Camembert: the best value cheese in Britain?

I know it's heresy but I'm not at all sure that Camembert isn't the best value cheese in Britain. For just £2.35 or £9.40 a kilo (online), for example, you can buy a perfectly matured Tesco Finest Camembert that will easily feed four.

Add a few grapes and crackers and you have a respectable cheese course for well under a fiver. Sainsbury's - obviously price-watching - costs the same.

OK, on special occasions I'll splash out on Britain's answer to Camembert, Tunworth, which is around £7.95 for the same weight. We all like to fly the flag. But it's not just that these premium Camemberts are cheap, they're also tasty - so much improved from a few years ago.

You can also bake them, a Nigel Slater classic that makes an indulgent supper for two with some boiled new potatoes or crusty bread and a sharply dressed green salad (although Nige, I see, favours PSB - aka purple sprouting broccoli)

Some of you may know that I also have a food and wine matching site so you'll be pleased to hear that I can also recommend a drink pairing for your Camembert that won't break the bank: a dry or sparkling cider. Or, if your Camembert is particularly runny or pongy, a Pommeau - a mixture of cider and apple brandy. The Somerset Cider Brandy Company has its own version called Pomona for £9.60 a 50cl bottle which would easily serve six.

What do you reckon is Britain's best cheese - or the best value cheese sold in Britain?

The tomato salad that turned into an aubergine bake

You'll have to allow me the pleasure of crowing about this dish - a rescue remedy for a leftover tomato salad.

I'd always taken the view that salads were unrescuable. Of course you could finish off the leftovers but not turn them into anything else. Or nothing that my husband would eat anyway, having an aversion to cold soups like gazpacho.

But we had so much left over I couldn't bring myself to throw it away so I tipped it into a pan and just simmered it until it took on a jammy consistency. And you know what? It didn't taste bad.

I then decided to use up another couple of leftovers - a couple of aubergines and some Comté to make an aubergine bake which would have actually fed 4 at a pinch, certainly three but the two of us scoffed the lot. Here's roughly how it was done

2 medium sized aubergines
About 300g leftover tomato salad cooked down to a sauce or homemade tomato sauce made from 1 onion cooked in a little oil until soft,  1-2 crushed cloves of garlic and 1/2 a 400g can of chopped tomatoes
Any stray herbs - I had a bit of fresh basil
About 4-5 tbsp olive oil
75g-100g Comté, Gruyère, or other leftover cheese plus a little parmesan if you have some
Salt and pepper

Cut the stalk off the aubergine and slice into 4 lengthways. Salt generously and set aside for half an hour or so. Cook down the tomatoes or make a simple tomato sauce - or even use a jar of pasta sauce if you have one knocking around that needs using up. Add a bit of extra garlic and chopped herbs if you like.

Rinse the aubergines and pat dry with kitchen towel. Heat a couple of tablespoons of the oil in a large frying pan and fry half the aubergine slices until browned, turning them a couple of times. Press them against the sides of the pan as you remove them to let as much oil run out as possible and repeat with the remaining aubergines. Warm through the sauce and adjust the seasoning.

Heat the oven to 200°C. Lay half the aubergines in a shallow dish and top with half the sauce and grated cheese. Repeat with the remaining ingredients, finishing with some grated parmesan if you have some. Pop in the oven for 20 minutes and bingo - there's your parmigiana. (Actually, you might want to flash it under the grill for an extra-crisp topping and grate over a bit more parmesan to serve. Oh, and a green salad on the side wouldn't go amiss.)

What's your most triumphant use of leftovers?

Cauliflower cheese with parmesan and almonds

They had some really nice cauliflowers in the greengrocer the other day which prompted me to make this cauliflower cheese with a twist. My husband isn’t mad about cooked cheese anyway so I decided to cut the amount of cheese and top it with flaked almonds which I reckoned would go well with cauliflower. (They really do). I think some chopped ham would be nice too if you want to make it more substantial.

The main thing is to use a strong, dryish cheese so you don’t have to use too much and can keep the flavour and texture light. I used some mature Old Winchester which I happened to have after a cheese festival but you’re probably more likely to have parmesan which would be fine. (Frugal cooking is, of course, about using what's in the fridge.)

Serves 2-3 as a supper dish, 4-6 as a vegetable

1 medium-sized cauliflower
30g butter
25g plain flour
350-400ml semi-skimmed milk
25-30g mature Pamesan or Grana Padano or 50g strong hard cheese like Old Winchester, Comté or Cheddar, grated
2 tbsp light cooking oil
50g flaked almonds
Salt and white pepper

Cut the outside leaves off the cauliflower but keep any tender, inner leaves. Cut the florets off the stalk and divide them into even sized clusters. Steam or boil the florets and inner leaves until just tender (about 6-7 minutes), drain and tip into a shallow buttered baking dish.

Melt the butter gently in a small non-stick saucepan, stir in the flour and cook over a low heat for about 30 seconds. Take the pan off the heat and gradually add the milk bit by bit, stirring between each addition. When you’ve added half the milk you can pour most of the rest of the milk in one go, holding back a little to see if you need it.

Bring the sauce to the boil, turn the heat right down and simmer for 5 minutes until thick and smooth. Take off the heat and add most of the cheese. You should be able to taste the cheese but it shouldn’t be overwhelmingly cheesy. Add more if you like then season with salt and white pepper to taste. If the sauce is too thick add the remaining milk or a couple of spoonfuls of the water you’ve used for cooking the cauliflower. Pour the sauce over the cauliflower florets.

Preheat the grill to a medium setting. Heat the oil in a frying pan and fry the flaked almonds over a low to moderate heat until they begin to colour then sprinkle them over the cauliflower. Place the dish under the grill (not too near the heat) until the almonds are light brown and the sauce starts to bubble.

Do you have any favourite additions to cauliflower cheese or do you prefer the classic version?

Cauliflower cheese with brown butter and onion

One of my favourite pastimes when visiting foodie friends is rooting through their cookery books though I have to admit it's rare to find many I haven't got. But the other day I turned up one called English Country House Cooking by someone of the splendid name of Fortune Stanley. Turns out she - she is a she - wrote in the 70's and has an illustrious background according to this page on the Stanley family tree.

The recipe that caught my eye was a cauliflower cheese with onion which seemed an intriguing addition. I didn't have time to jot it down so made up this version when I got home.

Serves 3 as a light supper, 4 as a vegetable

1 onion
400ml milk
a sprig of thyme
1 medium cauliflower
40g butter
30g plain flour
150g of grated or crumbled cheese (I used half and half Gorwydd Caerphilly and Cheddar which is what I happened to have in the fridge)
Salt and white pepper

Peel and thickly slice the onion and put it in a pan with the milk and thyme. Bring to the boil and leave over a very low heat for the onion to cook but you don't want it to boil.

Meanwhile divide the cauliflower into florets and steam or boil until not quite cooked (about 7-8 minutes). Drain, saving some of the water.

Melt the butter in a non-stick pan and stir in the flour. Cook the roux over a low heat until it it begins to darken in colour and smell nutty. Then tip in the hot milk and onions all at once and stir. It should thicken pretty well immediately - if it's too thick add a splash of the reserved cooking water. Or more milk, if you prefer. Remove the thyme.

Add half the grated cheese and season to taste and tip into an ovenproof dish. Heat the grill, top with the remaining cheese and cook until the top is golden and bubbling.

The effect of the onion was quite interesting, making the cauliflower cheese milder if anything although that could have been the Gorwydd which is quite subtle and delicate. It would have been particularly good with boiled ham or indeed with some bacon or ham in it though I was trying to keep it veggie. (This blog is sometimes too meaty by half).

I didn't take the roux quite as far as I might have done in terms of browning it. I reckon I cooked it for about 3 minutes - I think I'd cook it a minute or so longer next time to get an even nuttier taste. And a little blue cheese might have been interesting. But a nice twist on a family classic.

Thankyou, Fortune, for the inspiration.

Incidentally the surface of the cauli cheese shouldn't look as crinkly if you flash it under the grill. I had to put mine in the top of the Aga which takes an age to brown things. One of the things that drives me nuts about it.

3 cheeses for a fiver

I couldn't resist this offer when I spotted it in Somerfield the other day even though it broke one of my cardinal rules of not buying something you're not sure you can use up. Admittedly it wasn't a bad buy. We had family staying overnight, the cheeses individually would have come to over £7 and they were all versatile cheeses - a goats' cheese, a Brie and a piece of mature Stilton from the so-called 'Best Ever' range - which one could use in any number of ways.

I managed to use up a good chunk of the goats' cheese this lunchtime with a spontaneous salad of lightly dressed leaves topped with some roughly-torn croutons, made from leftover bread I baked off quickly in the A*A (won't bang on too much about that, notSupermum!) but could easily have made when I had the oven on for something else.


The Brie, which should last a few days longer, can easily be turned into a toastie or melt and the sell-by date on the Stilton is not till the 17th so there should be plenty of opportunity to use that up. Just a shame that my husband doesn't eat cheese . . .

What a terrible waste!

I spent the last couple of days in Dublin, judging the World Cheese Awards (see right). You can read more about it on my cheese blog, The Cheeselover, but there was one thing I wanted to share with you here.

At the end of the judging all the cheeses - some 2000 of them, worth thousands of pounds were apparently destroyed, for 'health and safety' reasons. They were apparently going to be rendered into 'cheese powder' whatever that is.

I'm sure the organisers are abiding by the letter of the law. Some of the cheeses were laid out overnight and certainly it would have been foolish not to dispose of the more perishable ones. But not to do anything with the aged cheeses which would have been perfectly edible is complete madness. As a cheeselover it makes me indignant. As an ordinary member of the public thinking about the use to which all that good food could be put I feel just plain angry.

I'm sure this is not the only example of profligate waste. Shops and restaurants have to throw away perfectly good food all the time. Isn't it about time we introduced some common sense into the regulations and treated our fellow citizens as grown ups capable of making their own choices about whether food is fit to eat or not?

Introducing The Cheeselover

A new book project (cheese). A new blog - The Cheeselover.

Must be mad but here's the thinking. I could write about cheese on The Frugal Cook but it would take the blog over for the next few months and cheese, as we all know, is far from frugal these days.

It also helps, I've found, writing a blog as you write a book. Book writing is a long and lonely journey and you don't see any results for months but blogging is immediate and gratifying, enabling you to share the ideas and thoughts you have as you go along with fellow enthusiasts.

You can also take and share your own photos which publishers understandably won't let you do ;-) Or won't publish them anyway.


That doesn't mean I'll be abandoning TFC or never posting about cheese. In fact to allay any worries you may have here's a pic of the glorious cheese rinds I scrounged from The Parmesan Cheese Co at the Organic Food Festival at the weekend which I shall add to the soup I'm making from the carcass of the half-price organic chicken I bought (which has already provided two meals). Fantastic in risottos too. When you buy cheese - if you buy cheese from an independent cheese shop - ask for some.

A gorgeous cheese

When it comes to frugal eating cheese is my achilles heel. I already mentioned I'd gone a bit mad in Waitrose this week. Now I've bought a whole cheese in the Whiteladies Road farmers' market.

The thing is this. The cheesemaker, who was there in person, was selling these big beautiful goats cheeses off for £5 each because he had too many of them. You can see from the picture above it had some pretty scary mould on it which would put a lot of people off.

But if cheesaholics like me don't buy them there's a danger that small cheesemakers like him will go out of business.

We had some for lunch (along with the leftover soused mackerel and potatoes which I managed to turn into quite a tasty salad) and it was just gorgeous.

I'll get the neighbours downstairs to buy the other half off me to salve my conscience . . .

Incidentally if you want to support this lovely cheesemaker who trades as White Lake Cheeses you can apparently buy his cheeses from The Cheese Gig and find out which farmers' markets he attends here.

Cut-price cheese/basil plants

I have to confess I'm a bit of a cheese snob so I wouldn't normally buy a supermarket's cheapest range of cheeses. But in the interests of research into how much you can save on cheese I bought a couple from the Sainsbury's Basics range - a ball of mozzarella for 57p rather than 75p for the standard mozzarella and a wedge of brie for 74p for 200g instead of 95p for 135g (i.e. £3.70 a kg instead of £7.04)

And you know what? They were perfectly fine. Only by paying quite a bit more for the premium lines would you get a better product.

Having some left-over tomatoes and olives, I made a tomato, mozzarella and olive salad with the mozzarella, using the herby oil from the olives to dress the salad and boost the flavour of the cheese.

You'll also spot a few basil leaves. I bought a pot to see how long I could get it to survive (not long if past experience is anything to go by but I'm trying to cosset it)

And I made a bacon and Brie toastie with 50g of the Brie. Rather more cheese, apparently than you're supposed to eat but quite restrained for me. The recommended portion size on most sites is 30g which would make the Brie stretch theoretically to 6 1/2 helpings. I reckon I'll get four out of it.

What's key with these milder (or, to be totally honest, bland) cheeses is to take them out of the fridge in plenty of time before you eat them. If you serve them at room temperature you get twice the flavour.

A very nice quiche

Of all the options for using up the remaining ham from my hock I chose a cheddar and ham quiche and a split pea and ham soup made with the scraps and the bone. The quiche should serve 6 although the two of us managed to demolish half of it yesterday, the soup 4. That makes 12 portions in total from the one £1.89 joint of meat. Result!

Here's the recipe. I'm torn about whether to advise making your own pastry. It has a better taste and texture and is cheaper than buying it ready made but not by a huge amount and it does take a fair bit of time. But the filling knocks spots off any shop-bought quiche.

Cheddar, ham and onion quiche
I suggest cheddar, ham and onion but you could vary this in an infinite number of ways depending on what ingredients you have to hand

Serves 4-6
1 tbsp olive oil
15g butter
1 medium onion (about 175g), peeled and roughly chopped
A handful of wild garlic, shredded (optional)
375g shop-bought or home-made shortcrust pastry
3 medium eggs, lightly beaten
225ml single cream or cream and milk, mixed
100-110g ham, ideally off the bone, cut into small pieces
125g mature cheddar, grated
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Preheat the oven to 200°C/400° F/Gas 5.Heat a frying pan over a moderate heat, add the oil and butter then, when it has melted fry the chopped onion for about 5 minutes until soft. Chuck in the wild garlic (which I used because I still had some), stir and set aside.

Unroll the pastry, if ready rolled, or roll it out in a circle big enough to fit a 25cm/10in diameter flan tin. Carefully lower the pastry into the tin, pressing it into the sides, trim any overhanging edges and lightly prick the base with the prongs of a fork. Line the pastry case with a piece of foil or greaseproof paper weighed down with some baking beans and bake the pastry shell for about 10 minutes. Remove the paper and beans and return the pastry case to the oven for another 4 minutes. Brush a little of the beaten egg over the part-cooked pastry base and return to the oven for another minute or two. (This stops it going soggy)

Reduce the heat to 190°C/375°F/Gas 5. Add the milk and cream to the remaining eggs and season with salt and pepper. Scatter half the grated cheese over the base of the tart then sprinkle over the onions and ham and top with the remaining cheese. Carefully pour the egg and cream mixture over the top making sure that it is distributed evenly. Put the flan tin on a baking sheet and bake for about 30 minutes until the top is puffed up and lightly browned. Leave for 10-15 minutes before serving or cool completely and serve cold.

A no-food-shopping weekend

I've often wondered how long we could last for food without going to the shops. Of course there are things you'd run out of pretty quickly like fresh milk, fruit and vegetables but if you had a reasonably well-stocked storecupoard and freezer I reckon you could easily survive a week.

Anyway I managed it for a couple of days over the weekend. My husband was away, and I was working on the book so I thought I'd see how I got on. (I didn't plan it ahead so I didn't stock up beforehand, honest!)

Here's what I ate:

Friday
Late back from London so I skipped supper and had a banana. Easy.

Saturday

Breakfast
A glass of freshly squeezed orange juice, and stewed plums with Greek yoghurt and granola.

Mid morning
A leftover croissant, split and toasted

Lunch
A bit of a chilli-fest. Scrambled eggs with chillies, spring onions and coriander and a warm tortilla, sweet chilli sauce

Dinner
Leftover chicken stew

Sunday breakfast
Same as Saturday's

Lunch
Feta cheese and red pepper tapenade quesadillas. with a chunk of cucumber.

Supper
Linguine with Stilton and onion, a pear

I'm particularly pleased with the linguine and Stilton invention which was made from a (still in date) piece of Stilton I found at the back of the fridge. Funny though how it doesn't sound as glamourous as Gorgonzola. But it's cheaper and just as good. Here's the recipe:

Linguine with Stilton and onion

Serves 1

1 1/2 tbsp olive oil or butter
1 medium onion, peeled and chopped
100g linguine or spaghetti
40g Stilton or other blue cheese, crumbled
1 tbsp double or whipping cream, crème fraiche or Greek yoghurt
2 heaped tbsp finely chopped parsley
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
Grated Grana Padano or Parmesan to serve (optional but nice)

Heat a frying pan, add the oil or butter then once it’s melted tip in the onion, stir and leave over a low heat to fry. Pour a kettle of boiling water into a large saucepan, bring back to the boil, add salt, then add the pasta, stir and cook for the time recommended on the pack. Before you drain the linguine set aside half a cup of the boiling water. Add 3 tbsp of water to the onion and tip in the crumbled cheese. Leave over a low heat to melt then stir in the cream or yoghurt (I used yoghurt which was fine) Drain the pasta and add to the pan along with the parsley and toss well together, adding a splash more water if you need it. Season generously with black pepper. Spoon into a warm bowl and sprinkle over some grated Grana Padano or Parmesan, if you have some. Some dark leafy green salad would be a good accompaniment.

Human Hoover Syndrome

Bad news from the scales. I have not only failed to lose the weight I put on over Christmas, I have acquired a couple of kilos more. Which makes me about four and a half kilos overweight in total.

Where did it all come from? All too obvious, when you start to think about it. Bread, cheese and wine - the three things I love most to eat and drink.

Working on any cookery book tends to pile on the pounds but acquiring a frugal mindset is even worse. You convince yourself that no ingredient must be wasted so you find a home for it. Human hoover syndrome . . .

This is a dilemma I'm going to have to get to grips with. I need - urgently - to lose weight. I need to test recipes. I simply need to eat less.

No more than 1 glass of wine and two modest slices of baguette a day for a start. Cheese only as part of a meal, not as a nibble. Cut down charcuterie (difficult in France). Cut out butter. No puds (that's the easy bit - I don't have a sweet tooth)

A good start with a scratch salad for two for today's lunch made from leftovers from the fridge - half a small cucumber, half a green pepper, a head of chicory, the green bits from a large, sweet spring onion and a handful of parsley. All chopped, sliced or cut into chunks and tossed with a dressing made from a dessertspoon of tarragon vinegar, 2 dsp of basil-flavoured olive oil and 1 dsp of grapeseed oil (cheaper and lighter than using all olive oil). To my portion I added a few fine shavings of sheeps' cheese and a small chunk of fromage de tete (a very frugal jellied ham paté, a bit like brawn) and half the day's bread allocation. Surprisingly delicious and satisfying but can I keep it up?

How much do sell-by dates matter?

I've done a lot of chucking out in the last 24 hours. Three pieces of cheese from mother-in-law's fridge, one from my own.

A couple of them were well over the hill (oldies are hopeless about sell-by dates) but mine, a piece of Comté that officially expired on the 28th of January didn't look too bad. I remember when I was a child my mum would have simply cut away the mould and cheerfully served up the rest but if I advised you to do that the health police would be down on me like a ton of bricks. So out it went.

What I should of course have done before going away was grate it and freeze it then I could have added it to a sauce or a topping. Hey ho . . .

I did however find an unopened box of Caprice des Dieux, a creamy brie-style cheese to which my youngest son is very partial but somehow escaped his attentions over Christmas. That expired on the 21st of January, almost two weeks ago, but looks - and smells - absolutely fine so I shall risk it. You wonder what they add to it to give it this kind of shelf-life. If I survive I'll report on the outcome.

To compensate for all this waste I raided the fridge and storecupboard for our lunch - spaghetti amatriciana-style made with some leftover pancetta (in date, I hasten to add), a small jar of tomato and chilli pasta sauce, extra garlic and a dash of red wine vinegar (useful for adding zip to shop bought sauces). Some parsley would have been nice but we haven't been shopping yet. That pleasure is to come.