Cheese & Football Feast day 14: Wales

For the first day of the Euro2016 football tournament knockout games my cheese feast returned to Wales. The title of this dish is Anglesey Eggs, but it is as much about the leeks and cheese as the eggs.

The mashed potato is mixed with a large portion of cooked leeks and some cheese is added too. This forms the base and edges of the dish. Eggs are placed in the centre and then topped off with cheese sauce and extra cheese on top for the golden finish.

I did manage to source some Welsh cheese for this dish, a Welsh Cheddar from the Snowdonia cheese company called Black Bomber. This is a mature cheddar with plenty of flavour. It is sold coated in black wax, hence the name. The beer to accompany the meal was Skull Attack Gold from Brains Brewery, based in Cardiff.

I based my recipe from the late Keith Floyd's book on Britain & Ireland which was a part of a tv series on British food.

I thought his portions were a little mean though, so I used rather more cheese and potato than in the book. This recipe from the Hariy Bikers is closer to how I made my dish but I didn't add any cream to the mashed potato and we didn't serve any bacon with our dish.

This is how much dish looked before going into the oven. It was heated through at a fairly low oven temp (160C)  covered in foil, and then at half time the grill turned up high to brown the top.

The cheese which I bought at a Devon cheese shop/deli came wrapped in its own 'strip' which was quite fun and I have to show you the bottle top on the SA beer, as I love dragon images.

I wouldn't say they Welsh team were on fire but they won so well done to them.

The next dish on the cheese feast is a my very anglicised version of a German Käsekrainer sausage. Instead of a smoked pork sausage containing cheese I shall be cooking a pork meatloaf made with minced pork, smoked ham and cubes of cheese. The beer will be more authentic.