a plate of cheese no. 3: rocamadour, childwickbury and tomme bluette chevre

L: Rocamadour (£1.55 each 35g); C: Childwickbury (£6.95 each 200g round); R: Tomme Bluette Chevre (£2.30 per 100g)

A seasonally apt all goat's milk trio of cheeses this time around - springtime on a plate. For me, the star of the show was undoubtedly the Childwickbury - smooth, spreadable and milky, slightly lemon zesty, it's probably the cheese God uses on his bagels instead of Philadelphia.

You can't see it from the photo (I think they're on the underside) but there are a few blue veins on the chunk of Tomme Bluette - however, to taste, you'd hardly know it was a blue cheese at all (or, indeed, a chevre). I loved it as it was, but I'd be interested in trying it when more fully veined.

The Rocamadour was the only one of the three instantly identifiable as a goat's milk cheese, and had been perfectly aged. Its intensity made a nice contrast to the freshness of the Childwicksbury and the smoothness of the tomme.

This lot cost £7.55 - five pence over our imposed limit. But £3.50 of that was for the half portion of Childwickbury and it was so worth it. If the wedge of tomme had hit the scales at 100g, we'd have been fifteen pence under, so I think we can allow an overspend just this once.

The following notes are, as ever, courtesy of Robbyn Linden from The Cheeseboard, the corner (literally - see below) shop of my dreams.

rocamadour

An unpasteurised goat's milk cheese from the Midi-Pyrénées. This little round disc belongs to the famous Cabecou family of French chèvres. In the dialect of the Languedoc 'cabecou' means 'little goat'. This cheese gets its name from the village in the Lot which nestles in the side of a cliff. The goats who roam here graze on varied and rich vegetation which impacts the flavour of the milk.  These cheeses are available when very young and fresh, but I prefer them after they have had a chance to ripen for a few weeks - when they develop a peppery bite and becomes intensely 'goaty'.

childwickbury

A pasteurised goat's milk cheese hand-made by Elizabeth Harris on the Childwickbury Estate near St Albans in Hertfordshire. A former research scientist, Elizabeth was looking to make a cheese during the day whilst her children were at school. So she chose a recipe that causes the curd to set in less than four hours.   This cheese is tangy with a slight sweetness to it. It's fantastic in a salad as well as on a cheeseboard.

tomme bluette chevre

Unpasteurised goat's milk cheese from just inside the French border of the Basque country. This region runs from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, forming a border which separates Spain and France. The people who live in the area do not consider themselves either French or Spanish, they are Basque. Within this region, cheese-making tends to be concentrated in Béarn , in the western quarter.   There are over 100 cheeses in France that have the name 'tomme'.  The root of the word is the Greek 'tomos' which means part of, or fraction of. Tomme's are often made using partial milkings. Originally, it was the term used for smaller alpine cheeses weighing a pound or less. Now, after hundreds of years, it is used as the name for many small round cheeses from all over France.  This particular cheese has a wholly unique flavour profile, unlike any other blue cheese I have ever tasted; its creamy paste is full-flavoured and moreish. It is also a particularly unpredictable cheese - I have been importing it for four months now, and twice I have received cheeses that had very little blue-ing inside, though this does not seem to effect the taste.  

EDITOR'S NOTE: Due to the flagrant and repeated failure of The Skint Foodie to meet even the most generous of deadlines, we have taken the sad decision to change the title of this series from 'A Monthly Cheese Selection' to the more non-committal 'A Plate Of Cheese'. It is still our intention to keep the little fuck to his contractual obligation of (eventually) delivering twelve seasonal cheese selections which will then form the content of a permanent page on the website. We can only apologise and thank you for your forbearance and understanding.