Michaels Reisetagebuch: Meine fünf Jahre in England - Ploughman's Lunch

»He is going back to cook a solitary lunch, thought Jane, or perhaps it will just be beer and bread and cheese, a man's meal and the better for being eaten alone.«

In the country, and I don't mean the garden counties around London, but in the West Country, in Somerset, Devon, and Hereford -- in fact all over rural England -- the pubs serve one of the finest lunches ever devised, incredibly simple, rustic and plain, yet a meal that can be memorable given the right conditions. Called a "ploughman's lunch," it consists of a cut of Cheddar, a home-baked bread roll, pickled onions and a pint of beer.

That is, if you're lucky in your choice of a pub. The ploughman's lunch is easily the most universal pub snack but it is often a travesty of its namesake: a slab of factory Cheddar, a piece of "French" bread, and some over-pickled onions. When ploughmen actually ate such a lunch -- then simply called "bait" -- the cheese would have been equal in size to the bread and both would have come from the farm whose fields were being ploughed. And the onion would have been both fresh and raw and eaten like an apple.

Today, few farms make their own cheese. (These are labeled "farm house" cheeses and are expensive and relatively hard to find, even in Britain.) England was once a country with a cheese for each of its counties, but this is no longer so. That tradition was fading even as this century got under way and the world wars killed it off entirely. Only very recently, much as the case with ale, have small independent cheesemakers sprung up, reviving the old craft and bringing back some of the old local cheeses, or creating new ones such as Limeswold.

Likewise, there are still a few pubs that are properly proud of their cheeseboards. Egon Ronay's BULMER PUB GUIDE lists, among such, The Park, in Bedfordshire, where you can choose from amongst "an outstanding Cheddar, a red Leicester, smoked applewood, and a rich, tangy Cotswold." And at the Plough, in Rusper, West Sussex, besides the Cotswold and Cheddar, you will find offered a Wensleydale, a Blue Shropshire, and a creamy Stilton. But in most pubs you count yourself fortunate if one superior version of a more familiar English cheese is respectfully kept. The fanatic turcophile must search further .than most local pubs to find such stillexisting regional specialties as blue Vinny, red Windsor, Wiltshire Loaf, or St. Ivel, and look further than here for their description, since I can only describe what I have tasted myself.

Fortunately, a good ploughman's doesn't demand a rare or especially superlative cheese -- just an honest slice from a caredfor wheel, a small loaf of well-crusted bread, and some homemade pickle. The ploughman's is a delicious but absolutely simple meal. The crumbly richness of the cheese, the yeasty savor of the bread, and the tang of the pickle must be allowed to make their simple harmony, the bass line given to a pint of bitter.

The classic ploughman's is served with a generous slice of farmhouse Cheddar, but different pubs offer different cheeses (e. g. Stilton), and each has a traditional consort to make up the meal.

CHEDDAR. Cheddar is not only the name of a cheese and a town in England whence it originated, but also the name of a cheesemaking process, where the curd is finely and continuously cut so that the moisture can be quickly squeezed out. A simple and successful technique, it has spread widely and produced cheddars from Canada to New Zealand. Of the American versions, Vermont's is closest to English Cheddar -- both have their sharpness tempered with the rich and tangy taste of soured milk, a depth of flavor, and a lingering aftertaste. A good farmhouse English Cheddar also looks like Vermont cheddar: pale and firm, moist enough to yield to the knife without crumbling but resilient to the touch. Cheddar, bread, and pickled onion make up the classic ploughman's but cheddar is also excellent toasted. (Traditionally served with bitter.)