I’m a deli-girl to the core and passionate about supporting local independent shops, producers and growers but it’s easy for me, living 500 yards from a greengrocer, fishmonger, butcher, deli, chocolatier (and a few fantastic and affordable independent restaurants with interesting cheese boards) in leafy west London (Chiswick, to be precise). Most people have had these rights (to choose where to buy) stripped from them, their only choice being which supermarket where paying more, believing they are paying less, for blandness and disappointment is easier than being discerning.
I’m also a cheese fanatic and, against all health advice, eat it every day. I always buy it from my local deli (Mortimer & Bennett, since you ask, and no I don’t work for them) which has a huge variety of artisanal English and European cheeses. Including, when it’s in season, Alex James’s extraordinarily good Little Wallop.
Even so, it’s brave of Tabasco® and Long Clawson dairy to collaborate with Tesco to produce Tabasco Pepper Cheese, a sample of which arrived this morning just in time for breakfast.
Is there any cooking household (or bloody Mary drinking household) that doesn’t have a bottle of the US-family-run McIlhenny Co’s fiery sauce in their larder? I can’t think of a time when the little red-octagonal-capped bottle hasn’t been in my kitchen, an edible (and drinkable) comfort blanket guaranteed to pep-up the dreariest of tasteless cooking disasters with a blast of spice. And who doesn’t reach for cheddar as a passing snack or to grate into sauces on cold winter evenings, even if your fridge has as wide a range of cheeses on the go as mine (including, when I can’t get to my deli, family-firm Long Clawson’s excellent stilton; their paneer is good, too)?
But I did worry that it would be horribly weird, a peculiar coupling crying out for an instant, quickie divorce.
The complex mix of flavours is long-lasting and wholly taste-fulfilling – which is what makes good food satisfying, and why cheap one-dimensional food leaves you hungry for more (but not of the same). Mixing Tabasco® with cheddar could generate high-handed criticism from food snobs wanting some band-wagon publicity – but not from me. I’ve eaten three portions already (well, there was lunch too).
Try it in this easy-to-make chicken and chorizo cheese jambalaya.