New Recipe Blue Monday Cheese Launched

The British Gorgonzola-style blue has been reworked to give the cheese a more sophisticated, creamy and piquant flavour. Cheesemaker and musician Alex James has teamed up with Katie Matten and Caroline Bell, of award-winning dairy Shepherds Purse, to ‘remix’ the recipe.

Blue Monday – launched last week at the Speciality & Fine Food Fair in London - costs from £18 per kilo and is now available at all good stockists.

Alex said, “Blue Monday has undergone a remix to give it that star quality, and who better to do that than an award-winning family-run dairy like Shepherds Purse. The new recipe Blue Monday is much creamier and buttery to taste, which is as a result of the high quality milk used by Shepherds Purse, as well as their cheesemaking expertise.”

Katie added, “Shepherds Purse is a quality, artisan and award-winning dairy, and we are really pleased with the Alex James Presents’ Blue Monday recipe. We have used a much stronger strain of blue culture than is used in our other blues to make it, but the cheese is not as strong or salty as previously. New Blue Monday has a smoother, more balanced and consistent flavour.”

The shape of the improved recipe Blue Monday has also changed, while cheesemakers at Shepherds Purse have worked hard to achieve a much more even blue-veining.

All Shepherds Purse cheeses are turned by hand, a process that helps achieve the creaminess of flavour and even mottling.

Shepherds Purse won six awards at the Guild of Fine Food’s Great Taste Awards 2013.

Find out more about Blue Monday on Facebook at www.facebook.com/AlexJamesPresents or at www.alexjamespresents.co.uk and www.shepherdspurse.co.uk