Mark's Cheese
Or how to celebrate a life with cheese.
This weekend in Darlington we held a memorial service for my father in law, Mark Robertson who died last October after a long and fulfilling life - he was ninety-two. We decided to wait until the Spring, a more joyful time of year, to hold his service.
The thing you need to know about the Robertsons, and their associated clans, the Wicksteeds, Calverts, Cooks, Wilsons, Sweeneys, Jamsons and Pestells, as well as an impressive collection of old family friends, is that there are an awful lot of them. The night before our wedding I had to get my wife Imogen to draw me a diagram so that I could greet the whole family appropriately, which took a few sheets of A4. To be perfectly honest with you I still haven’t got the whole lot down yet after fourteen years.
Imogen and I took on the catering, which unsurprisingly involved a generous offering of cheese - it’s quite the responsibility selecting the cheese for your father in law’s wake. We wanted to pick styles of cheese that Mark really loved, to celebrate his background as a proud Northeasterner and to buy as locally as possible. Thankfully there are plenty of outstanding cheeses that fit these directives, and the only problem was narrowing down the selection.
Before we get to the cheeses, because I want you to know that we really did send Mark off in style, let me also tell you that we had fifty rounds of sandwiches from local Darlington caterers Catering in Style, cut into triangles of course; an inordinate number of little pork pies - Mark did love a pork pie - quiches and sausages from Darlington butcher Taylors; and a tall pyramid of Kiplings apple pies, Mark’s dessert of choice. And now for those cheeses:
Wensleydale was an obvious choice - Yorkshire’s national cheese, loved with a fierce pride by all Northeasteners. For Mark’s immediate family this also stood as a reminder of the traditional Boxing Day lunch at the CB Inn in Arkengarthdale, high up in the Yorkshire Dales, a place of outstanding, awe-inspiring beauty; and for me personally, the time when I was researching A Cheesemonger’s History, when Mark drove us to the oddly homely ruins of Jervaulx, Wensleydale’s monastic birthplace, and the little town of Hawes at the top of Wensleydale itself, where this cheese flourished for so many centuries.
Just as importantly, Wensleydale is delicious, especially in its traditional pre-war farmhouse version which is epitomised in Yoredale, made by the Spence family in Caperby. It’s surprisingly creamy - if you are used to the modern crumbly version - complex, earthy, with notes of green herbs, and eminently sessionable. Out of all three, Yoredale disappeared the fastest - a testament to its approachable excellence as much as to people’s loyalty to a regional treasure.
I wanted to have a Cheddar for its more heartening qualities, but Cheddar’s home is down in the South-West, and so we chose Doddington from Northumberland. Mark’s father’s family were from Alnmouth, a port on the Northumbrian coast.
Doddington made by the inimitable Maggie Maxwell on her family’s farm near Wooler, began life as an un-dyed version of Red Leicester, and retains that satisfyingly chewy texture, it also has the savoury heart-warming bite of Cheddar, and the sweet caramel note of Gouda - the last a legacy of visits from Dutch agricultural students. This sort of promiscuous multiculturalism is a characteristic of modern British cheese, the hard-won fringe benefit of losing so much of our traditional local cheesemaking cultures in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.
Mark was a big fan of blue cheese, in particular the firmer more toothsome British styles like Stilton. Keeping with the local(ish) remit, we went for Darling Blue, another of Maggie’s cheeses. This one is named for the Northumbrian lighthouse keeper’s daughter Grace Darling who in 1838 at the age of 23 saved victims of a shipwreck and became a national if reluctant heroine. Mark was a keen dinghy sailor, and like anyone who has gone down to the sea in ships, or little boats, had a healthy respect for its dangers, and knew Grace’s story well.
Another good reason to choose Darling Blue is that it is an absolute cracker, with plenty of umami from the blue, a moist yet crumbly texture with a bit of refreshing acidity and a lovely biscuity note on the rind. Overall the flavour is quite gentle for a blue cheese, which can be a little intimidating for some palates, and as such this was hugely popular with everyone.
Darlington is blessed with a great cheese shop, Darlington Cheese and Wine, and it is one that I have a big soft spot for. I used to sell Neal’s Yard’s cheeses to its original owner, Terry Farr who opened for business in 1999. Terry put in a good word for me when I started going out with Imogen, and her parents went to see if he knew anything about this random cheesemonger who had blown into their lives. It’s now run by Caroline and Dean Elliot who have been doing a fantastic job, so fantastic indeed that even in these difficult times, they have moved to larger premises in Skinnergate, one of Darlo’s main shopping streets. You can now get a plate of cheese and a glass of wine, ad enjoy both on their comfy sofa, and I believe there are plans to open a dedicated tasting space upstairs. I asked them to put a whole Darling Blue aside for me, and when I went to pick it up was told in no uncertain terms that I wasn’t paying a penny for it. Cheesemongers are nice.
This week’s recommendations:
Substack: The Day My Cobbled Together Kitchen Went Viral, from the lovely Debora Robertson (no relation…I presume…) and her Substack Lickedspoon. If this doesn’t drive you mad with envy you are dead inside.
Book: Staring at the Sun, by Irving Yalom. Given this week’s subject. This has been a great comfort to me when thinking about ageing and mortality, my own or anyone close to me. A compassionate, thoughtful and eminently readable book.
Podcast: Staph Retreat, on Radiolab podcast. Antibiotic resistance started wayyyyy sooner than we thought, but fear not, an Anglo-Saxon remedy might be coming to the rescue…
Thank you again to Darlington Cheese and wine, Maggie Maxwell and Neal’s Yard Dairy for all the lovely cheese.
A lovely post, Ned.
A lovely collection in memory.