Cheese, Coffee & Honey | The Hungry Guy
When you read Cheese, Coffee & Honey on the menu together there is an instant, almost jarring effect. Both your brain and mouth head straight towards a land of pre confusion. Almost short circuiting at the thought. Then there's a sort of gasp of disbelief and some doubt enters your mind. Maybe it’s a typo, maybe the chef’s had a breakdown and has just gone bonkers? But its real! And it’s really delicious!
When you pair the three components together, you end up with a quite breathtaking harmony of flavours. The sweetness of the honey balances the bitterness of the coffee, whilst also breaking down the tangy, sort of astringency of the hard cheese. The cheese also adds a sort of creaminess to everything that just allows the flavours to sit around for a little longer and mellow into each other in surprisingly luxurious way! The flavours create a remarkable balance and combination in your mouth that ends up in an almost light malty flavour. If you play around with the quantities and balance of the three you can travel the entire length of the flavour spectrum from savoury to sweet and you can stop just about anywhere in-between. It makes a brilliant pre-dessert or cheese course to a menu as well as having the ability to be a palate cleanser after a strong flavoured main course.
Where this dish starts to excel is when you breakdown each element and start really focussing on the individual flavours. There are people out there who think cheese is cheese, honey is honey and coffee is just coffee - but when you enter, deeper into each of those worlds you find a remarkably diverse place in terms of flavours and textures.
You have to start with a high quality, hard cheese. Something that has a level of acidity and tang to it, a sort of astringency. I find Appleby’s Cheshire and if you’re feeling like a real whack in the face, their mature Cheshire, is just about as perfect of a cheese for this as you’ll find!
Equally with the honey, taste local honeys - every one has a slightly different quality to it. I like a slightly more floral flavour as it just adds something a little extra to the dish, but this is up to you. Go and explore and experiment with local honeys and this simple dish can become your new delicious playground!
For me, the real deciding factor is the coffee! Make sure you are using finely ground, good quality coffee! Initially when you realise you are about to eat straight up coffee grounds, you start to imagine and remember that god awful trend a while ago when everyone was trying to eat teaspoons full of cinnamon, only to be coughing brown dust for days and almost choking on the gloopy boulder that forms in your throat when it comes in contact with saliva. This couldn’t be further from that. Lovingly, finely ground coffee is a beautiful thing. It’s a light powder that isn’t in any way gritty - especially when its ground and looked after by experts. Experts like Hundred House Coffee!
If you have experienced Hundred House Coffee in the past, you’ll know that they are all about the flavour and tasting notes of their coffee and they have a pretty wild and expansive delicious coffee world; its never ending!. From their single origin coffees to their slightly more weird and wonderful out there combos in their Freak & Unique ranges - they are without doubt the masters of coffee flavours and tasting and have a coffee or blend for just about anyone!
I knew that these guys were the ones to ask when it came to pairing a coffee with the cheese and honey and they didn’t disappoint. Matt recommended the Baba Brew - their Turkish style Ibrik Coffee that is blended with cardamon. My initial response to tasting it on this dish was actually great frustration!
‘CARDAMON, OF COURSE! WHY DIDN’T I THINK OF THAT?’
A stroke of pure genius.
The cardamon adds another wonderful sweet, aromatic and floral spice to the whole delicious mouthful and takes it all to the next level. This coffee makes all the difference - it heightens the entire experience and just sprinkles that little bit of extra va-va-voom that I didn’t even realise it needed!
It might sound out there, but try this and then get ready to blow your friend's and family’s minds next time you are entertaining! If you’re not sure, grab whatever cheese, coffee and honey you have in your fridge or cupboards and give it a quick try - its as simple as slice, dust, drizzle, eat. Then when you realise how utterly and fascinatingly delicious that was, go and buy some of the good stuff! Get that Appleby’s Cheese, get that local honey and definitely without question, get that Baba Brew from Hundred House Coffee!
I’ll be sitting here with a wry smile on my face, waiting to say I told you so………
Steve - The Hungry Guy
