Friday 8th January 2010
I must just fit in this little Christmas narration. I know I’ve been promising that miraculous fashion lady all week.
Elsa Hodgeman, the Gertrude Stein de nos jours, huge in the Art World, was shopping for Christmas in a mart, possibly Sainsbury’s, with her sister. The Multis were to dine with them at their mother, Lady Newell’s, Elizabethan manor house in the country on Christmas Eve. Elsa said, ‘We must have cheese,’ for a cheese course. Her sister was appalled: ‘The expense. The hole in the roof. However are we to mend it if we squander on cheese?’ I’m not sure quite which hole in which roof she referred to. But I do sympathise. I too have often been crushed by the cost of cheese.
Elsa said, ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ You know what sisters are like. They quickly became over-heated. Elsa was sobbing by ‘World Cuisine’. Later, she said, Mark Wallinger himself remarked that a piece of cheese would be hard to fit into a hole in the roof, which was rather horrid of him. With no grace her sister finally picked out a shrink-wrapped piece of Edam: cost £3.54. Elsa flung it back, grabbed the £7.89 slab and as good as rammed the check-out with the trolley. Sister left speechless.
So it was, on Christmas Eve, that Elsa faced entertaining the Multis with the grim lump of Edam. The headlamps of their Mercedes approached. They crunched at a halt at the door. Out they came from the car with an enormous box. ‘It’s for you,’ they said. A present. A whole Stilton from Neal’s Yard.
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Stilton? My my the multis are behind. Stichelton is where it’s at.
The Multis are not merely fashionable. But what is it – Stichelton? Is it a hydrid cheese?
Sounds like another one of those Sitwells – Sir Stichelton? Caciocavallo Podolico is my favourite but sadly it’s out of season momentarily.
Stilton made- as Stilton was until the EEC banned it- with unpasteurised milk, so has to be called a different name. Utterly delicious, and reassuringly more exp than the top brand of Stilton. Heaven.
I beg to differ, but having thrust myself forward as an Anglophile and therefore the British Cheese authority abroad I can honestly swear that Stichelton is a cheap imitation of super Stilton – and believe me when I say I have tried them all. It is creamier, granted but less of a strong flavour there. Different horses for courses I guess – as you would say there?
Clearly we must have it!
Thank you, Barbara. You show admirable Poor Little Rich Gay tendencies in the deep attention you have given to this subject. I had no ideah cheese was such a subject. But Reggie Cresswell, as you know, the Ghanaian ceramacist (do hope I’ve spelt right. No spell check here), doesn’t take cheese at all. Would drop down dead if so much as a crumb…
Must have that too, as soon as its season opens. Cheese, for Poor Little Rich Gays, is a challenge. It must be eaten but not eaten, because of the figure.
This column is getting cheesy