One of the highlights of summer is a perfect, freshly picked and vine ripened tomato. Today I combined the aforementioned with the perfect cheddar cheese and produced what may be a perfect summer sandwich. The tomato was a Rutgers heirloom that was plucked less than a half hour before and the cheese was a vintage English Cheddar from the Barber family who make cheese just outside the West Country village of, you guessed it, Cheddar. Bring these two sublime ingredients together on whole wheat bread, drizzle with Kalamata olive oil, a sprinkle of Maldon Sea Salt and a good grind of Penzey's Extra Bold black pepper. It was all I could do not to make a second. I haven't made myself a BLT yet this summer with fresh tomatoes which I will and it will be glorious but I must say the simplicity of the great cheese and fresh tomato is going to be pretty hard to beat. The BLT is going to have to wait until I can get to the Riverview farm truck before they run out of the locally produced bacon or I take the time to score a locally raised pork belly and make my own.
Not to worry...I get an hour for lunch today and there might be an encore performance in the works.
6 comments:
How did you get that Cheddar?
I want to alert Harris Teeter.
Thanks!
S
Whole Foods carries it around here. It is very nice but you should be able to find a vintage and actually made in the UK cheddar at any good cheese shop.
Also try Cabbot's extra sharp or Vermont's 'Trucker' Cheddar. If you like triple cream try Sonoma's 'Cowgirl'.
There you are, you see, 'cheese across the Atlantic', together we could conquer the world!
I've tried both the "Yankee" cheddars and they are both very good. I'll have to look for the 'Cowgirl'. There is something, however, about proper English cheddar that is unmistakable.
I am an unabashed fan of English cheeses(esp. Cheddar, and Stilton), sausages(Lincolnshire) and English ales. You'll get no argument from me over those.
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