There are shops selling exclusively collectible rubber ducks, stores selling Christmas ornaments all-year-round and even a shop selling everything butterfly!
A specialty shop I truly enjoy is La Fromagerie, a French name for a cheese-only shop.
It’s not a chain but, given the success and the attention it received, a second shop has already opened in a different location.
This shop is a new interpretation of British dairy tradition; it is a small venue close to famous Marylebone High Street.
This store has become the reference for all lovers of the best European cheeses and products.
They have a special room: a temperature-controlled display case that collects different varieties of cheeses from all over Europe.
In addition to the most classic French and Italian cheeses, seasoned and smoked specialties from Spain and Eastern Europe, there are many others to satisfy even the most demanding palates.
A special section is obviously dedicated to British cheese.
And here is where I discovered the beautiful variety of the cheeses of this country.
Most people are unaware of the tradition behind British cheeses which goes beyond the classics.
For me they were a true discovery because in Italy English cheeses are almost unknown.
A true epiphany for me was learning more about Cheddar.
I have found out that Cheddar originally comes from a very small village of six thousand inhabitants in Somerset.
The original Cheddar is very different from the orange gooey cheese now produced in America under the same name and used on burgers and toast.
Whereas in America the cheese production is something rather new, England began producing cheeses thousands of years ago and it seems that during the Middle Ages, it was the monks who took care of the cheese production and it is thanks to them that there are many of the typical English cheeses today.
The original Somerset Cheddar is a large hard cheese, with a colour ranging from very light yellow to intense golden yellow and the original product has a very dark brown crust.
With the introduction of pasteurization, Cheddar without the crust began to become popular also in England.
The original production was made with raw milk but today only a small minority of family-run farms prepare it this way, to the point that Slow Food has presided over it.
Slow Food steps in when a food product risk being lost because there are not enough producers making it or when a food is ‘contaminated’ like in the case of Cheddar cheese from the UK.
Another cheese I enjoy is Jersey blue cheese, a fat, aged, soft or semi-hard cheese with a pale yellow colour with blueish veins (to which it owes its name), made using only the milk of Jersey breed cows present in the Devon region, in United Kingdom.
Being a blue cheese, it is a cousin of the more famous Stilton one of the few traditional English cheeses to have received the Protected Designation of Origin from the European Commission.
Stilton can only be produced in the three regions of Derbyshire, Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire and to be called so, this cheese must also be prepared according to strict and precise rules:
- First of all, it must be made with local pasteurized cow's milk.
- Its shape must be cylindrical and not pressed.
- Each wheel must weigh about 5 kgs and must age for at least five months.
- Its rind must be formed in a completely natural way and be of a light brown colour.
- The texture must be soft and creamy.
- It must have delicate blue veins that radiate from the centre of the wheel and its flavour must be strong and slightly spicy.
This cheese is so important that a comics character (a journalist mouse) was named after it.
I have learned that there are over 700 varieties of cow milk cheese alone in Great Britain and many are the local dishes accompanied by cheese or cheese sauces, among which the famous “Welsh rabbit” or “Welsh rarebit.”
