I’m in excellent company – Wallace, Gromit and I all love Wensleydale cheese. Crumbly, dense and savoury, Wensleydale originates from Wensleydale, Yorkshire, where it began life as a ewes milk cheese made by French Cistercian monks. It’s now made across the UK from cow’s milk, …
Savoury cheesy beery sauce on toast, that is my delicious experience with Welsh Rarebit to date. And my, this lovely little cheese-on-toast treat is scrumptious.
What to do with sage? Make buttery, cheesy sage and cheddar biscuits? Yes please.
I’ve found myself with a reasonably plentiful supply of fresh sage, which is a new thing. I have always managed to grow parsley and been left perplexed at how to use the stuff up, but my previous sage attempts have all turned into sad little heaps.
It seems I’m not the only person to pose this question. The lovely Chocolate and Zucchini blog has very helpfully compiled a list of suggestions. Those of you who have read some of my other cheese-laced ramblings can probably imagine that sage and cheddar biscuits were a stand-out.
Mmm, cheddar. Do you know what I love most about cheddar? It’s those delightful little crunchy bits amongst the dense, savoury cheese. And recently, I was fascinated to learn from this wonderful cheese blog, Fromage Homage, that they have a special name….calcium lactate crystals.
These little biscuits are adapted from this recipe. They provide a lot of bang for their buck, being so very simple to make but looking most classy served up as a home-made nibble to accompany drinks. I need to provide you with a warning: they are incredibly buttery. So much so that you need to have at least two.
Here’s how to make your very own:
Ingredients:
Preheat your oven to 200 degrees celsius and line two baking trays.
Combine the butter, cheese, flour, sage and pepper in a bowl. Mix until it forms a ball (I find it easiest to use my hands for this).
Turn the dough out onto a floured surface and roll out to 0.5 cm thickness. Use a cutter to make into rounds, treating it like a cookie doll by rolling up the offcuts and cutting out more biscuits.
Bake in the oven for 12-15 minutes until crisp and golden. Cool for one minute and then transfer to a baking rack.
Makes 16 biscuits.
Ladies and gentlemen, we have finally hit the International Dishes section of the Edmonds Cook Book. As I make my way alphabetically (and rather slowly, I do admit) through the Edmonds Cook Book, the A section to date has yielded a fair bit of baking and …