Results tagged “cheese” from Birmingham Mail - Restaurant Spy

These days health and safety considerations frequently stifle common sense and pleasure.

Take cheese, for example. All too often it's stored at such a low temperature by cautious shops and restaurants that its texture is wrong and its flavour virtually non-existent.

How reassuring, then, to come across a reminder of how cheese should be.

I'm not going to reveal my dealer - he/she would probably get into trouble from those who make it their business to deny us such delights - but the two soft French cheeses I bought on Saturday were magnificent.

Perhaps it's because I'm a messy eater, but I almost always end up surrounded and covered by the stuff when I eat a cheese sandwich at my desk.

The reason: most sarnie shops use grated cheese rather than slices and (in my experience) it always spills out of the bread on to trousers, my desk and the carpet beneath.

That might be good news for any mice lurking about - but it's very bad news for office cleaners,

In yesterday's restaurant review in the Mail I asked a question that has puzzled me for ages - why so many vegetarians get fat?

The answer came in an email that arrived today from a woman who explained that her boyfriend doesn't eat meat, but scoffs crisps, biscuits, chocolate, cheese and lots of other goodies that can pile on the pounds - though, to be fair, she did add that he's not fat.

Thanks for the explanation. But it's posed another question.

Congratulations to Glynn Purnell for getting through to the second round of the latest series of Great British Menu.

In the new series' first programme, screened on BBC2 tonight, he prepared a modern version of cheese and pineapple on a stick and an offbeat version of pork and apple complete with pig's trotter nuggets. It was food I sampled with the show's presenter Matthew Fort and it was fabulous - an explosion of colours, textures and flavours that worked off each other brilliantly.

The dishes were typical of the inventive, amusing and thoroughly enjoyable food served at Glynn's new(ish) restaurant Purnell's in Cornwall Street in the city centre. It's been a while since I last ate there but I'm determined to put that right soon.