Curworthy's Rachel Stephens: Artisan Cheese Pioneer!
 I always like travelling up to north Devon. Wiggling up the valley to Moreton and on past Chagford, the Figaro takes half an hour to reach Whiddon Down, then you're into wide open spaces. Rolling hills, big skies ... and a lot less people (the south of the county is positively teeming by comparison).
Rachel Stephens' dairy is at Stockbeare Farm Jacobstowe. She's been there for 19 years, refining a small family of cheeses all based on her first, Curworthy. But she didn't start at Stockbeare: back in the 80s Farmers Weekly owned the nearby Curworthy Farm, which they used as a way of generating content for the magazine. To add extra interest for their readers, they began to make cheese - using a recipe based on Gouda - with Rachel helping out. In due course she took over as cheesemaker, eventually buying the equipment and moving it to her own farm, where she still is today.
Makers' approaches are interestingly different. In Rachel's case, she's built outwards from the original, very successful cheese. So at six weeks the cheese is sold in a black wax as Curworthy, but there's also Devon Oke, which is a six-month matured version with a rind. Flavoured with spring onions it becomes Chipple, and yellow-waxed Meldon features ale and mustard. Latest addition Devon Smoake rather speaks for itself!
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 But they all start with the tried-and-tested Curworthy recipe. This uses what's called the 'washed curd' process, where water is used to wash the whey out of the curd, lowering the acidity and making for a sweeter cheese.
Rachel's a delightful, quietly smiling lady, completely unruffled by the power cut which happened while she was in the middle of making and trying to talk to some passing cheesemonger. I suspect she is completely unruffleable! I also met one of her assistants, Sandra (seen here waxing and labelling small Curworthys), who told me how much she loved coming to work each day!
One of the true artisan cheese pioneers, there were just
a handful of makers when she started. She's seen the huge growth in
interest from a public looking for quality and authenticity in their
food, and lots more makers entering the field; good developments like farmers' markets (which she enjoys -
getting direct feedback from her customers) and less welcome ones like
the reams of paperwork which now, sadly, go with the job. |
Creator of Keltic Gold & Miss Muffet: The Dynamic Sue Proudfoot
 Leaving Rachel it was a short drive west - and just over the border into Cornwall - to meet Sue Proudfoot. Sue's cheeses go out under the name of Whalesborough, the family's farm near Bude, but success has led to a new dairy just up the road and that's where we met.
Where Rachel is calm, placid with a quite dedication, Sue has a sort of fizzing energy - an irresistible enthusiasm for what she makes and a determination to tell the world just how good it is! But what they share is more important. Both have a love of cheese and cheese making and real commitment to what they're doing. Both produce a set of cheeses with a sort of family relationship to one another. And both came into it with no previous experience.
For Sue the learning process was even more daunting. She'd done a bit of everything - taking free range eggs around Bude in a pushchair, milk churn painting, special needs work, sheep breeding ... then one day about 10 years ago she turned to cheese. And I suppose that's when she found her vocation. Because she's come through the tough learning process as a hugely skilled cheesemaker, good enough to supply Paxton & Whitfied: good enough to supply Fortnum & Mason, and good enough to win Best Modern English Cheese at last years British Cheese Awards (for Cornish Crumbly).
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 As with Rachel, her four cheeses are closely related, though here the process varies a little more. Trelawney is the orginal - a firm farmhouse cheese that might remind you of Cheshire. Miss Muffet uses the washed rind process which produces a sweet, supple cheese. For Keltic Gold, she takes Miss Muffet and washed its rind with Countrymans Cider three times a week for five weeks. Tedious, but the result is a real connoisseur's cheese.
And the newest addition is Cornish Crumbly, where the curd is left much more undisturbed (i.e it's not cut or broken up into small pieces) resulting in a chalky texture and lively taste, "a bit like a creamy Lancashire", says Sue.
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Idle Moment? You Could Nominate Someone
You could, you know. The Radio Four 2009 Food & Farming Awards
are now under way and they're looking for nominations: people that the
public think are doing great work as food producers, retailers, farmers, internet cheesemongers (ahem)
etc.
If you knew of, for example, an internet cheesemonger, you could nip along to the Radio Four site and nominate them.
But obviously, only if you happened to know one.
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