Ok, so this isn’t really a review, though one day a review of Northcote will be on the site somewhere. This is something a little bit different.
This is all about cheese. Cheese as part of your canapes, your starter, main and dessert. As a long term cheese lover, I was already excited. That it was award winning Stilton and Shropshire Blue and my mouth was watering in anticipation.
Add in Nigel Harworth as the chef responsible and I was downright giddy.
It’s not just his skill as a chef that is exciting. Or that he and his team do traditional beautifully, as well as they do the unusual. There’s something about the Lancashire accent that does things to me. I had to take a friend with me, just in case I had too much Prosecco and needed to be stopped from chasing the poor man around the kitchen.
Colston Bassett Dairy is home to award winning Stilton and Shropshire cheeses, winning Supreme Champion in the International Cheese Awards, The Cathedral City Crown Stilton Trophy for the Best Stilton Cheese, The CHR Hansen Perpetual Challenge Trophy for the Best other Blue Veined Cheese, the title of Champion UK plus Gold for their Shropshire Blue cheese.
With further trophies at the World Cheese Awards, Great Yorkshire Show and the Great Taste Awards, it’s safe to say this is bloody awesome cheese. And they wanted to celebrate. So they handed over a truckle or two of cheese to Nigel and the team and awaited the delights that emerged from the kitchen.
The fun started almost as soon as we arrived. As we mingled with our hosts, sipped a deliciously crisp Ca’ Morlin Prosecco Frizzante and chatted cheese, the canapes arrived. Light crisp tapioca crackers dusted with Shropshire Blue cheese, and two kinds of risotto balls, including one with a rich game filling that Nigel worried wasn’t quite there. The cheese had added a buttery quality to the meat, and I think I understood what he was alluding to. I’d have loved a bit more base umami flavour, but this was have clashed horribly with the Prosecco, and instead they balanced well and whetted our appetite for the main event.
As we took our seats. Craig Bancroft, Joint Managing Director at Northcote, introduced both himself and the first of our matched drinks for the evening, not wine, but a white port, Ramos Pinto – Adriano White Reserva Port. Fruity, rich, sweet, this has lots of orange and honeysuckle, but not what I’d have automatically paired with our starter, onion caramel charred hanger steak with pickled artichokes and Colston Bassett Stilton.
The challenge had been to match the pickled artichokes to a wine. Artichokes are notoriously difficult anyway, but add in pickling and it was even more so, let alone the rest of the ingredients. However, the sweet charring on the steak worked with the sweet acidity of the Port and both the earthiness and acid of the vegetables and the bitterness of the charred Savoy cabbage.
From White Port with our starter, to a Pinot Noir with our main – Chanson Bourgogne Pinot Noir. Light red in colour, this was cherries, redcurrant jelly and light spice. Served with the Goosnargh Cornfed Guinea Fowl which had a Colston Bassett Shropshire Blue cheese crumb, damsons, girolles and the most incredible Colston Bassett Shropshire Blue cheese mash.
The Guinea fowl was tender, the crumb delicious with dehydrated chicken skin adding a crisp salty buttery flavour, tart damsons and the earthy mushrooms were divine.
But that mash.
Oh, that mash.
Nigel had been usurped by mashed potato. No longer was I wanting to chase him around the kitchen. Now I wanted a quiet room by myself and another bowl of that mashed potato.
It was not to be.
Instead we moved on towards dessert. Craig returned to introduce us to our final matched wine of the evening and we were back to Port with the Ramos Pinto LBV 2009. Plums and damsons on the palate, this was soft, but with a really punchy acidity, and despite it’s intensity, was lighter in sugar than the white Port.
Served alongside the Port were black figs in Port wine & Colston Bassett Stilton ice cream. The syrup drenched figs were soft and the acidity of the Port balanced some of the sweetness of the dessert. Too sweet for me, the best element was perhaps the Stilton ice cream which was light, a little salty and creamy.
Coffee and extraordinary petit fours, including a coffee truffle, sasparilla Turkish delight and a thyme caramel were served and yet, though our belts were straining, our taste buds hadn’t yet finished and we dove into cheese and biscuits.
While we did so, it was the perfect opportunity to talk to Billy Kevan, Head Cheesemaster at Colston Bassett. The job is a long-term one, he’s the fourth in line, with previous incumbents having held the post in the 101 years since the Dairy began.
Milk is bought by Colston Bassett from 5 farms surrounding the shop and Billy’s day starts at 4:30am, turning this milk into the Stilton and Shropshire Blue they produce, churning out 420 tonnes of handmade cheese every year. Even by my standards, that’s a lot of cheese.
The work, care and love that goes into producing the cheese is evident – Billy talked us through the process, from temperatures and curds and whey, through to pricking the cheese to stimulate the mould growth to create the blue veins, to it’s maturation. And the cheese is beautiful. It’s not as heavily ‘blue’ as anything you’d buy in a supermarket. This is creamy, buttery, the rich blue enhancing, without dominating the creaminess. It’s bloody gorgeous.
Though this was my first visit to Northcote, it certainly won’t be my last and to help such an award winning cheese celebrate was an honour. Thank you all involved.
Dammit, I’m a lucky bird.
With huge thanks to Starlings Photography for the images, Colston Bassett for the invitation and Nigel, Craig and the team for their hard work to create such delicious pairings.
I attended this event as a representative of Tasting Britain, to whom I also owe my thanks.