Saturday evening in Oxford and we ate at Browns. There had been some debate as to where we should go but in the end we decided on somewhere safe. There was a combination of celebrations including a Wedding Anniversary, a birthday and exam results and a need to keep all ages happy. As we sat in the room we realised that one way or other we had been coming back on an irregular basis for at least the last twenty-five years.  Apart from the bar having shifted position it all seemed very much as I remembered it from when I was first in there. The walls were painted the same dull creamy yellow and what I assume were the same pots plants gave off a bit of deep greenery. The menu had changed slightly and the waiters and waitresses were not quite as good looking as I remembered them.

Co-incidentaly Rachel Cooke then mentioned Browns in the column she writes in The Observer Food Monthly the following day. She had received a press release informing her that it was 40 years old. She said there are now twenty-seven branches and the last one she visited was horrible. Well our visit to Browns in Oxford was not horrible. The food was much as I remembered it. Good chips and generous plates. Nothing spectacular but plenty of it and not too much to complain about apart from the need for a bit more vigour with some of the flavours. All our plates were clean.

They have just opened in Liverpool. With all the other good places to eat I suspect it might be a while before I try it out.

We then got to thinking about the restaurants we have been back to most over the last twenty-two years. Of course this is all to do with place and where we have been back to.

So one of the other restaurant we have been back to over the years is also in Oxford, The Chiang Mai, which is down a small narrow alley just the High Street. Part of its attraction is very good authentic Thai food being served in a building that is almost four hundred years. It is a few years since we have been but it is one of the restaurants I would most like to return to. My memory of it always is the good clear salty sweet flavours.

By way of a small celebration I made myself a very rough plate of Thai Chicken Salad this evening. Two small chicken breasts browned slowly with a few drops of oil in a pan. As they browned I poured in a good dash of fish sauce and the juice of half a lime together with a teaspoon of sugar.

I then sliced a red onion and some carrot and mixed in finely chopped garlic, red chilli and coriander. Some mint would have been good but it seems to have disappeared out of the garden. This was then left to steep in another dash of fish sauce, the juice from the other half of the lime and another teaspoon of sugar.

I turned off the heat under the chicken when the sauce around it was thick and brown. I left it to cool a while and cooked some rice. When the rice was done I chopped up the chicken and stirred it with its juices into the carrot and onion mixture.

Listening now to some of the music bought over the week-end. A special mention must go to Julia Holter and Hello Stranger. My new favourite song. Listen and be bewitched.

In Oxford for the weekend and I was determined to stock up on Moghrabia. Last time we were here we went for a walk up the Cowley Road and came across a couple of middle eastern shops that were selling it. So this morning we went back.

Twice we were asked if we missed the Cowley Road. Walking up and then down it again I was bound to say that we do. Where we lived was within fifteen minutes walk of any number of good pubs, restaurants, shops and record shops. There was even a decent music venue down the bottom of the road where I saw Giant Sand twice, Therapy, Ash, Manic Street Preachers, Radiohead and Supergrass before they were famous, That Petrol Emotion, June Tabor, Gong and any number of obscure bands on a Saturday night.

Eighteen years later it does not seem to have changed a great deal.Some of the pubs are more themed up and The Bullingdon Arms is a faint shadow of its former self.Twenty years ago all it sold was Guinness, the covers were ripped of all the seats, there was the occasional lock in when we would crowd into the room at the back curtains closed and continue our drinking. All that has gone and it now sells Craft Beera and all the seats have their covers.

I found Moghrabia and bought out the shop. There were about six kilos of the stuff I had to lug home. If anything there is now more diversity on the Cowley Road than when we lived there. Back then most of the restaurants were Indian (there were at least a dozen) with a couple of Chinese and Italian. There are less Indians now but there was a place doing Russian food, Turkish and two or three Lebanese.

There was even a good record shop which would be expensive to live close to.

It still looked a good place to live.

Last night I was writing about Durrus cheese but all week I have been eating Milleens in my sandwiches. I finished it off today and may not be able to get my hands on any more until next summer.

Milleens is made on that part of the Beara Penisula that is part of County Cork. Although it is not that far away we have never really made it onto the Beara having just skirted round the edge on the odd trip to Glengarriff. But the Beara is a great dark brooding presence on any walk that takes you up to the spine of the Sheep’s Head and onto the north side. It looms up on the other side of Bantry Bay almost always shrouded in grey.It is vastly bigger than the Sheep’s Head so on old maps the two penisulas almost merge into one.

One of the reassuring aspects of the Sheep’s Head is that you are never away from being able to see the sea. I suspect that within the bulk of the Beara and its mountains the sea can disappear and that will make it more difficult to maintain your bearings. It will be a remoter and more far away place.

Something of that remoteness carries through in the cheese. Milleens is less refined than Durrus and Gubbeen. There is a real earthiness about it as if it has spent time lodged in some deep corner of half rotten soil. The smell of it sticks to the fingers after a slice has been cut. I am going to miss it.

As I think I may have mentioned before one of the many reasons for wanting to spend more time than we do in Ahakista is the ready availability of good cheese all made on the doorstep. There are a large number of world class artisanal cheeses being made in West Cork and there is something special in being able to pick these up in either one of the local supermarkets or from the stall at Bantry Market and then chew at them over a long lunch.

The cheese that is closest to home is Durrus, named after the village, and made in the hills that rise above the back of the church. It is proably one of the first of the Irish cheeses that we tasted and along with Gubbeen was top of the list of the cheeses I wanted to sell when I had vague thoughts about open the cheese shop from which this blog takes its name.

Just over a week ago I was standing at the bar in Arundel’s pub buying myself a couple of pints and a lady walks in carrying a large round of Durrus cheese. She passes it over the bar and explains that it is a small contribution to the festival.

She looked vaguely familiar, so I asked,’Are you the lady who makes the cheese?’

she acknowledged that she was and so I found myself talking for brief few moments to Jeffa Gill, the lady who makes the Durrus cheese.

I had time to explain that the cheese that she makes was one of the great attractions of the area before we got on to talking about the festival and which of us had been able to get tickets for the pub quiz that had been presented the night before by Graham Norton. We had, she hadn’t. Those tickets must have been like gold dust.