The Multi-Award-Winning Blacksticks Blue
The Lancastrian King of Blueness!
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| Image courtesy of ButlersLarder.co.uk - actually I didn't ask at all or that but it's basically free advertising |
SEEING THE CHEESE AND SNIFFING IT A BIT, MAYBE A POKE
Blacksticks Blue resembles Stilton but are a soft orange in colour, with decent blue veining. That's a pleasant colour match, that.Blacksticks isn't especially pungent, and it'll bring Stilton to mind on the nose, probably. It's softer than Stilton, though, with a creamier texture. You can squish it with a knife and spread it like, for sandwiches. Or on toast would be proper good. Oh, I have to try that. With Jalapeño, Lime and Coriander jam.
MMmm. Yes.
TASTE THE CHEESE
FULL FLAVOUR. Wine sometimes have like "full-bodied" written on it. Always makes me think of euphemised fat people - like myself, only I'm is not euphemised usually - anyways, this means that this cheese flavour is like well busomy. It's a buxom cheese, with big, rounded, mid-level flavours, blending tang and cream. It doesn't sing louder with any bit of its taste choir, they all hit the right level I reckon. A round taste rolls on for a bit, like a memory. Or in my case, like, a reminder.To have some more.
WHAT MY THOUGHTS ARE WITH THE CHEESE
This cheese are kind of recognised as a proper good cheese. It has awards and everything. The Indiepedant, which are a newspaper* says it's number 7 in the top 10 British cheeses.I think this cheese are very good. Good enough to be a Stilton understudy, but like a up-and-comer understudy. Conceivably you could make Stilton have nights off or go on holiday, and the Blacksticks Blue won't disappoint in its place. It are very creamy and would please cheese-eaters nicely just so long as they like blue cheese. And if they don't like blue cheese they're only sort of cheese-eaters anyway.
Robust flavours and creamy texture put this cheese on my personal top ten and also in my new favourite blue cheese category. Lancastrians done good.
* a "newspaper" is like a kind of tiny internet printed out on a thick kind of toilet paper, only made for a giant's arse
FRATERNISING OPTIONS
You can proper do this on its own, like in small pieces, in a lamplit room, with music on low. I won't judge you. I been there.I reckon this cheese are pretty versatile. I would have it with grapes, to get that sweet and sharp cutting through the cream, or I'd team it with a good steak-mince burger. Cheese sauces would have a hefty flavour punch from the cheese fists of Blackstick Blue, too.
My best recommendation would be for a nice warm, fresh whole or multigrain bread. No need for butter, just bang a wedge of Bluesticks in it and munch that mother. Mmm. Peasanty bliss.
Drinkwise, get a peppery Shiraz or something with good smoke or oak - but not too much tannin would be my undereducated guess. You still want the fruit to present nice. Also a dark old ale like Woodforde's Norfolk Nog would wash it down beautyful.
Music: whatever you fancy really, though I will say it accompanied Jake Bugg very nicely.
OTHER KNOWINGS
Blacksticks Blue is cow cheese.It is Artisanal. I hate that word, cos it combines the words "art" and "anal".
Next week, (or a week in the future, you don't own me) I will be doing a French cheese, and doing it HARD.
