13th
Say Cheese!
“Cheese (noun): a solid food prepared from pressed curds of milk.”
For many people, that’s all cheese really is. Something you have in a sandwich, or perhaps (unforgivably) squeeze from a tube. Many people have no idea how it’s made, or what the real artisan product might taste like.
Martin Moyden is a Shropshire farmer and cheese-maker. His family have been rearing cows for decades, and when milk prices crashed, and supermarket contracts became increasingly ruthless, he turned to making his own cheese.
His day starts with early morning milking, his fifty cows grazed on the lush pastures adjacent to the parlour. These are not your usual milking cattle though. Where most herds consist of pedigree Holsteins worked like race-cars to maximise their milk yeilds, Martin’s girls are a different kettle of fish entirely. A mixed-breed herd they bask happily in the sun, wondering close to take a sniff of the alien photographer standing at the gate. They’re playful, curious creatures, and compared to their milk-machine cousins, seem amazingly happy. It’s this which makes a better quality milk to make cheese. Plunging his hands into the vat of unpasteurised curds, “It feels lively,” he says, clearly a man who knows his craft.
What follows is the process of removing as much whey as possible, pressing the curds into molds, then letting the cheese cure in a specially conditioned store room. The rind forms a thick layer of mould which draws further moisture out of the cheese, and once ready, is washed off to leave a perfectly formed wheel of cheese. The milk that goes into this cheese is completely untreated. No pasteurisation, it’s not even chilled. Within a matter of hours it becomes a wheel of cheese ready for maturing.
This is a vastly different product to what you might find wrapped in plastic in the supermarket. His ‘Wrekin White’ is packed-full of mellow flavours, subtle aromas and nutty after-tastes. His blue cheese is soft and gentle to the tongue like a Danish blue, but with a hefty punch of flavour that you’d only usually find with a vintage Stilton. Probably not an every-day cheese for a student budget, but if you’re anything of a foodie, it’s the perfect treat to get you through exam-season blues.
Martin has been making cheese for around five years, but already he’s won a handful of awards. Dignitaries like Princess Anne and Raymond Blanc have sampled and enjoyed his cheese too.
It’s been said that it takes eighty-years to make a master cheese-maker. If that’s true, there are good things still to come from this artisan producer.
Mr Moyden’s Hand Made Cheese www.mrmoyden.com
Available online or stocked at Delilah Fine Foods, 15 Middle Pavement, Nottingham, NG1 7DX
