10 cheese recipes

Cheese. Photograph: The Guardian. Food and Prop styling: Kitty Coles. Food styling assistant: El Kemp.

The door of my fridge always contains at least one wedge of hard, salty cheese wrapped in waxed paper, ready to grate over everything from plain buttered spaghetti to beans on toast, and usually a few rinds too, waiting to add flavour to soups and stews. The handy thing about such cheeses is they keep for ever and a day, graduating from being good for melting into macaroni cheese, cheese and onion pie or quesadillas, to desiccated nubs perfect for party food such as cheese straws or cloud-like gougeres. Blue cheese, which generally doesn’t last long enough around me to create leftovers, is worth hoarding to add to a broccoli soup, and most odds and ends will work in a fondue, as long as they’re happy to melt and mingle with others. The pleasure of softer, fresher cheeses is more ephemeral, but its potential in the kitchen is just as great; think milky paneer smothered in rich spinach gravy, or featherlight gnudi dumplings made from mousse-like ricotta. Or, indeed, the richness of cream cheese baked into a wobbly, and deliciously burnt Basque cheesecake. Few ingredients match the sheer versatility of cheese; consider this a love letter and a celebration.