One of the great pleasures of going to West Cork every summer is the cheese. Durrus and Gubbeen are always readily available but Milleens is a bit more elusive. Tt has to be furtled for on the shelves of Super Valu in Bantry and Schull and on the tables that are set up in the regular markets.

But it is one of my favourites especially after it has been left for a while in the back of the fridge and is then found again. If I make it for my sandwiches for lunch there is deep smell of the earth and matured green grass that sticks to my fingers through the morning.

So it with some sadness that I read that Veronica Steele had died. She started making Milleens back in 1978 and in many ways can be regarded as the god-mother to all the great cheese that can now be had in Cork.

This is what Jane Grigson had to say about her in 1984 in an article that appeared in The Observer Food Magazine.

VISIT TO A CHEESEMAKER

Thinking that Ireland was short of cheese, I brought one over from T’yn Grug for the Allens at Ballymaloe. They were politely grateful, but I need not have bothered. Their Sunday evening table was covered with Irish cheeses. Later in Dublin, in the cheese shop of the Powerscourt Townhouse market, the first thing I saw as I walked in was a row of them – cheese from Milleens; soft goats’ cheeses from Wendy and Brian Macdonald in Wicklow and so on.

We went to visit Veronica and Norman Steele on the north side of the Beara Peninsula at Milleens. Rhododendrons and thick greenery at first, pines and glimpses of water. At Dareen gardens, a coast road turns off right down past the cottage where the fish producing O’Connors live. A creek runs in at that point, a path goes down to their boat and in the distance their shellfish rafts rest on the sea; we thought of dinner to come at Kenmare, with their mussels, their oysters and, above all, their sea urchins.

On to Milleens. A flaming car in the middle of the road watched by the sad owner and his parents. No one in sight, village two miles away. Gradually people emerge from nowhere, ambling along, chatting, drawn to the smoke and flames. At last, we get by.

We struggle up the right stony muddied lane and we find two philosophers in Wellington boots, teacher and pupil, both young, turned herdsman and cheesemaker and not regretting it. Straight off the lane, you step up into the orderly, sweet – smelling cheese room, the dairy. Then into the living – room where cheeses were set out on a long table, with a long bench and a view over the sea, over the great inlet like some Galician ria that jags in to the town of Kenmare on this rough shredded fringe of Ireland.

The Steeles began in 1978 with one cow, three gallons of milk a day. Now they have twelve friesians, two kerries and fifty gallons of milk a day. They make two kinds of cheese, Beara which is a cooked curd cheese, a big yellowish cheese, and the flatter Milleens. They export all over the place, to Germany, America and England. With one helper, they have a business they can manage, a life they like – but they could sell ten times as much.

They are keen to spread the idea of Irish cheese. With the chairman, Patrick Berridge, they are amongst the most active members of the Irish Cheese Producers’ Association, which is now thirty strong. Veronica Steele has no craft secrets, but passes everything on that she can.

The house is now a quieter place. The eldest two children have gone back to university and the rest of us need to fall back into a different rhythm.

There are of course advantages, the likelihood of being swept up into a bear hug by the nineteen year old son are substantially reduced and the general level of screeching has been reduced.

The final family meal was Friday night. I had planned a feast of falafel, lamb, pitta and miscellaneous tapas but was told that one of our number didn’t like falafel, never had done, and I would think again.

So I suggested beans with guacamole, fried chicken, wraps and tacos. This got a more positive response provided the beans were better than the ones we had for a Sunday breakfast in Brighton a couple of months ago. I hadn’t had the beans but I was told this would be a tall order.

I started with the beans. I cribbed part of the recipe from the  Brindisa book on Spanish cooking I was given for Christmas.

An onion was finely chopped and cooked off in olive oil until soft and golden. Crushed garlic and chopped chilli was added together with a large roasted red pepper, also finely chopped and finally a fresh bay leaf. Once all that had taken on some colour a couple of tins of chopped tomatoes were stirred in and it was all brought to a simmer. I then stirred in three tins of haricot beans and seasoned it all with plenty of salt, pepper and paprika. It was a left to cook for an hour so whilst everything was put together.

Chicken breasts were put on to fry in oil with salt, pepper and more paprika. As they cooked in a sliced onion and pepper were thrown in. Once the chicken was done I sliced it up and stirred in some Mole sauce (a Mexican chilli sauce made with chocolate) at which point it seemed like a good idea to stir a teaspoon of the Mole sauce into the beans. I loosen the chicken up with a glug of beer.

Finally I made the guacamole. Four avocados were mashed with a wooden masher. A finely chopped red onion was stirred in along with chopped tomatoes (if I had been doing it properly I should have skinned a deseeded the tomatoes – but most days I think life is too short for the skinning and deseeding of tomatoes), crushed garlic, chilli, lime juice, olive oil, a dash of tabasco and more salt and pepper.

We ate it all with wraps and tacos, grated cheese and salad, hot chilli sauce and cooling yogurt.

The kids seemed to enjoy it although I never got to hear if the beans were better than the ones we had in Brighton?

Once the food was eaten they started on the packing for journeys down south.

So that was a curious Christmas and probably the first completely sober Christmas Day that I have had for the best part of the last 35 years.

I should probably start by saying ‘thank you’ to the doctors and nurses who were working in the walk in centre in Arrowe Park and so were able to see me on Christmas Day and prescribe me the antibiotics I needed to keep me a few steps further from death’s door than I might otherwise have been.

It was surprisingly quiet up there.

I guess most people feeling ill were staying at home in the hope that a further 24 hours would see them through. I had been of that camp until around midday when I attempted to shuck an oyster and found myself shaking so much there was greater chance of me removing a finger than the oyster being shucked. A GP friend was duly consulted by way of telephone. He was able to supply a medical name to the shakes (‘the rigors’). Apparently these combined with the periodic hot flushes I was also coming down with were signs that a serious infection was about to be unleashed somewhere inside me.

So off to Arrowe Park we went.

There was some initial confusion on being called for the nurse. There were only three people sat waiting to see someone but it transpired that at least two of them were called Ralph. So when my name was called I found myself in competition with a three year old and his anxious parents. The confusion was sorted and the three year old was sent back to sit down.

The nurse took a long list of details, gave me a small plastic container for ‘a sample’ and suggested that it would be another few hours before I would be able to see a doctor but in the meantime the most important thing was that I produce ‘a sample’.

Unfortunately I did not feel in any desperate need to produce a sample so I positioned myself next to the water dispenser and drank my way through about three pints of water. There was still no stirrings of a sample but I was called back to see the nurse. A doctor could see me later that afternoon. In the meantime there was no reason why I could not go home but I would have to come back with the sample.

So we went home for an hour or so to watch some more presents being opened.

We were back there at 5.00 having left instructions at home for the final preparations of the food so it would be ready by the time we were back.

I saw the doctor. There was more confusion. He was hard of hearing and I was not speaking clearly. So when I explained that I had suffered from a urinary infection before Christmas he expressed some surprise that I should be there on Christmas Day for an ear infection.

Confusion cleared up he tested the sample and duly prescribed more water and the necessary antibiotics and we were back out after only half an hour.

At home they had not been able to wait any longer for food and a large part of Christmas dinner had been eaten by the time we got back.

I had a roast potato and a slice of the capon by which time I was ready for bed.

So Christmas passed in a blur of sobriety and the slightly hallucinogenic effect of whatever infection was passing through me.

In the meantime we did a few walks, I made a particularly good bolognese sauce and there was a general sense of relaxation.

There was  no fatted calf to welcome home the only son but he he did get a pretty fine roast chicken.

The chicken had been picked up some months go from The Farmer’s Market since when it has languished near the bottom of the freezer waiting for an opportunity to do good. Its time came today.

It came out to defrost last night and was cooked late this afternoon.

As always the most important thing to remember was to take out the small plastic bag of giblets. It was replaced with half a lemon and and half a red onion, some garlic and a fistful of herbs.

The rest of the lemon was squeezed over the bird before it was given a good dusting of salt, pepper and paprika. It then went into the oven for about 90 minutes.

We had it with crusty rice and salad listening to Miles Davis.

It transpires you send the only son to university for 3 three months and he comes back a fan of Tom Waits and jazz. How do these things happen?