Monday 12th of October 2009
Great news we have been published in a brand new North Eastern Based Magazine.
As this is a new magazine we would like you to have a look and decide what you think of it.
They are extremely passionate about good food and hope to become a gateway to good food in the north east
The magazine's name is FLFmagazine and you can navigate to it by clicking here or you can just type the web address into your browser it is "www.flfmagazine.co.uk" happy browsing to all.
Thursday 8th of October 2009
Co Durham Cheese Wins Bronze in British Cheese Awards and is also a finalist in Waitrose Made In Britain Awards 2009
Wow we won the bronze medal award!
Winner
The Durham Cow
Cheese Company
HUTTON HENRY,
CO DURHAM
What they said in the country living magazine
Julia Cammiss’s kitchen isn’t quite what you picture when imagining an award-winning artisan cheese dairy.
The fitted cupboards and counters in her modern house in a cul-de-sac on the edge of a Co Durham village are a far cry from the cool, stoneflagged, farm buildings that house the archetypal small-scale cheese maker.
Yet when Julia decided to try making cheese she didn’t let her background, location or lack of experience put her off.
“People thought I was mad when I started "
I wasn’t a farmer and didn’t have access to a dairy herd,” she says. “
At times I still wonder what I’m doing, but then I taste the cheese and I tell myself: ‘You’ve cracked it’.”
The Durham Cow Cheese Company’s triumph in the Made in Britain Awards just a year after Julia sold her first batch of cheese is a testament to her skill, courage and gut feeling that Co Durham needed its own cheese.
She began making cheese to take her mind off a stressful office job.“
Others might have taken up knitting,” she says, “but this idea had been in the back of my head ever since I went to France six years ago.”
Holidaying in Limousin with her husband, Barrie, she was amazed by the quality of the local cheeses.
“I thought about cheese-makers in the north-east of England and realized there were hardly any.”
After a two-day cheese-making course at Reaseheath College in Cheshire, Julia experimented at home using a 50-litre cheese vat on her kitchen table. Her goal was a soft blue cheese, because no one
else in the north east made one.
She sought advice from established cheese-makers, playing around with
temperatures, humidity levels,
moulds and cultures. “
The first person to try it was my neighbor, Michael,” Julia recalls. “He said ‘Bloody hell, that’s fantastic.’ and that was the moment when I realized that I was on the right track.”
Made using pasteurized milk from local processor Rock Farm Dairy, Durham Cow Cheese is ripened for five weeks in the temperature-controlled cheese room that Barrie built in their garage. Julia wraps each cheese in foil to preserve its soft, pale orange skin, which adds a gentle bite to a silky soft center striped
with thick columns of blue mould (the result of hand-piercing at 8 and 15 days). Mild, mellow and
Moorish, it is unlikely to survive one outing onto the cheese board.
In the unlikely event that there are leftovers, they melt divinely into pasta or cauliflower cheese.
Scooping cut curds from the cheese vat into plastic colanders, in which they drain before being turned, dry-salted and ripened, Julia explains how her cheese got its name. “Early on I lost confidence and thought it wasn't going to work. Barrie took me for a walk by the river at Durham, where I saw a statue of the Durham Cow. When I got home I researched the legend of the cow that led Lindisfarne monks to the spot where Durham Cathedral was founded. It inspired me to link that story with my product – it felt like an epiphany.”
Julia makes just 18kg of cheese each week, but plans to move production to a converted farm
building, where she’ll use her prize money to buy a bigger vat and more moulds. She hopes the
business may one day provide for herself and Barrie, without whose support and building skills her
cheese would not exist. “Imagine what most husbands would say if you told them you were giving up
your job to make cheese,” she says.
“He just said ‘Go for it, girl.’ So I did.”
“People thought I was mad when I started I wasn’t a farmer and didn’t have access to a dairy herd”
(Julia Cammiss)
The Durham Cow Cheese Company
(www.durham-cowcheese-company.com)
(01429 836819)
Original publication page 20-21 country living magazine supplement October 2009
If you would like to see the pages from the magazine in pdf format then Click here
If you would like to know more about the british Cheese Awards then Click Here
If you would like to know more about the winners of the Country Living and Waitrose Made in Britain Awards 2009 Click Here
Tuesday, August 25 2009: The Durham Cow Cheese company has been named as one of five producers to win the Country Living Magazine and Waitrose Made in Britain Awards 2009.
The overall Made in Britain Food Champion of the year, will be announced at the Royal County of Berkshire Show held at the Newbury Show ground on September 19 2009.
So we wait with baited breath for the final outcome and the opportunity to get our produce stocked in local Waitrose stores.
Monday, July 20 2009: A blue cheese made in a garage in Hutton Henry is a finalist in the
Country Living Magazine and Waitrose Made in Britain Awards 2009.
Julia Cammiss of The Durham Cow Cheese Company learnt traditional cheese-making skills on a short course as a hobby to provide relief from a stressful office job. She sought advice from more established craft cheese makers about technique, starter cultures and moulds and went on to create the short listed blue cheese, an entirely new cheese from her own recipe. It is ripened in a temperature-controlled cheese room, built by her husband Barry in their garage.
Following a nationwide search for the best British food and drink producers demonstrating quality, innovation and use of traditional skills, 12 companies have been short listed. The finalists include Wood Berry Farm, Norfolk; Gigha Halibut, Argyll; Cairngorm Smokehouse, Highland; Simple Simon’s Perfect Pies, South Lanarkshire; Chef on the Run Foods, Powys; Alex Gooch’s Organics, Powys; Trealy Farm Charcuterie, Monmouthshire; Bramley and Gage, Gloucestershire; The Orchard Pig, Somerset; The Real Veal Company, Cornwall; The Durham Cow Cheese Company, Co. Durham and Clare’s Organics, Oxfordshire.
Now in its second year. the Made in Britain Awards promote and celebrate British producers, farmers and growers making the heritage foods of tomorrow.
From the finalists, five food producers will be chosen, each winning £5,000 to develop their business and the opportunity to sell their product in local Waitrose stores. The overall Made in Britain Food Champion of the year will receive a further £5,000. An additional category for the Farmers Guardian Best Farm Entrepreneur will be awarded to the farmer who can demonstrate flair, innovation and good business practice, highlighting Waitrose’s continuing support for British agriculture.
The winner of the Made in Britain Awards will be announced at the Royal County of Berkshire Show, held at the Newbury in September. The winners and finalists will appear in a special Country Living Magazine supplement published with the October 2009 issue.
