“Substitute”

Town Crier with

Justin Tunstall

Retail consultant, shares with us his cheese selling experience

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When The Who’s Roger Daltrey sings “I was born with a plastic spoon in my mouth,” one might be forgiven for thinking that he came from a family of habitual deli-sample guzzlers

The title of Pete Townshend’s song is, of course, “Substitute” and substitution is a skill that successful deli-owners learn to master.

Hardly a Saturday goes by without customers rushing into their local cheese specialist brandishing a torn out page from a colour supplement with a recipe from a celebrity chef. All too often the ingredient cheese that is specified is either overly general: “goats’ cheese” or unattainably precise: “St Thingummybob’s”. The descriptor ‘goats’ cheese’ is a particular bugbear of mine; no one would ever put ‘cows’ cheese’ in a recipe, yet goats’ cheeses come in the same variety; it would be helpful to have a few clues from which to work. These may lie in the recipe instructions – shaving indicating a hard cheese, spreading soft, baking something with a bloomy rind to contain the molten paste. If there’s nothing else to go on, be it pictures of ingredients or the finished dish, then a slice from a log of plain Rosary or a white-rinded log will probably have been what the chef intended. 

When the ingredient is very specific, it’s a different challenge. There are over 1,000 different cheeses being made in the UK alone, and it is impossible for any deli to stock, or even be conversant with every artisan product across the globe. This is where a talent for research needs to be applied. My first approach is always to consult one of the cheese books that we stock – the World Cheese book by Juliet Harbutt or the one from Patricia Michelson. I do this with the hope of selling a copy to the shopper – and often with success. Other helpful resources include a pocket-sized guide to French cheeses, a similar one for the UK and, of course, wholesaler catalogues. My last resort is Google, but that’s something the shopper could do at home and we like to show that we have our own in-house resources.

Once we know what kind of cheese was being referred to, we can identify a close relative from our existing stock. Thankfully the systematic approach to categorizing cheese means that substitutes can be made with confidence. Washed-rind cheeses probably offer the greatest risk when ‘subbing’ – a cheese with a pungent alcohol wash of brandy, perry or cider will present very differently from a brine wash and this will be even more marked if the cheese is cooked. Rather than inflict these strong flavours where they may not fit, I’d always tend to offer a good brine example such as Francis.

I find that the so-called “Delia Effect”, where an ingredient is suddenly sought after and then unsourceable for a few months, has a comparatively short life when it comes to cheese. I ordered a dozen Chaource after the Telegraph cited it as Britain’s new favourite (and being asked for it about 20 times on the day of publication) only to have to slash prices below cost to shift them before the use by date. Within a week, customers had lost interest and moved onto the next thing.

I don’t know if Roger, or Pete, would demolish my sample tray and pocket my plastic spoons on a visit to the shop – they’ve not been in. But a friend of theirs was a regular and bought Daltrey a bottle of Black Cow Vodka – gluten-free, and compared to the high street brand, a great substitute!