FROMAGE FRAIS

Perhaps it's all down to a rogue genetic construct when it comes to my appetites, or perhaps it can be blamed on a certain maturity taking hold of my tastebuds since turning 25, but recently I've been wracked with a craving for melted cheese products. This is odd for two reasons; the first being that I've hated any kind of cheese not on a lasagne for as long as I can remember and also because a hatred of cheese has been combined with an unexplainable yet pathological fear of actually touching the stuff-so much so in fact that on one notable occasion back when I was sixteen years old, I was frog marched out of my GCSE Food Technology class by the teacher because I threatened to throw a screaming fit if I was going to be forced to plunge my hand into a bag of grated cheddar.

To this day, the mere thought of grated cheddar makes me feel a mite queasy. I'm sure the person who invented this time-saving construct must have been some kind of bizarre fromage sadist. Surely I cannot be alone in believing that it holds little to no relation to its lordly cousin, the humble block of (ungrated) cheddar? A block of cheddar feels waxy and weighty and doesn't look as though it's so radioactive it's going to leap out of the bag and grab you by the throat. Grated Cheddar feels and tastes...dusty. Just writing this sensation down makes my skin crawl.

However, call it fate, call it chance, call it my insatiable craving for something obscenely savoury, but on Saturday night after a couple of jars, I returned home with the unshakeable knowledge that melting a high quality cheddar on a crumpet with a dash of Worcester Sauce would be some kind of culinary ephihany. Which indeed it was, a incident which was made even better when I woke up and remembered I hadn't burnt my house down by leaving the grill on overnight.

On Monday evening I decided to put my newfound craving to the test by attempting to make a Hommity Pie for myself and my beloved. Hommity Pie is one of those kind of recipes that's a perennial favourite in many households and certainly provides a premier amount of stodge to shoehorn into any diet on a cold Winter's night. If you're looking to make it for yourselves, the recipe goes something like this:

HOMMITY PIE-SERVES FOUR PEOPLE

Pastry
4oz Plain Wholemeal Flour
4oz Plain White Flour
4oz Margarine
Pinch Salt

Filling
2lb Potaoes
1 Medium Onion
3 or 4 Cloves Garlic
3 Tablespoons Shoyu (Soya Sauce)
Black Pepper
1 Teaspoon Dried Parsley
8oz Cheddar Cheese (Any cheese will do really-when I made it I used Gruyére which was equally as tasty)

Method
First of all mix the flour and margarine together with your fingertips until you end up with something akin to bread crumbs.
Gradually add enough cold water to form a dough.
Refrigerate for an hour.
To make the filling, start off by cubing the potatoes and cooking until very soft.
Chop the onion, crush the garlic and then fry together in a little oil.
Add the shoyu and black pepper and then mix with the potatoes, along with a little of the potato water to make the mixture nice and creamy.
Spread the mixture out in a pastry-lined baking tray.
Grate the cheese and then spread it out over the potato mixture along with the dried parsley.
Cook in a moderate oven (Gas Mark 5) for about 40 minutes.

Unfortunately, when I made this the pastry turned out a little soggy, but I think this was more down to me dishing it up too early instead of allowing the juices from the Shoyu Onions and Garlic mixture to soak into the pastry. However, I do intend to make this again, if only because it managed to sate my savoury cravings for a good four hours or so.

As a result of my various experiments, I can now resolutely hand-on-heart say I am a cheese convert. So readers, which ones do you think I should be trying out in my quest of discovery? Please bear in mind that I don't do blue cheese. I'm all for experimentation, but I'm not yet sure that my stomach lining can handle an ingestion of mould.