Cheese Board: An Ode to Stilton

I have a confession to make...

I love cheese. Specifically blue Stilton. Whenever I am presented with a cheese board, the first thing I go for is the blue cheese. If it's a Dolcelatte, Saint Agur, Gorgonzola, Cashel Blue, Roquefort or any other type of blue cheese on the board, I will happily eat it but inside I will be left slightly unsatisfied. 

To me, Stilton is the perfect cheese. It's the perfect consistency, not so hard that I need to do some Powerball exercises to strengthen my wrist in order to cut a triangle off, yet not so soft that it's drooling over the board, and the perfect Stilton is not so crumbly that it makes a mess when you bite into your cracker. It is incredibly creamy, like umami butter, and is multi-layered. A good slice of Stilton starts with the strongest blue flavour from the middle section which gradually becomes weaker, and more creamy as you head towards to outer edge. 

So you can imagine how delighted I was when my boss gave me two small packages as a late Christmas gift on returning to the office in January. What do I find but two types of Stilton! A blue and a white Stilton flavoured with lemon and ginger. White Stilton is very different it's blue friend, it is far more crumbly and doesn't quite have the rich creaminess of the blue but it is still very good, especially with fruits. I have had an apricot and white Stilton in the previous Christmas which I ate with zeal. 

What better way to celebrate my new cheeses than by creating a Stilton based cheese board! 

Left to Right; Apples, White Stilton with Lemon & Ginger, Oatcakes, Baked Fig, Blue Stilton, Pears, Port 

I do think, in hindsight, I could have done with some celery sticks to add a bit of green to my cheese board. While celery does go brilliantly with blue cheeses, Stilton is slightly too crumbly and messy to work with celery hence I left it out. I must admit the apples didn't go awfully well either, they were screaming for a harder cheese, so I sneakily ate them with some Edam. 

My colleague at work is moving to Hong Kong and whilst clearing her pantry found a recently purchased whole baked fig from the market. She gave it to me to eat with my cheese. I had never heard or eaten these before so opening them up was quite a curiosity to me. They are wrapped in fig leaves and slow baked at a low temperature for eighteen hours (see more info here). There were at least two or three figs in my ball so they crumbled and fell apart easily when I removed the outer leaves. To taste, they were bitter at first, then slightly sweet leaving your mouth with an aniseed flavour. I was expecting them to be much sweeter than they were. Sampling a piece with my blue Stilton complimented the flavours and made for an interesting 'playground' in my mouth. But I do think the would go better with a softer blue such as Gorgonzola.

Finally, I ate my cheese with oatcakes. I used to buy the Nairns variety but I found these slightly too dry and thin. So I have been experimenting with other varieties. I find that the oat crackers work best with a blue Stilton and indeed other blue cheeses. There's something about their sweetness that compliments the cheese in the same way the port compliments the Stilton. I'm quite fussy about my crackers so when we have cheese boards at work, I take all the Jacob's oat crackers and leave the water biscuits and square wheat crackers in the basket.

This cheese board was devoured in its entirety in approximately 15 minutes by my partner and I. I did say to begin with that I would only have one cracker, but we ended up finishing the stack in the picture and another equally tall stack before we knew it! My mouth is now salivating at the memory of this dish, so I shall leave you with this Sonnet:

Stilton, thou shouldst be living at this hour

And so thou art. Nor losest grace thereby;

England has need of thee, and so have I--

She is a Fen. Far as the eye can scour,

League after grassy league from Lincoln tower

To Stilton in the fields, she is a Fen.

Yet this high cheese, by choice of fenland men,

Like a tall green volcano rose in power.

Plain living and long drinking are no more,

And pure religion reading "Household Words",

And sturdy manhood sitting still all day

Shrink, like this cheese that crumbles to its core;

While my digestion, like the House of Lords,

The heaviest burdens on herself doth lay.

- G.K. Chesterton "Sonnet to a Stilton Cheese"