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22/07/10 - Stilton in fiction, rhyme and recipe. Our blue veined blogger, Neil Sowerby waxes lyrical

YOU’D think fiction would be stocked with characters named after cheeses – Cheddar George or Red Lester maybe. The movies have, after all Kenneth Williams as Citizen Camembert : “He’s the big cheese around here” (Carry On – Don’t Lose Your Head, 1967, Sid James played the Black Fingernail, a spoof on the Scarlet Pimpernel, geddit?). Then there’s Rocky, Rocky II and Roquefort (sic).

In children’s fiction there’s a best-selling cavalcade of titles purported to be written by an erudite mouse called Geronimo Stilton, editor of The Rodent’s Gazette (originating in Italy but translated into English since 2004). The closest he gets to the world’s greatest blue cheese is in novel no 31, The Mysterious Cheese Thief (August 2007) when our hero receives a legal paper telling him that he may no longer use t

he name Stilton because it is the trademarked name of a British cheese.

It leads him to travel to Britain and find all the Stilton in his village destination has been stolen. This entails a lot of sleuthing on the intrepid mouse’s part and informative tidbits about Stilton cheese, Britain, cheese-making, recipes and the like.

He’s far more likeable than the thick-necked dolt called “Stilton” Cheesewright in PG Wodehouse’s Jeeves and Wooster novels. Oxford rower Cheesewright is continually threatening to break Bertie’s neck if he lures away the affections of Madeleine Bassett.

Wodehouse’s literary contemporary, GK Chesterton, provides the only sonnet I know written about Stilton. Do you think it captures the transcendent beauty of the great dairy product? Mail me your poem on Stilton to neil@neilsowerby.co.uk and we’ll come up with a suitable prize for the best.

Here, meanwhile, is Chesterton’s Stilton sonnet:

Stilton, thou shouldst be living at this hour
And so thou art.  Nor losest grace thereby;
England has need of thee, and so have I.
She is a Fen.  Far as the eye can scour,
League after grassy league from Lincoln tower
To Stilton in the fields, she is a Fen.
Yet this high cheese, by choice of fenland men,
Like a tall green volcano rose in power.

Plain living and long drinking are no more,
And pure religion reading 'Household Words',
And sturdy manhood sitting still all day
Shrink, like this cheese that crumbles to its core;
While my digestion, like the House of Lords,
The heaviest burdens on herself doth lay.

Not sure that’s a great poem. There is perhaps more beauty in a great recipe. Here is a bistro classic translated from the French, substituting Blue Stilton for Roquefort in a salad of endive, blue cheese and walnut. It’s not just national  loyalty but I preferred the nuttier mellowness of Stilton to the more pungent soapiness of the French blue cheese. Here’s an adapted recipe courtesy of the great French-influenced, London-based chef Chris Galvin:


1tsp Dijon mustard
1tsp wine vinegar
25ml walnut oil
90ml vegetable oil
25g double cream
8 heads of Belgian endive (chicory)
200g Blue Stilton (young)
180g roasted walnuts
20g chopped chives

Refrigerate all dressing ingredients to ensure it doesn’t split. Blend mustard and vinegar in a processor. Combine both oils and cream and pour into blender.

Cut the bottom off the endives and wash well. In a mixing bowl toss endive, Stilton and walnuts in the dressing. Place in serving bowls and sprinkle with chives. Quite creamily lovely.