Roka Gouda Cheese Crispies 100 g (Pack of 8)

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Having so very much wished – and for ages! – to gingerly attempt to home-make my most loved cheese biccies, Roka Cheese Crispies, here follows the result. I've read both biographies of David (the authorised volume by Artemis Cooper, and the unauthorised version by Lisa Chaney), not to mention most of her own books. Yet mysteries remain. Why did food, of all things, became so important to her? In some ways, she was so austere, abstemious even. Her passion for Nescafé and Roka biscuits seems more of a piece with her personality than a vast bowl of osso buco. And to what degree is she still an influence on the way we cook? Does the Jamie Oliver generation even know her name? I wonder, too, about her personality. Cooper makes her sound perfectly terrifying, but what kind of cook doesn't care for other people? Isn't the whole point of food – particularly David's kind of food – that it is to be shared? If cooking from frozen, take them out and leave in a warm kitchen for about 30 mins ahead of slicing. They will slice better, with a serrated knife, if semi frozen. I believe the perfect ratio of juice to fizz is one-third the former, two thirds the latter – and the juice must be strained through a fine sieve or tea-strainer before use. And there will be ICE! A mimosa soon warms up in the glass, further exacerbated by the warmth of a paw around it. Furthermore, please don’t serve mimsy mimosas; that champagne should be served in a flute is misguided, here. I use a fine-glass beaker with three or four ice cubes stirred in when serving, along with an optional tiny slug of Cointreau. Cheese and sesame puff-pastries

I am particularly fond of a braised, small joint of meat cooked with whole endives. Pork is possibly my favourite choice, especially with sage and much garlic to infuse meagre, though intense, savoury cooking juices. But here we are at Eastertide, when it would seem perverse not to go down the Pascal route. Please don’t waste a cut of ruinously expensive tender spring lamb here, even if available, for this is a slow affair, with the meat close to falling away from the bone, once ready to eat; save spring cuts for a little later, say late May, when both its cost has somewhat diminished, a touch more flavour has further emerged and, whichever joint preferred, should be cooked pink. We did get sent a fourth but we didn’t try it as I am allergic to nuts and it had nuts in it, so it wasn’t a wise idea to give them a go! Lay pieces of cling film on the work surface and divide the dough into 5 equal parts weighing approx 200g. Shape into sausages about 15cms long; wrap in the cling film. Press and shape the dough into a rectangle about 4-5cm wide and 3.5cm tall. Chill for at least 1-2 hours, until firm if you want to cook same day. Each log will produce 12-14 biscuits.

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Once, grumpily protesting that “I cannot find them in these pretty tins any more!”, while sipping from a glass or two of sublime chablis, I sympathetically stared at her, sorry as a closed shop. Unroll the pastry rectangle from its sheet of paper and, using a pastry brush, generously cover the surface right to the edge, with beaten egg. Finely grate about 100g of tasty cheese – cheddar, lancashire, say – over the entire rectangle, bravely sprinkle with cayenne pepper (I use the not-too-hot but fragrant piment d’Espelette almost all the time, these days, when cayenne is asked for) and then press down with the hands. I know that the estimable Roka uses gouda, but this is simply because the biscuit company is Dutch, so they would, wouldn’t they?

In 2002 the company was sold. The new management, embraces the original mission of being a fine example of manufacturing authentic Dutch cheese biscuits. They invested a lot in ‘state of the art’ new production lines respecting the original recipes and production process. In 2002 the company was sold to Wim Bontje, who already had had a very successful career in the cheese industry. Wim invested a lot in ‘state of the art’ new production lines respecting the original recipes and production process. 2016 So I will come into the office to bring Dominic his lunch and there will be box after box. Well you should have seen his eyes dart open when he realised that he had a box of cheese crispies behind him and he didn’t even know. When she was pregnant with me she said her addiction was tubes of Primula soft cheese that she would squirt as she walked around the supermarket and by the time she got to the till she would have finished it.

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Roughly slice up into the pot a small onion and 6-7 medium-sized white mushrooms, along with 3 crushed garlic cloves and 2 broken sprigs of rosemary. Pour in a glass of dry white wine and bring up to a simmer. Reintroduce the lamb, closely cover with a tight-fitting sheet of dampened greaseproof paper (or foil), reattach the lid and slide into the oven. Once 20 minutes has elapsed, remove and turn the meat over. Turn the oven down to 150C/gas mark 2 and continue to cook for a further 30 minutes. Meanwhile, take the endives, trim away any tired leaves and, using a small, sharp knife, remove the little core from the base (its most bitter part) using a tight circular cut; it will emerge as a tiny cone. Put the endives in a bowl and squeeze over the juice of a small lemon. Plus whenever she is out for dinner her dessert of choice is always cheese and biscuits and I must admit she is the only person I know that likes that horrible blue mouldy cheese.

Towards the end of her life, she was famously irascible. She drank too much, too – frustrated by her inability to get around, and perhaps a little lonely: since her affair with Peter Higgins, the dedicatee of French Provincial Cooking, had ended in 1963, she had been single. The death in 1986 of her sister, Felicite, with whom she shared her house, was a terrible blow, plunging her into depression. But she was also able to see, by this point, that others would carry the torch she had passed to them: Jane Grigson, Jeremy Round (until his early death in 1989, David had hoped Round would write her biography), Simon Hopkinson. And others felt it, too, this passing of the baton. Her work would not be undone. Among the baskets of lilies, blue iris and violets at her funeral at St Peter ad Vincula in Folkington, East Sussex, on 28 May 1992, someone placed a loaf of bread, and a bunch of herbs tied up in brown paper.Add the cheese, butter and paprika to the chorizo oil and stir to combine. Finely chop the crispy chorizo, then add to the cheese mixture, along with the remaining ingredients. Knead the mixture together by hand until it forms a soft dough. I ask Norman, who looks after David's estate, how she sees the legacy of her "beautiful, elegant, reserved, witty" friend (we have this conversation, incidentally, at a table that once stood in David's house in Halsey Street: a pine affair bleached pale with years of use). "I remember Prue Leith telling me that at a catering college soon after Elizabeth's death, she asked students how many of them had read her, and not a single one raised a hand. Prue was quite shaken. But the books do sell – I see the royalty statements – and you see her influence in the cooking of Jeremy Lee, Shaun Hill and Rowley Leigh. I think she would have loved the food at restaurants such as Moro and Ottolenghi. Towards the end of her life, she did get a bit bitter and cross, but she had reason. Fiddling about with food, over-garnishing; she hated that. She felt there was too much bad food about – the way the English made pizzas, she was always complaining about that – and some of the things on television, she would have been scornful. Elizabeth never, ever promoted herself." The company ROKA was founded in 1949 in Delft (the Netherlands) by Jo Roodenrijs. The name ROKA comes from his family name ROodenrijs and KAastabletten (which means cheese crispies). Mr Roodenrijs was the real creator of the unique Cheese Crispies. He always strived to deliver the best quality to his customers. KLM Airlines and the Holland America Line were some of his most famous customers. 1984 Finally we try the Roka Gouda Cheese Crispies. Because it is just the normal cheese variety I am expecting something rather boring that is asking for cheese or spread to be added to it. Well I try them……they are crunchy, they are flavoursome, they give you a fantastic cheese hit and best of all they taste amazing alongside some red wine. ROKA GOUDA CHEESE CRISPIES – SHOULD YOU BUY IT? Well let’s start with the Roka Onion Cheese Crispies and our son. As I write this it is a super hot day in Portugal and I have a shedload of work to get done. Monday is my busiest day of the week and it doesn’t feel like I have come up for air. He has spent all day asking if we are doing the review and I feel like I have had a flea in my ear. You see his favourite flavour is the onion one and he wants me to hurry up and review it before he can eat the rest. Well I can tell you to never come between a teenage boy and his cheese! The hubby then chips in that the only way to eat them is dipped into soft cheese which is heaven. OMG I can’t believe I have to share the rest of these onion crispies. It is like homemade scones in a crisp.

I have grown up loving cheese and being completely and utterly addicted to it. I totally blame my mum for this as it is something that is clearly in the genes. She has always told me that when she was in her teens that she would go and buy scraps of cheese with her waitressing money and melt in a pan and then have it on some bread. Simon Hopkinson first met Elizabeth David in 1984, or thereabouts, at Hilaire, the Chelsea restaurant of which he was chef. She came for supper with Valerie Eliot, and the widow of the poet was wearing – he remembers it vividly – a polka-dot dress. "I was very excited," he says. "Because I was a fan." By this time, David was in her early 70s and a little frail (in the early 1960s, she had suffered a cerebral haemorrhage, and in the 1970s, she was in a serious car accident). As a result, she had a miniature appetite. "She ate like a bird. But I remember that I'd made a consomme, very clear and gorgeous, from some prawn shells. She asked for a second helping, and I was so pleased." Made brave by this, at the end of her lunch, the young Hopkinson left his kitchen, clutching a copy of An Omelette and a Glass of Wine, David's collected journalism and the book of hers that he loves the most. She duly signed it for him, and so began a friendship that would last until she died in 1992. In 1965, she opened a shop, Elizabeth David Limited, in Pimlico, London, where she sold Le Creuset pans and other hard-to-get-hold-of kit. The store, with its marvellous window displays, was as influential as her books would eventually be, pioneering a new generation of shops devoted exclusively to kitchenware. But it was also a business disaster, and she severed her links with it in 1973. Thereafter, she devoted herself to a more scholarly kind of writing: English Bread and Yeast Cookery was published in 1977, and Harvest of the Cold Months: the Social History of Ice and Ices appeared posthumously, in 1994. She became a vociferous critic both of the supermarkets, and of the 80s "foodie" culture as satirised in The Official Foodie Handbook by Ann Barr and Paul Levy, a volume she loathed ("To be sure they are skilful enough in the arts of toadying to their public and providing it with a little giggle at itself, but the meaning of satire in the true sense eludes them," she wrote in her review for Tatler). So we dived in and argued over who would have each box and were quiet for ages as we argued over which one was the best one. ROKA Cheese Crispies have an excellent unique flavour and texture. The unique taste comes from the high percentage (30%) of real matured cheese which is used. The texture is really unique because every single biscuit is made from refined puff-pastry, consisting of 90 layers (45 layers of dough and 45 layers of cheese). Our Crispies are still baked according to the original recipe created in 1949. Ever since, ROKA has continued to focus on making the finest quality cheese biscuits, made from the best ingredients to create those special moments of indulgence.Be prepared with a sheet of all butter puff pastry, carefully selected from the supermarket chilled shelf. Generally, they all hover around the 320g weight. It is a good product and, be assured, performs admirably for these pastries unless you are a purist and wish to home-make. Many cooks who choose to make this most luxurious of purees will use maincrop potatoes. However, when I first came upon the recipe (from Fredy Girardet’s cookery book La Cuisine Spontanée) some 30 years ago, the potatoes asked for were new. Although it may seem an easier task to incorporate oil into a fondant fluff of mashed maincrops, I remain convinced that his original stands alone; a unique, gloriously glossed potato puree. The company ROKA was founded in 1949 in Delft (the Netherlands) by Jo Roodenrijs, as a side business to his patisserie shop in Delft, the Netherlands. The name ROKA comes from his family name ROodenrijs and KAastabletten (which means cheese crispies). The company specialized in the production of very high quality, crispy puff-pastry biscuits, abundantly flavoured with over 30% matured Gouda cheese. Mr Roodenrijs strived to deliver the best quality to his customers. The deliveries at our house always seem to come on a Friday. Dominic is normally in the office on that day so is usually dealing with lots of different delivery companies which he hates. Not that we hate reviewing things, it is the fact that you get the same courier companies each week and each week they can’t find our house, even though they eventually found it the week before and it is so easy to find.