Image:
Tom Crockford
Carolyn Hopkins learned her trade as a cheesemonger with Charlie Turnbull at the still-missed Turnbulls Delicatessen and Cafe in Shaftesbury. Now she takes her travelling cheeseshop the Truckle Truck – a bright turquoise converted Citroen van – to Shaftesbury and Wincanton, and to food fairs, festivals and events, where she sells outstanding local and regional cheeses, as well as chutneys and savoury biscuits.
From this month, you can also meet the Truckle Truck’s trailer-drawn baby, Pepé Le Pew (named after Disney’s famous skunk). He’s clearly a rather stroppy offspring with the official name Filthy Cheese, and if you think you recognise the style of the baby truckle’s logo, you are right. Its designer also created the award-winning labels for Marcus Fergusson’s Feltham’s Farm cheeses.
Carolyn will be taking Pepé to events around the area, serving two of the great Alpine cheese dishes – raclette and tartiflette. Swiss in origin, raclette is both an ancient cheese from the canton of Valais, and a dish created by heating cheese and scraping off the melted part, typically serving it with boiled potatoes or bread. Carolyn will be using raclette with wild garlic and and Ogleshield, a similar cheese made by Jamie Montgomery at North Cadbury.
Tartiflette comes from Savoy in the French Alps and from the Aosta valley, and is made with potatoes, reblochon cheese, lardons and onions, often with a splash of white wine. Dating back to the 14th century, reblochon has an interesting history, created by farmers to avoid paying duty to their landlords. They only declared part of their first milking, and used the undeclared remaining – and much richer – milk to make the small cheeses.
Baby Pepe, a miniature Citroen H van, was made specially for Carolyn by London-based Yannick Read, who is known for his miniature Citroen “Prosecco bars”.
