Tag: Shepherd’s Purse

This ewe’s milk cheese is a Mediterranean salad style cheese from Shepherd’s Purse in North Yorkshire – definitely not feta as it’s not Greek.

Hand-salted and then hand-waxed to seal in the moisture, it comes without any excess briny liquid, and is less salty and has a firmer, creamier texture than many of its Greek counterparts.

How about it trying it in a beetroot and hazelnut salad, as recommended by its creator Judy Bell?

I’m on holiday next week folks, so there’ll be a gap in my Cheese-of-the-Weeking.

Monty xx

Like Olde York last week, this is another ewe’s milk offering from Shepherd’s Purse. Pale white in colour and streaked with blue-grey veins, Mrs Bell’s Blue is a piquant blue not dissimilar to Roquefort, but with more creaminess and less saltiness. It has a pleasant tang that goes well with fruits.

It also makes a nice contrast to our Gorgonzola Dolce, which is a younger, fruitier cow’s milk blue I’ve been enjoying with quince jelly. Come in and try both!

Monty xx

Olde York is one of our ever popular ewe’s milk cheeses, made by Shepherd’s Purse in Yorkshire. Judy Bell (who also makes – you guessed it – Mrs Bell’s Blue, among other things) began producing cheese from sheep’s milk in the 1980s – Olde York won Gold at the 1989 Nantwich International Cheese Awards and has been going ever since.

A really fresh-tasting cheese, cuttable but quite soft, I like it with smoked salmon, although the ladies at Shepherd’s Purse go one step further in the decadence stakes and suggest strawberries and champagne…