7 ways to EAT CHEESE*

Cheesemongers give tips on how to buy and store cheese in an environmentally conscious way

1 KEEP IT WELL

Many fridge designs have a little shelf in the door labelled ‘cheese’ or ‘dairy’. Don’t be fooled, says Jason Hinds, director at Neal’s Yard Dairy. ‘Fridges are very dry environments.’ If you’re buying cheese in a packet, then where you store it in the fridge makes no di erence; but a quality cheese will su er if not looked after properly. The best place to put it is in the bottom drawer of the fridge, which is less open and therefore less exposed to cold, dry air, while not being sealed o entirely. ‘If it’s in the same drawer as your lettuce, there is some air getting to it – but there’s also some moisture,’ says Hinds. ‘Dry environments and environments where the cheese can’t get any air are the two big don’ts.’

2

Buy quality cheese to cook with

‘All too often the same people spending a bit more for a good cheeseboard are buying cheap, lavourless cheddar for cooking,’ says Jason. ‘If you want to support a sustainable food system, you should buy all your ingredients from the cheesemonger.’ This might sound somewhat self-serving from a man who makes his living from selling farmhouse cheese, but he argues that well-matured farmhouse cheddar, produced from the quality milk of pasture-fed cows, has so much lavour, you need less to cook with – ‘so, it doesn’t actually cost more’. You’d have to double the quantities of a bag of mass-produced cheddar to get the same intensity as a Montgomery or Isle of Mull cheddar – and even then, you wouldn’t get the complexity of lavour. Neal’s Yard Dairy has even started selling leftover Montgomery blocks, grated, to restaurants. Hinds explains they did it, ‘initially to reduce waste, but they’ve loved it so much they’ve converted from the cheaper cheese they got from big wholesalers before’.