Here's something different: Heligan uses both cow and sheeps' milk, then adds cream for good measure. It's yet another offering from the fabulously productive and inventive team at Menallack Farm. The texture and colour are similar to Nanterrow, but it has an altogether stronger flavour and a very special qulaity coming from it's very special extra ingredient - lemon zest!
At a recent Cheese Shed 'research' session Gill, Deb and I worked through a box of samples sent up from Menallack (it's a tough job but someone has to do it) and this was voted the pick of the bunch. And if you're interested in two other versions of this cheese, have a look here, at Miss Finns and Treverva Green.
Pasteurised / Vegetarian, around 600g (whole cheese - pictured right)
More About Menallack Farm and its Cheeses
John was a telecom engineer who lived all over (La Paz, the Yemen ...) before retiring to Cornwall with his wife Caryl in the 1980s. Inspired by a cheesmaker they'd met in Wales, Caryl started making cheese (her first was Menallack itself), originally using milk from their own herd. At that time there were only three cheesemakers in Cornwall! Until her death in 2007, Caryl was the driving force at Menallack, and became an inpsiration to others wanting to tread a similar path.
Today Menallack is run by John with the help of right-hand-woman Jess (though he'd put it the other way around!). When you arrive at the farm there's a shop to your left, the cheese room itself to the right, and in the middle is the generous granite farmhouse. All in all seven people work here turning out - wait for it - sixteen different cheeses. That's the amazing thing! Unlike other makers who concentrate on one type of cheese, perhaps with a couple of variations, Menallack make hard cheese, soft cheese, blue cheese, flavoured cheeses, and use every sort of milk you can think of. Alright, not beaver. But everything else!
