It’s quite unusual to eat similar things together. If we’re having carrots, for example, it’s normal to eat only one type of carrot, but anyone who was to taste three completely different carrots one after the other — say a biodynamic baby carrot, a medium-sized organic purple one and a fat luminous orange one — just once would know, for ever, what type of carrot he prefers, which must surely be a useful thing to know. The point is that it’s really very hard to tell how much nicer one thing is than another unless you taste them side-by-side, and two or three similar things being served side-by-side is about the last thing that ever happens, normally.
I must admit I’ve not yet tried it with carrots, but I did recently serve a cheeseboard with six or seven blue cheeses on it, and no others. I only did it because I was road-testing my latest cheese, a blue, so I bought all the blues on the market that were closest to it to see how it compared. What is remarkable is not how similar, but how very different they all are — even the ones that are supposed to be the same. What was actually a technical exercise, I was surprised to discover, my guests really enjoyed. We tend to value variety — serving meat and three veg rather than meat and three carrots — but tasting similar things together opens up a whole world of exquisite detail. It is certainly the best way of sharpening one’s palate.
An all-blue cheeseboard is bang on the money anyway, even if I say so myself. The Supreme Champion gong at the British Cheese Awards, the ultimate cheese accolade, has gone to a blue two years in a row now. (Quenby Hall Stilton this year: grab it if you see it.) When they are being judged, in the early rounds of the competition, the cheeses are always grouped by category — for example, ‘fresh sheep’s milk less than three months old’ — for comparative tasting. If you get two people who know what they are talking about, it’s very unlikely they will disagree on which is the best. It’s almost always obvious.
It’s peculiar, but judging cheese, in fact judging food, does tend to generate harmony, whereas almost everything else I’ve ever judged tends to collapse into squabbles (books are the worst). There were even some serious ding-dongs around the table compiling the shortlist for BBC Farmer of the Year this year. I went to meet one of the finalists this week, a sheep farmer on the Isle of Man. What is significant about his operation is that he has brought a breed of sheep from the verge of extinction to a viable business with a PDO classification on the meat. The lambs are quite small, sleek as opposed to plump, and slow-growing, to boot. All things that mean the meat is healthier and better-tasting, but also mean that it’s more expensive. It takes about twice as long for these sheep to reach killing weight as it does for the more commercial breeds, and even then they don’t yield anywhere near as much meat. This is why the Manx Loaghtan became endangered: just 50 breeding ewes left at one stage. The breed was economically so hopeless that its cultivation was seen as hobby farming and wasn’t even eligible for agricultural subsidies. It’s taken George Stereopolis, the farmer, ten years and a huge amount of determination but he’s achieved something quite outstanding. A PDO is about the highest stamp of approval that a food can be given.
The sheep are incredible-looking creatures: mythical, golden brown with extravagant horns. George believes there is as big a difference between Manx Loaghtan and ordinary lamb as there is between lamb and venison and I think he’s probably right. He cooked some for me. Laid out on a platter, there were two fillets, both very handsome, one from a two-year-old and one from a four-year-old sheep. We tend to think of lamb as the thing, rather than mutton, but seeing them side-by-side, the lamb looked rather pale next to the deep-red mutton.
Of course they were both delicious. Livery, gamey and full of flavour from the varied grazing the sheep get on the Isle of Man. About as good as it gets. He cut the fillets into steaks and fried them. We ate them with bread, mopping the juices out of the pan, and it’s the best meal I’ve had all year: the lamb was good but, boy, it really made that mutton sing.
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