I love few things more than a cheese counter where buying involves tasting – preferably everything. So this swap’s shop was a delight. I went to the mothership – AKA Neal’s Yard Dairy, my alma mater – and tasted Colston Bassett stilton, stichelton, crozier, cashel, harbourne, devon and spa blue … each one a blue to knock your socks off, and a palette of flavours – surprising sweetnesses, varying saltinesses, degrees of creaminess – that come with built-in pairing suggestions. Your recipes tapped into that potential with great flair.
The winning recipe: Roasted cauliflower with pear, walnuts and stilton
Anna Thomson scoffed most of her test trayful here in one sitting, and I totally see why. Her blue take on cauliflower cheese is sophisticated: light (not an easy thing to pull off with a wedge of stilton), fragrant and full of texture.
Serves 4-6
1 medium cauliflower, broken into florets
1 turnip, cut into wedges
Olive oil
Salt and black pepper
4-5 bay leaves
1 garlic clove, finely minced
1 firm pear, chopped
100g stilton or other blue cheese
50g walnuts, broken into chunky pieces
1 Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/gas mark 4. In a shallow baking tray, mix the cauliflower and turnip with a generous amount of olive oil, season well with salt and pepper and add the bay leaves. Bake for 25-30 minutes until soft.
2 Mix the minced garlic with a little olive oil and stir into the cauliflower. Add the pear, cheese and nuts. Bake for a further 10 minutes or so, until the pear is soft and the cheese melted.
Stilton, shallot and pancetta tartlets
You’d think Lara Derham’s stilton-pancetta combo would be too much. You’d be wrong. Make these the day before you need them – cold and a day old, they make for the perfect bite.
Makes 24
For the pastry
225g plain flour
150g cold butter, cubed
1 egg, beaten
For the filling
200g pancetta, cubed
4 shallots, finely diced
3 tbsp Bénédictine
150g stilton, crumbled
100ml light creme fraiche
Salt and pepper
1 Preheat the oven to 200C/400F/gas mark 6. Pulse the flour and butter in a food processor, or rub together by hand, till the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Add the egg and 1 tbsp of water and mix to form a dough.
2 Turn out on to a floured surface and roll out to about 3mm thick. You will need a tartlet tray with 6cm wide x 2cm deep holes, or a muffin tray. Cut out circles of pastry slightly bigger than your tartlet holes. Lay them over the holes and push the pastry gently against the base and sides. Refrigerate the cases for about 20 minutes.
3 In a nonstick pan, fry the pancetta until a good deal of fat has rendered – about 1-2 minutes. Transfer to a bowl with a slotted spoon and set aside.
4 Add the shallots and Bénédictine to the pan. Fry until softened and just starting to brown, about 1-2 minutes. Allow to cool.
5 Add the stilton and creme fraiche, season lightly with salt and pepper and gently combine. Divide the mixture evenly among the tart cases.
6 Bake for 17-20 minutes, until the tartlets are golden brown and bubbling. Allow to cool slightly before removing from the tray and transferring to a wire rack. Serve warm or at room temperature.
Blue cheese and honey on toast
Rachel Kelly, I thought this would be my favourite recipe – I bought a block of beenleigh blue especially. But then I remembered that I love all kinds of cheese and that I’d happily do exactly the same thing with ash-rinded goat’s cheese, mascarpone, caerphilly … you name it. A generic cheesy winner, then, of a toast topping.
Serves 1
Toast
Crumbly blue cheese (I like stilton, but roquefort or shropshire blue work well)
Runny honey
1 Lightly toast the bread on both sides. (Any colour bread will do, but I think that wholemeal does add a nice nutty flavour).
2 Crumble one side with blue cheese. Drizzle over runny honey – not too much, but a quick zigzag will do.
3 Return the toast to the grill until the cheese has begun to melt.
Roast beetroot, cranberry and gorgonzola salad
Any blue shines bright with something sweet, so pairing gorgonzola with beets and berries, as DetoutcoeurLimousin does here, is a great idea. I made a version with Rachel Kelly’s pickled cranberries from last month, and oh what a good idea that was.
Serves 2-4
4-5 medium-size raw beetroots, peeled and roughly chopped into 3-4cm chunks
2 tbsp cooking oil
1 sprig rosemary
Salt and black pepper, to taste
2 handfuls fresh cranberries
1 large garlic clove, peeled
2 handfuls bread, torn into bite‑size pieces
7 tsp gorgonzola dolce (or equivalent creamy, soft blue cheese)
1 Preheat the oven to 200C/400F/gas mark 6. Put the beetroot in a roasting pan and mix with 1 tbsp oil, a rosemary sprig, salt and pepper. Roast for 35-40 minutes or until just tender.
2 Add the cranberries to the beetroot and cook for a few more minutes until the berries soften and start to burst.
3 While the cranberries and beetroot are cooking you can get on with making the garlic croutons: heat 1 tbsp cooking oil in a frying pan with the whole garlic clove, and fry the torn bread pieces until crisp and golden. Remove the garlic clove.
4 Take the cooked beets and berries out of the oven, remove the rosemary sprig, add spoonfuls of gorgonzola and the croutons and mix. Serve warm.
Beef and cashel blue pasties
Cashel blue has a delectable sweet tartness that lifts Niamh Mannion’s beef and mushroom parcels. Best eaten straight out the oven.
Makes 4-5
For the filling
1 tbsp vegetable oil
A small knob of butter
125g button mushrooms, sliced
Salt and black pepper
250g sirloin beef, chopped into 1cm dice
200g potatoes, peeled and chopped into 1cm dice
50g onion marmalade
1 tbsp thyme, finely chopped
A few splashes of Worcestershire sauce
75g-100g cashel blue, crumbled
For the pastry
400g plain flour
½ tsp salt
125g butter
150ml water
1 egg, beaten, to glaze
1 Preheat the oven to 200C/400F/gas mark 6. Line a large baking tray with nonstick baking parchment and set aside.
2 Melt the oil and butter in a small frying pan over a medium-high heat and add the mushrooms. Season with a little sea salt and freshly ground pepper and fry until the mushrooms have softened slightly and turned a golden brown colour. Remove from the heat, drain on kitchen paper and allow to cool.
3 Put the chopped beef and potatoes in a mixing bowl and add the cooled mushrooms. Next add the onion marmalade, chopped thyme, Worcestershire sauce and cashel blue. Season well. Mix together to disperse everything evenly but try not to break up the cheese. Set aside while you make the pastry.
4 Sift the flour and salt together in a bowl. Put the butter and water in a medium saucepan over a high heat and bring to the boil. Immediately remove from the heat once the butter has melted and add the flour, stirring with a wooden spoon until the mixture comes together.
5 Turn the dough out on to a lightly floured surface and knead briefly until smooth, but do not overwork.
6 Using a large rolling pin, roll out the dough to 3-4mm thick. Using an upturned side plate as a guide, cut out 4 or 5 discs of about 20cm in diameter.
7 Divide the mixture evenly in mounds on one half of each circle, leaving a good edge clear all around. Brush around the edge of each disc with a little beaten egg and bring one side over to meet the other edge to wrap the filling. Pinch and crimp the edges together to ensure they are well sealed and put on the prepared baking tray.
8 Brush the pasties with a little more egg wash and cut a small slit in the top of each to allow steam to escape.
9 Bake in the preheated oven for 10 minutes and then lower the heat to 180C/350F/gas mark 4. Continue to bake for a further 25-30 minutes. Remove from the oven and allow to cool slightly.
10 The pasties can be served hot or cold but I like to eat them when they are still slightly warm and the cashel blue oozes out seductively.
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by noon on Wednesday 18 January. Selected recipes will appear in Cook and online on 28 January.
