I admire the grit of Emily Pankhurst when she resisted the brute force of the prison guards as they tried to force feed her, she was standing up for what she believed in and as a result the role of women in society was changed forever, for the better (she was born in Moss Side in Manchester, I’ve driven through once by mistake and I’m not surprised she was a resilient soul). Then along came the girls from Dagenham, who won the equal wage and furthered the status of women as equals in the workplace.
However, no matter how hard the suffragettes worked for equality, no matter how many strikes the ancestors of Stacey Solomon rallied for, there are still a handful of extremely important masculine things that remain sacrosanct that men can do that women can’t. Grow a beard for instance, sing the bass line in a barbershop group, or pee standing up. That is until I was privy to the dignified invention of the ‘ShePee’ at a festival a few years ago, when a girl came out of the urinal and shook out her “re-usable” funnel and stuffed it back into her handbag. I headed straight for the ladies; at that moment society had officially flipped on its head.
Gender can also be applied to food and drink in the same way, in a pub the majority of men will order a pint and the women a glass of wine, this is of course not universal by any stretch. In fact having spent a considerable amount of time in pubs I’ve noticed a vast majority of the girls also drink beer, yet fewer of the lads will tuck into a glass of Chardonnay. Partly to do with image and pride, but surroundings also play a key part in ones order, a pub in its truest form is not a place where men drink wine, yet women can indulge in both and their image will remain untarnished.
Goats Cheese then, to me, is like walking into The Nags Head, slamming my van keys down on the bar in between Barry and Steve, pulling up a stool, letting out a loud belch, and ordering a small glass of Sauvignon Blanc. Girls go mad for it, I only have to whisper the phrase “Goats cheese and caramelised onion tart” in front of my girlfriend and she drags me upstairs, admittedly to go on UkTvFood, but in the bedroom all the same. It has a pretty strong taste, unique in fact, but I think it’s the appeal it has to women that subconsciously puts me off, perhaps I’m jealous? I don’t know.
Perseverance is a virtue and I have, over time, warmed to the churned lactation of the world’s oldest domesticated animal. It is delicious with strawberries and pepper for example, and of course anything caramelised. So without further ado, here is my effort at taming the most aphrodisiacal of cheeses.
Ingredients: (Serves 4)
4 wheels of goats cheese, 1cm thick each
8 sheets of filo pastry
200g spinach
8 sweet piquanté peppers, from the jar, patted dry
½ red onion, finely chopped
1 tspn cumin seeds
1 tspn medium chilli powder
½ tspn sugar
150g butter, melted
Olive oil
Salt and Pepper
Vine tomatoes for roasting
Frying pan, baking tray, brush for the butter
Method:
1. Steam or boil the spinach for 5 minutes until it is wilted, strain it thoroughly to get as much water out of it as possible and chop it up roughly.
2. Heat a little oil in the frying pan and fry the cumin seeds for a minute or so, add the onions and piquant peppers and fry for a few minutes until the onions soften. Chuck in the spinach and stir it around before adding the chilli powder to the mix. Fry for another couple of minutes, take of the heat and keep warm.
3. Lay out a sheet of filo pastry and brush all over it with the melted butter; line up another sheet on top and press down, sticking them together. Place a wheel of goats cheese in the middle and dump a couple of spoonfuls of the spinach mixture on top of it, fold over the bottom end of the pastry over the cheese and brush it with butter, do the same with the top and sides, making sure to butter them thoroughly. Repeat four times with the remaining cheese and mixture.
4. Wipe out the frying pan and return it to the heat with a little oil, fry the parcels cheese side down for a few minutes until they crisp up, whack them on a baking tray and put them in the top half of the oven at 220°C for around 10 minutes until they are golden delicious.
5. Season up the vine tomatoes and whack them in alongside the parcels to roast, serve up, bless up.
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