Glynn Purnell on Cheese Great British Food Revival

-Some of the best British produce is under threat.

-It's at the mercy of market forces.

-And food fashion.

-Produce that has been around for centuries...

-Could die out within a generation.

-So together we're on a mission...

-To save it.

We'll give you tips on how to find it, grow it and cook it.

-And crucially, how to put sensational British produce...

-Back on the food map.

One carpaccio, one egg, one duck, one lamb.

'I'm Glynn Purnell, head chef at my own award-winning restaurant in Birmingham.'

One egg, one duck, one lamb.

'If there's one ingredient I believe is in need of revival, then it's British cheese.'

We forget how much we use cheese in cooking.

We do a goat's cheese emulsion with things, we gratinate things. And you can't beat cheese on toast.

I'm sort of concerned that we're not giving cheesemakers enough credit for what they do.

It's frightening that we've neglected them.

Over half the cheese we buy each year in the UK is imported,

so our own cheeses face stiff competition on the shelves.

Copycats, imitations, misleading labelling. We need to bring it back, we need to revive it.

'I want to see British cheeses in your basket, so I'm doing the hard work for you

'by tracking down some of the country's best cheeses.'

You get that dimple of sweat.

'By finding out how we're fooled into buying the foreign stuff.'

53% of the cheddar sold is pre-packed own label. We don't even know who made it.

'And in the Revival kitchen I'll be sharing three fantastic recipes to help you

'show off our great British cheese.'

We've got that fantastic wibble wobble.

'I've always loved using British cheeses in my recipes.'

One of my first experiences of cooking with cheese, when I was 10, with a little brother and sister,

we used to grate the cheese over hot beans for cheesy beans on toast

and the other one was when we'd grate the cheese into the bowl and pour hot soup over it.

Let it stand for a second then create fantastic, sort of elastic-y cheese string.

They thought I was a genius. Still do.

'Now there's no denying that we Brits love our cheese.

'We eat around 600,000 tons of the stuff a year. But do we know enough about the great British cheeses

'that are out there?'

I could name five British cheeses. I think so. Cheddar... No, sorry!

Stilton, Wensleydale, Cheddar, obviously.

Cheddar, em...

-Cheddar, Wensleydale...

-Obviously, Cheddar.

Red Leicester?

Hmm, it's not so easy, actually.

'Clearly, for my revival to succeed, we all need to become more aware

'of the variety of British cheeses available.'

Nigel, what's happened to British cheese?

Well, in WWII, our cheese production virtually came to a standstill

and any cheese that was made was made to a national recipe,

which was essentially a Cheddar style in the rationing system. So we lost a lot of skills in that period.

Cheesemaking didn't start in earnest until the early 1950s.

'So that explains our obsession with Cheddar, but we're talking half a century ago.

'Surely our British cheese industry has moved on.'

We're now making over 700 named cheeses in this country,

many of which are similar to imported cheeses we've had for some time.

Things like our Cornish and Somerset Brie and Camembert are a match for any cheese in the world.

The idea of having an English Camembert is fantastic.

Just looking round this shop, it's amazing, really. There's so many varieties of British cheeses.

I'm surprised how many there is. As a nation, are we not trying enough different British cheeses?

Probably. I think part of the reason is that Cheddar is the nation's favourite. More than half the cheese

-we eat is Cheddar in one form or another.

-It's being brave and having a go.

-It is.

And you don't have to buy a lot. I try a different cheese every week.

I only buy 100 grams to get a taste of the flavour.

Cheddar plus one is the little motto we've got. Cheddar plus one and see how you get on.

-Have you tried all 700?

-Not yet, but I'm well on the way.

100 grams at a time, working your way round all 700 of them!

'It turns out we're making lots of different types of cheese, but not yet buying enough of them.

'So I'm going to show you how easy it is to substitute British cheeses for your foreign favourites.

'And what better place to start than the most famous of all cheese recipes, a cheesecake?'

Normally I would use a typical soft foreign cheese, but today I've got a fantastic West Yorkshire,

British cheese, which is pretty unusual. I'm excited making this.

This will be a perfect recipe to showcase how fantastic and brilliant British cheese is.

'The first step is the biscuit base.'

I normally use digestive biscuits. If you've got broken biscuits, throw them in. The odd ginger,

the odd cookie that's lost its way.

'Blitz together the biscuits with melted butter. I use salted butter to cut through the sweetness

'of that real cheesy topping.

'Tip it into a loose-bottom tin, press it down firmly and whack it in the fridge to set.

'Stage two is the fruit topping.' Get the blackberries in with some sugar.

And crush as much of the juice out as possible.

Some people call it coulis, but I just call it a juice. Coulis is a bit too posh!

And we'll pass that off and get rid of all the little bits that get stuck in your teeth.

I've got some now, actually. It should make an absolutely stunning pudding.

'Leave it to cool and get on with the main event -

'the sweet cheese filling.'

We've got this lovely West Yorkshire British cream cheese, which people probably haven't seen.

It's fantastic. It's got a slight acidic smell, which is really nice.

And we've got a really nice vanilla pod, which we're going to split. It'll flavour our cheesecake.

'And here's a top tip - before you split it, run your knife over it to loosen up those little black seeds.'

I just want to scrape... as much of that out as possible.

You can also save these and use them in your sugar.

'Next get the cream cheese in a mixer with those vanilla seeds.

'Then add three eggs and some cream that have been whisked together.

'And, finally, feed in some flour and sugar.'

Once you've mixed it, you might have to run your paddle through it.

If you overbeat it, it'll be too thin and take too long to cook. Don't ask me why. It just doesn't.

'Simply pour the cheesy mixture onto the biscuit base.

'And drizzle on the cooled blackberry juice.'

I'm making a feathered effect. It's a little bit retro,

but it's a classical recipe so it's quite nice to keep that sort of theme, really.

I'm going to pop this in the oven for around 45 minutes, but not too hot. Don't overcook it.

You want it to cook really gently all the way through.

In the middle we want a little wibble wobble. 'I'm serving it with zingy blackberries and honeycomb,

'dusted with black pepper.' Just give it a...

'Smash it into shards of peppery sugariness.'

I'm going to cut up some of the blackberries, leave some whole.

And you always have to nick one.

Whack a bit of that in there,

give it a little stir up.

'And after 45 minutes, it's done.'

It's exactly what we're looking for.

We've got that fantastic wibble wobble.

'Now for the hardest part - leaving it to cool before diving in.'

So this is the moment of truth to see whether it's set.

We need to run a knife round the outside.

You can hear the crunchiness of the biscuits on the bottom.

And there we go.

I'm going to serve it with the blackberries and honeycomb

and that should give the dish even more texture and a little bit of spice with the black pepper.

So there we have it. My baked blackberry cheesecake.

In Britain, we love our cheese. We buy it in supermarkets, delis, farmhouses, markets.

60% of that is Cheddar, but a third of it isn't even from the UK.

'Originally made in its namesake village in Somerset, Cheddar is now produced all over the world.'

If you go back into the 1860s, there's a guy called Harding who lived in Somerset

who sent his recipe to America. And because of him Cheddar went global.

It can be made anywhere in any sort of factory and imported here.

People are confused.

They think they're buying home-produced Cheddar.

In fact, they're buying cheese that could come from anywhere.

And that is a great problem.

'Buying your cheese from a farmer's market is always a good way to know where it comes from.

'What about the cheese you buy in shops and supermarkets?'

This is a block of mature Cheddar.

Right? 53% of the Cheddar sold in this country is in pre-packed own label

-so we don't even know who made it. It's a supermarket.

-So supermarket Cheddar, which most people get,

-thinking they're having British Cheddar.

-Right.

-I turn that over...

-OK.

-..and it just tells me not even that it's packed in the UK.

It just names the retailer. No clue where it comes from.

Where could it come from?

-An awful lot comes, believe it or not, from Australia and New Zealand and Canada.

-Australia?

-Absolutely.

-A long way away.

-It is. Considering you're thinking you're buying Cheddar.

'And for the cheesemakers this is the critical issue.'

We do need desperately to clarify the labelling laws

so if you do want to buy English Cheddar, you can buy it.

'Some supermarkets are starting to clarify their labelling.

'One good way of guaranteeing your cheese is made in Britain is the red tractor,

'an independent mark of British farming quality.

'But there's another label.'

What can we do to make people more aware of what they're buying?

We have about 9 or 10 Protected Designation of Origin cheeses. They are protected across Europe.

-The most famous is Stilton.

-Stilton.

-We always had that one.

And around eight or nine years ago, West Country Farmhouse Cheddar,

that was accredited with a PDO, so it has to be made in Dorset, Devon, Cornwall or Somerset.

On the farm, using the farmer's own milk.

-And there, you see the logo there?

-Yes.

-Even the supermarkets

-have to put that on their packs now, which is great.

-So we know exactly what's going on.

-You've got it.

'And there's a very important reason why now is the time for us to revive our cheese industry.'

We've got a critical situation. We've lost half our dairy farmers in 15 years.

-The average age of a dairy farmer now is 59.

-Which is ridiculous.

So we need to start buying more British cheese. There's plenty.

The best thing people can do is to shop more carefully.

What a fantastic story it's turned out to be.

Cheddar seems to have lost its way so we're here in Somerset

to meet a guy who wants to bring Cheddar back to its home county.

'The Montgomeries have been making their award-winning Cheddar on their farm near Yeovil

'for the last 100 years.

'Unlike most supermarket Cheddars, they use unpasteurised milk,

'which gives every batch of their cheese a unique flavour.'

Because it's unpasteurised, we're trying much harder to get more flavour

to come from that milk. You can make Cheddar with a lot of acidity and a lot of people like that,

something that'll blow their head off. But we're not about that.

Because it's unpasteurised, we can supply that flavour to the market.

'James makes cheese every day of the year with each truckle left to mature for at least 12 months.'

Oh, fantastic smell.

It is really complex.

You put it in your mouth and it's changing all the time, which is fantastic.

That's the best feature, the really progressive feature of unpasteurised cheese.

With a little hint of sweetness, but it's a spicy sweetness.

It's not sickly. That's what you get from unpasteurised cheese.

The complexity. When you pasteurise the milk, you kill all the flavour.

-Then you put a starter in to give you the flavour.

-OK.

That means the flavour you get is very defined, exactly what you want it to be.

-For supermarkets, that's fantastic. It's always exactly the same.

-Is that too good to cook with? Or...

What you can do is you can get all that flavour into a dish only using a little bit of cheese.

That's right, yeah. I'm sure at a nice room temperature with a glass of cider, it'd do the job.

Well, that's king. That's everything from the farm.

I want to have a go at cooking with it. I've got the ideal dish to bring out the best of your cheese.

So for my next dish, what I want to do is emphasise how great British Cheddar is.

First, we need to get the custard going, so cream and grated Cheddar.

'All right, custards are normally sweet, but this one's savoury.

'It's a bit like a quiche without the pastry. It starts with double cream - quite a lot, in fact.'

Now I need to grate some of that delicious, sharp mature Cheddar.

I want to grate some rind into it because the rind has still got the smell of the farm

and the orchards over the back. So if we grate it down...

'Once you've got a big enough handful, chuck it in with the cream and give it a good stir

'to encourage it to melt.

'Now it's time for some bold, punchy flavours, starting with a pinch of ginger.'

And then a tiny bit of English mustard just to help bring that flavour of the cheddar out.

Not too much. So what I've got now is a fantastic consistency,

almost like a cheese sauce consistency. What we need to do is add the eggs.

This will be our setting agent to give a fantastic consistency and let the Cheddar sing out.

'Once the eggs are whisked in, pass the mixture through a sieve to make sure there's no lumps.

'Then pour boiling water into a baking tray around an oven-proof dish and tip the custard in.

'This will make sure it cooks slowly and evenly.'

A little bit more grated cheese on top to almost get that cheese on toast taste.

It colours and melts onto the custard. I'll cook that at 160 for 40-50 minutes.

Whilst that's cooking, we'll do the beetroot salad. 'Beetroot is the perfect partner for cheese.

'There's lots of varieties, like these colourful beauties.'

When I was a kid, when you had a ploughman's, you'd have pickled beetroot or crunchy red cabbage

so this really is reliving that sort of flavour.

We'll have a little splash of really reduced balsamic.

So you've got beetroot, the crunchy veg to go with the creamy, sharp Cheddar.

We're just about ready for our Cheddar custard. Got that cheese on toast smell.

It's just started to colour, which is absolutely fantastic. I can't wait to taste that now.

I just hope I've done that Cheddar justice.

That, to me, sings.

Great British Cheddar.

'If we're going to succeed in reviving British cheese,

'we need to open our eyes to the different varieties that are as good as foreign equivalents.'

We're off to Lancashire today to meet a cheesemaker making a more continental-style cheese.

These guys are making cheese more like the French, so it'll hopefully knock them off the shelves.

'Gillian Hall and her family have made traditional farmhouse Lancashire for three generations

'at their dairy near Preston.'

This is the original Lancashire recipe that my mum's made

-for over 40 years.

-And the blue one's six years old.

-It's the new artisan modern recipe.

-The future, is it?

-Hopefully, yes.

'It took two years of trial and error to produce a British soft blue.

'They even built a separate dairy to keep the blue cheese mould away from their Traditional Lancashire.

'This mould sets the cheeses apart.

'That and the careful handling required to give it a soft, creamy texture.'

-We've got to treat it very gently.

-Gently.

-With kid gloves.

-What'll happen to this now?

-We call it the Miss Muffet stage.

-I like that.

-It's got a bit more romance to it.

-You're a romantic!

-I am.

You've got the whey and this curd. Actually, only 10% of the milk ends up as curd.

So you can see from these 700 litres of milk, we'll get very little.

-So it's a passion as well as a job for you.

-It is.

If you see how gentle this is. It really is hand-made with love.

'It's this passion, shared by all our artisan cheesemakers,

'that has seen Britain produce Camemberts, Mozzarellas, Ricottas, Bries, soft blues all of our own.'

This is the beautiful blue cheese curd.

-It looks like really overcooked scrambled egg.

-And it tastes a bit like that at this stage.

It's not until it's matured for about six weeks that you get the creamy texture and blue flavour.

'Once separated from the whey, the curds are packed into circular moulds and left to drain.

'Then the cheeses are pierced with needles to encourage blue mould.

'After six months, they're ready for the table.'

My L plates are not on. I love blue cheese.

It's so subtle. I'd say it's as good as any Roquefort or Gorgonzola I've tasted.

-Thank you.

-And it's British.

-That's right.

-Let's give it to the French!

Thank you.

It was fantastic. The colour was great. There was a lot of blue,

but it wasn't overpowering. It was subtle, smooth...

It was starting to make the sides of my cheeks gently sweat.

You know you're enjoying the cheese when you get that dimple of sweat. I'm really excited.

'What better way to help put British cheese back on the food map

'than by making it yourself?

'You could start with the handful of courses for wannabe cheesemakers.'

More and more people are interested in cheese and how it's made

and they want to have a go.

'You can even buy kits and try making it at home.'

People get right into it, get really enthusiastic, excited,

really proud of themselves.

After dinner, how nice is it to bring out a cheese that you've made from scratch?

'You definitely don't need a dairy when a bedroom's just as good.'

That's better. The first cheese I made was a Camembert.

I decided to jump in and make a ridiculously difficult cheese.

I just progressed from there, thinking I want to make every type of cheese, and now I've settled

on a goat-y blue cheese.

It's really about just jumping in and trying it. It's not difficult.

You just need lemon juice and some milk. Simple. ..Pretty good.

For my last recipe, we're going to use some of Gillian's really rich blue cheese. British blue cheese.

And in the past a lot of chefs like myself have used typical blue cheese like Roquefort to cook with,

foreign blue cheeses. I'm so excited to cook this beef dish with a great, soft British blue cheese.

We're going to cook slow-cooked fillet of beef

with blue cheese bonbons, rocket and shallot puree.

The first part is to get the beef on. This is a fantastic cut.

British, of course. It should go fantastic with the cheese.

What's great about this dish is it doesn't have to be an expensive piece like the fillet.

You should get that for a good price. It's the end of the fillet. You could use rump steak

or a big roasting joint. It'll work.

I'll cook that in a quite hot oven for around about 15, 20 minutes, depending on how you like it.

'But it's Gillian's blue cheese I can't wait to get my hands on. It's got a fantastic creamy texture,

'perfect for my blue cheese bonbons, which are like potato croquettes.'

We want to basically mix in the blue cheese so it all breaks down. If the worst comes to the worst,

you have to roll your sleeves up and break it down.

Already you can see the potato is taking on the blue cheese colour.

When you cut open the bonbon, it has a beautiful yellowy colour.

What I'm going to do is make these into nice, round bonbons, like the sweets we used to buy.

That sort of shape.

They're all cooked the same and will all be encased in a little crispy coat.

Roll my sleeves up.

'And here's some Brummie advice. To get them really crispy, dip them in flour, then egg,

'then breadcrumbs, not once, but twice.'

Until the outside's golden brown, crispy with a lovely gooey sort of yellowy cheese centre.

Now what I'm going to do is take the meat out. It's crying, "Get me out," so we will.

We take that out and give that a good 5-10 minutes to rest.

'So the meat relaxes, always a good idea.'

There's a few juices left which I'll clean down with wine to make sauce.

We don't want too much sauce. The bonbons give us all the flavour.

'While that's reducing, you can get them in to fry.

What we're looking for is a nice, golden outside, soft in the middle.

A nice bit of colour.

There we go. Nice, crispy little jackets.

Tip them out onto there.

Season them up. A bit of rock salt.

The beef should have had plenty of time to rest. Still relatively pink.

'And that, with a dollop of creamy shallot puree, and two cheese bonbons and some peppery rocket

'is what I call a taste of British heaven on a plate.'

Glaze the plate with the red wine.

And then we should have a finished dish - roast half fillet of beef with British blue cheese bonbons,

shallot puree and rocket.

'Criss-crossing the country, meeting truly passionate hard-working people

'and tasting some of the amazing cheeses that are out there made me realise

'how important it is to keep our cheesemaking industry alive.'

The farmers and cheesemakers are making the effort with bringing different varieties to the market,

but when you go to the supermarket, pick up the cheese, look at it, read the label

and we can put British cheese back on the map.

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