Top Five Cheeses

I heart cheese. I have a "Cheese" t-shirt. My mother's side of the family is from Cheddar, so I think it's in my blood. I could talk at great length about my top twenty or so cheeses but, because your patience isn't infinite and the format demands it, below are five of the best.



1. Leerdammer
The product of a cheese-breeding experiment, this slightly rubbery Dutch cheese is less than ten years old. Perfect in sandwiches.

2. Dolcelatte
When I was growing up, blue cheese was alongside parsnip, swede, tomatoes and spinach on the list of things I couldn't bear to eat. But those days are long gone now and all but the parsnip have been reprieved. It's the creamiest blue cheese I know and is so soft you can almost spread it.

3. Camembert
Serve me Brie or any number of similar French cheeses and I wouldn't necessarily spot your duplicitousness but I would definitely still smile - between mouthfuls, naturally. My mouth is watering as I write this!

4. Halloumi
A hard, bland, milky cheese... until you cook it: slice the "loaf" of halloumi into strips and grill them; wrap the cheese in pitta bread, fill it up with chopped lettuce and top it off with a liberal squirt of lemon juice; then watch me regress to my 19-year old self, too disgusted by the wheel of meat to eat a proper kebab on a Friday night when all the pubs had shut.

5. Mozzerella di Bufala
Very prolific in Italian cooking. The International Restaurant Standards Commission (which I just made up) scores major points for ensuring that, when away on business, insalata tricolore was available in every Italian restaurant I ever visited.