This week is National Chip Week, which celebrates everything good about the humble fried potato.
Chips are one of the stalwarts of British cuisine and equally at home with a gourmet steak at a restaurant or with a battered piece of cod from your local chip shop!

Ultimately however whether you like your chips with gravy, curry sauce or mayonnaise one thing is for certain, cheese and chips is a delicious treat. So this week why not tuck into a portion of chips with some grated Tasty Lancashire cheese on top!

With today being Shrove Tuesday, we thought we had better offer you a cheesy alternative to the traditional lemon and sugar filled pancakes!
So take a look at this recipe by James Martin for the delicious squash, goat’s cheese and rosemary pancakes (care of BBC Good Food)

Ingredients

200g self-raising flour
1rosemary sprig, finely chopped
1 egg
300ml milk
25g butter, melted and cooled, plus a knob extra
2tbsp olive oil
250g butternut squash, peeled, deseeded and cut into small cubes
100g goat’s cheese, crumbled into small pieces – for example Kidderton Ash, Inglewhite Sweet & Nutty or Ravens Oak
A handful of pumpkin seeds, rocket salad and onion chutney, to serve.

Method

1. Mix the flour, baking powder, rosemary and a good pinch of salt in a large bowl. Beat the egg with the milk. Make a well in the centre of the dry ingredients and whisk in the milk mixture and melted butter to make a thick, smooth batter. Place in the fridge while you prepare the rest of the ingredients.
2. Over a medium heat, add a knob of butter and 1 tsp oil to a large pan, then add the butternut squash and cook for 10 mins until tender, turning the heat up for the final few mins to brown a little. Remove batter from the fridge, add the goat’s cheese and squash, then carefully fold everything together.
3. Heat a little oil in a non-stick frying pan, then, in batches, add a ladleful of batter per pancake. Allow to cook for 3 mins until bubbles cover the surface, then flip over and cook the other side until golden. Serve with dressed rocket salad, a sprinkling of pumpkin seeds and onion chutney on the side.

We’ve recently been contacted by some students at Lancaster University Business School, who have been set a project to explore the positioning of Lancashire cheese.

As such we thought we should share the questionnaire with our fans. So if you have a few minutes and would like to help out this group of students (while also entering a £50 prize draw) then click here to complete the survey.

At Butlers we work hard to ensure that all of our cheeses are matured for just the right amount of time to guarantee the correct flavour profile. For example, Creamy Lancashire is matured for between one to three months, whilst Tasty Lancashire might be kept in our cheese store for up to a year.

However we’ve never matured a cheese for eight years, but one cheese lover has done just that! John Sear’s was given a truckle of west country cheddar as a gift, however it had sat in his fridge for seven years before he decided to use it in a sauce.

Despite it being more than 2,500 days Mr Sears, told The Metro newspaper that it had tasted delicious.

Maybe we will give it a try!

One company in Dubai however, has proved doubters wrong by creating cheese made from camel’s milk.

Researchers had previously claimed this to be impossible, as camel’s milk as it doesn’t coagulate (an important step in cheese making) as easily as goat’s and cow’s milk.

Although it may have taken three years of work, the ‘Camelicious’ brand has finally come up with three types of Camel cheese, one for salads, one for cooking and one ‘table’ cheese  – presumably for a cheese board.

Camel cheese is lower in fat than cheeses made from cow’s milk, plus its rich in vitamin C and calcium. It will be available in the United Arab Emirates from April apparently.  It is expected to command a hefty price tag, due to its scarcity.
It hasn’t been confirmed yet if ‘Camelicious’ will be available in the UK anytime soon, however if you want to try a taste of the unexpected then why not tuck into one of our Blacksticks cheeses?

Thanks to The National for drawing our attention to this story.

Ingredients:
1 onion, roughly chopped
3-4 small potatoes, or 1 medium to large, diced
2 slices of bacon, cut into strips, or 1 small pack of lardons
Cheese, about 150g, cubed
1 small carton of half-fat crème fraiche
Breadcrumbs

Method:
Heat some olive oil in a heavy sauteuse and sauté the potatoes on a high heat until they soften and start to colour.

Remove carefully, keeping as much of the oil in the pan as you can and place in an oven-proof dish.

Sauté the bacon next and add to the potatoes, again leaving the oil in the pan.

Finally, turn the heat down and sauté the onions until they are soft and translucent.

Add to the potatoes and bacon and mix well. Season with freshly ground black pepper.

Heat the grill. Stir through the cheese and crème fraiche and top with homemade breadcrumbs. Grill until the mixture is bubbling and the breadcrumbs have formed a crispy gratin.

Enjoy it with a fresh green salad on the side.

One such cheeses is called Rubing and it is a specialty of  Yunnan province. Now we can’t vouch for the taste ourselves but according to  the appetite for china blog, it is like a firmer crispier paneer or even mozzarella.

So if you happen to find yourself in Yunnan province (South-West China) then why not give this little known delicacy a try and remember all it requires is a little salt & pepper mixture and sugar!

So after all the excitement of Christmas and New Year, January can be a tricky month. It’s dark and cold, many of us have over spent and over eaten, and it’s a long way till summer.

Now is a good time to reach for mood boosting foods to perk yourself up, rather than going on a restrictive and often somewhat depressing diet.

This great link on the Good to Know website lists 20 foods to give you a lift – and the good news is that chocolate, cheese, vanilla ice cream and even coffee are on the list.

Cheese contains an amino acid known as tryptophan – this has been shown to reduce stress and induce sleep – so cheese may actually help you have a good night’s sleep rather than give you bad dreams!

Why not try crumbling a little left over Blacksticks Blue into a salad for dinner this week? That way you can stick to the diet and still drift off to a well deserved nights sleep.

Sweet dreams!