Tunworth

I’ve been trying to make a camembert-style cheese this weekend. The lovely rind and flavour found in this kind of cheese comes from a white mould produced by the  fungus penicillium candidum. This fungus can be obtained in a freeze-dried format from cheesemaking supply shops, or, as I decided to try, from the rind of another good camembert-style cheese.

I’ll write more about the cheese-making itself later as what I want to write about now is the cheese I used as the inoculent.

I had a possibly irrational desire for an English cheese, so chose Tunworth. This cheese is made  by Hampshire cheeses and won Supreme Champion  at the British Cheese Awards in 2006, as well as a gold at the World Cheese Awards 2007; it seemed like it might be a good mother-cheese.

Produced from unpasteurised cows milk, it has a strong, grassy, almost farmyard (in a good way) aroma. The smell alone made me want to eat it although some of my work colleagues were slightly less enthusiastic when I kept in in the fridge for the last few hours of Friday.

The texture is gooey, sticking to the knife and the back of my teeth. I’m still working on how to describe the taste of cheese but it is rich – with an earthy, almost sour, kick. I would be really happy if my cheese comes any where close to this.