Hello again everyone. This time around, we have something weird and rather horrific-sounding, I’ll be honest, but it comes to me from a company that we’ve seen before. One who’s cheeses I thoroughly enjoyed.
Today, though, we’re looking at the latest from them, The Great British Cheese Company. A much madder creation, if you ask me, because it contains chocolate. Chocolate, chilli and lime, to be precise.
And, while it barely looks any different on the outside, it makes no attempt to hide its uniqueness once I’ve peeled back the wax:
It’s a pastel shade of cocoa-brown, with whole chips of chocolate and small flakes of both red and green pepper all throughout.
It’s not the most tempting looking snack, even by cheese standards, but the aroma wafting from it holds far greater appeal – An overtone of something akin to green candy, with subtler notes of smooth, creamy chocolate cheesecake. None of their usual strong cheddar here, just a gentle scent that reminds me of either chocolate limes or a mint aero.
It’s rather enticing but smell can only get you so far. What do The Great British Cheese Company have in store for its taste?
Well, when I carve off a slice to nibble on, I’m not actually greeted by all that much. It’s sweet and maybe a tiny bit milky but not a lot more at first.
Then the cheese melts in your mouth and in comes the most delightfully creamy drinking chocolate, followed, almost immediately, by the not quite artificial taste of lime oil. Milder, perhaps, than it was on the nose, but anything but mint in the mouth.
And, last but not least, the cheese and chilli do make themselves known. One a mild wensleydale, contributing more to the creaminess of today’s item than anything else, and the other a surprisingly feisty jalapeño, building slowly like a superhot but only to a high
2/10
Heat
on the lower end of what I would call “medium”.
It’s nothing that’ll blow your head off but it is a bit of a creeper, likely due to the dairy holding back its initial kick.
I was not expecting a lot when I first tried this cheese but, once I got over my preconceptions, I quickly realised that I like it a lot.
It’s definitely not a normal cheese – Not one that will go with crackers, wine and pepper jams – but there are a couple things that I, personally, think would pair well with it.
First, a gentle coffee. More milky than dark but with just enough richness left to compliment the chocolate and a touch of bitter to balance the touch of sweet.
And second, not crackers but biscuits. Oaty ones or ones with ginger, preferably of a crumbly consistency to contrast the smooth texture of our cheese.
I don’t know how much more you’re going to be able to do with today’s item, beyond maybe making a cheesecake out of it, but it’s certainly something that I enjoy.
Here’s what goes into it:
Wensleydale 63%(MILK) Salt, Cultures, Rennet, Drinking Chocolate 16% (Sugar, Cocoa powder, salt, flavouring) Milk and white chocolate chips 16% (sugar Whole(MILK) powder, Cocoa butter, Cocoa mass skimmed (MILK) powder, emulsifier: Soya lecithin, natural vanilla flavouring) Red chilli, green jalapeno peppers, lime flavour, Sugar 3.3%
And, as always, that’s their poor formatting, not mine. In fact, it was quite a struggle to get my spell checker to stop correcting it. Yet it is worth noting that, despite the rennet, this cheese is labelled as “Suitable for Vegetarians”.
Cow innards may be the most common source of these enzymes, used to curdle milk into cheese, but there are other, less harmful ways to obtain them.
Spicefreak 