cheese, it seems, is the next big food trend of 2014. Roquefort doughnuts, Stilton truffles and goat’s cheese ganache: Chocolate and cheese set to be 2014s next big foodie trend It must be true, it’s in The Daily Mail. And on this blog.
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Cheesed Off
According to this piece from the venerable Daily Mail, it seems that the English are opting for more exotic and cheaper foreign varieties. A strategy that can be adopted in life and love too I guess! Cheddar cheese sales crumbling
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Making the World a Cheddar Place
They say that familiarity breeds contempt. This is perhaps why I always forget about cheddar as a legitimate contender in my own pantheon of great cheeses. I mean, it’s one of the first cheeses we come across in our lives. I remember cheddar cheese sandwiches on white bread as a child and learning to smother them in mustard. I also remember Saturday lunches, when after doing the shopping, Mum would fill the dining table with cold meats from the local deli, freshly slices tomatoes and of course, slices of cheddar. We would then make our own sandwiches on fluffy white rolls. I came across this cheddar Jones the Grocer, and…
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Passing Muenster
This story about a man who either loved his cheese or saw the dollar signs caught my eye this week and I just knew I had to track Muenster down. Monster Cheese Theft I mean who does that? Anyway, I found Muenster lurking in the dairy cabinet earlier this week and just knew I had to see what the fuss is about. Here’s the thing. Muenster cheese is not as exotic as it sounds. It’s an American cheese, not to be confused with the French variety, Munster. The name Muenster is derived from an English transliteration of Münster, a city in Germany. Muenster is a smooth textured cheese with an…
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Cheddar the Class
Cheddar. The but of many jokes, yet one of the most versatile and loved cheeses in the world. I had meant to do this earlier, but didn’t want to resort to generic, supermarket brands. Finally, I stumbled across this beauty at the soon-to-close (perplexing as that is) Dean and Deluca in Doha. Hailing from Glastonbury, the home of that rain-soaked celebrity spotting music festival each year, this smoked cheddar is a thing of beauty. Made by Greens of Glastonbury it has a strong, powerful flavor which is the result of 12 months of aging. Perhaps my new heros, the Green’s have been making cheese for four generations on the Somerset…