Homage 2 Fromage are now delivering themed boxes of cheese that let you replicate their experience at home, with the added bonus of the element of competition thanks to the addition of a board game! The set includes everything you need to make an evening of your cheese, with a playing mat, counters, dice and reward badges to heighten the stakes along with crackers chutneys, plates, tasting notes and flags to number all of your six cheeses. This is necessary as the cheeses are presented anonymously for you to attempt identify. It’s that identification that forms the basis of a rudimentary, but no less fun for it, game as you roll the dice and work your way around the board to earn the opportunity to match a cheese to the description/region.

We made sure that the cheeses had ample opportunity to breathe and enjoyed the heady aroma of six strong French cheeses filling the house before diving into the game. That said, I was more proud of our feat of correctly identifying all of the cheeses at the first attempt. Incidentally, these were Munster, Bleu de Saint-Flour, Tommy de Savoie, Mimolette, Camembert and Ossau Iraty.

As far as I’m concerned, cheeses should be, by and large, sinus-rattlingly strong and this sextet included a good few to fit that billing. The Mimolette was perfectly nice but a touch mild for my taste while the Bleu from Auvergne was quite intimidatingly plonked at the other end of that spectrum, super salty and wonderfully pungent. The remainder sat between those extremities and all impressed with varying textures, strengths and flavours. Whether or not the amount provided is “all you can eat” depends on your appetite/extent of your gluttony, but two days later we still had a couple of tiny morsels left in the fridge.

The game element could have been a little forced but it worked perfectly to encourage discussion and repeated sampling while thankfully remaining good natured (I can’t promise that will also be the case in your house!). I shall certainly wear my “Curd Nerd” badge with pride for sometime. This is a significant amount of entertainment and more cheese than we could eat in one sitting for the very reasonable sum of £40, an absolute bargain as far as I’m concerned.

Disclaimer: No charge was made for this package. Opinions are impartial.

The post A Homage to French Fromage in the home appeared first on York on a Fork.

I had an excited browse through the course list and found a Yorkshire Game Masterclass that was scheduled to run for four hours. I’ve visited the cookery school a few times before, though not participated in a course, so had no trouble finding its new home just off of the main square. It’s an informal space with a central island featuring a collection of ovens and hobs on which to cook. It’s worth noting that these require the participants to take a few steps away from their cooking station when heat is required, creating a natural mingling of course participants throughout the day.

The Game Masterclass started with coffee and tea as the group started to make one another’s acquaintance and take in their surroundings. The main cooking station for Gilly to demonstrate from was dressed with some fantastic produce for us to work with through the day and we quickly met Deb who would be assisting for the day. Little Deb might be diminutive but her talents are large, having featured with Giles Coren on ‘Back in time for dinner’. She’s exactly the kind of calm talent you want keeping things ticking along in the background and is surely due another turn in the spotlight before too long.

Our first task for the day was to get some dough together for a soda bread, quickly achieved together as we cooperated in small groups to get it in the oven ready to accompany the first fruits of our labours. With that done, we set about making sure we were properly equipped for the coming activities. We were going to be doing a lot of knife work and since there’s nothing more likely to cut you than a blunt knife, it was important to learn how to keep the edge of our blade in tip top shape. The truism that blunt knives are more likely to cut comes from their propensity to slip off of the task in hand into, well, your hand so Malton Cookery School partners with Zwilling knives to provide each of the cooking stations with a full complement of decent knives for all possibilities.

A little bit of knife safety goes a long way (I’ve the scars to prove it) so in a group with an unknown skill level, it’s a good place to start. We were shown how to safely work with blades and what the intended purpose of each one in our block was along with how to keep them sharp.

I’ve enjoyed every cookery course I’ve been on but oddly the less specific the content is the better as far as value is concerned. It’s undoubtedly fun making a delicious plate of food with techniques you were previously unfamiliar with, but it’s transferability that ultimately represents greater application for the lessons learned. This is something that is clear in the approach taken by Gilly at Malton, the knife skills we went through being widely applicable to everyday cooking. Similarly jointing a partridge, as we next were taught was fundamentally the same as dealing with any similarly anatomied bird.

By now our exertions were making us peckish so we used the last of our energies to make a carpaccio to enjoy with the bread with which we’d started our day, warm from the oven now. After the school resonated to the sound of wooden rolling pins gently flattening meat to cover a surprising area, we tucked in and the room fell silent for a few moments as we signified our appreciation.

The next hour or so passed in a whirlwind of activity, trimming pork loin to roast and venison to roll into a Wellington that would eventually resemble the most refined sausage rolls I’ve ever eaten. We also created some rather “rustic” looking gnocchi to go with the pork that ended up resembling a fricassee.

As well as all that, we got a plate to the table featuring that partridge from the beginning of the day, pan frying the breast while also sampling some confited thighs that Deb had sneakily been applying herself to in the background. What really gave this one depth was the sauce that we’d been talked through creating, layering up flavours using stock, cider, herbs, bacon and a few other things. Again, this was a process that was easily repeatable at home and didn’t require slavish copying of amounts from a recipe.

It’s easy to forget that this was only a four hour course; we packed in so much both in terms of the output of our labours and learnings to take away. The day finished with the opportunity to enjoy all of the treats we’d created with a glass of wine while reflecting on the dishes and techniques we’d learned. Both the layout of the school and the talented, encouraging staff pushed the participants toward learning and getting involved. I’ll use those lessons regularly and think of this day when I do, Malton Cookery School certainly does a great job of representing Malton’s culinary credentials.

Disclaimer: No charge was made for my attendance, opinions are impartial.

The post Malton Cookery School appeared first on York on a Fork.