I taught them to cook vidya4 - Flipbook - Page 45
Autumn Term
43
‘Why don’t you like the other cheeses?’
‘Because we like Cheddar.’
I pass round the first plate of tiny pieces of a creamy, mild
cheese.
‘This Caerphilly cheese is moist and salty. Welsh coal miners
need a salty cheese to replace the salt they have lost in sweat
when they are working hard in underground mines. When you’ve
finished tasting, eat a piece of cracker and take a sip of water to
clean your palate for the next one.’
‘Gavin. What now?’
‘Got any more biscuits, Miss? To clean my palate?’
Cynthia instinctively snaps the remaining crackers in half.
For Gavin and the other boys this cheese tasting is lunch. If they
fill up on cheese and crackers, they can go down to the betting
shop.
The National Dairy Council is keen to promote cheeses in school
and provides booklets and coloured charts to decorate my room. If
the class is good, next term we’ll go on a trip to their headquarters
near Oxford Street for a demonstration. But only if they are good.
Really good. And if I can persuade Gavin not to come.
I point to the large wall map called English Cheeses which
shows chunks of cheese dotted around England. Caerphilly
is shown with an arrow pointing to Wales. Why’s that there?
And what’s happened to cheeses from Scotland or Northern
Ireland?
Lancashire cheese is next.
‘Lancashire cheese comes from the north of England. It’s
much colder there and this cheese is used a lot in cooking.’
‘Is that where you come from, Miss?’
‘No, Len, I come from north of Watford, the Midlands. Not the
north.’
They don’t get this tease. Watford is an unknown land.
‘Crumble this cheese into potato pie and bake in cheese
pasties.’