Wensleydale with cranberries cheese made in the town of Hawes in Yorkshire, England. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Talking of cheese as I was the other day this mini food review comes courtesy of my folks’ latest travels with their motorhome which took them into Yorkshire and shows that Britain’s food producers are still thinking of new ideas.

While in Hawes they visited the Wensleydale Creamery and tried their many varieties of excellent cheeses and brought me back a sample of Wensleydale cheese with strawberry.  It’s a smooth cheese that crumbles in your mouth and has a delicate fruity flavour.  Its not shown on their website but they also produce other varieties such as Wensleydale and Cranberry which is a favourite of mine already that I enjoy just by itself – being sweet and creamy – and also in a slightly decadent version of my perfect burger.

Cracking! as Wallace would say.

Given that I live in a town where the closest burger to be had after six o’clock is two miles away and I’m not that dedicated to McDonalds I have been on a quest to create my own big, tasty burger.

The first one arrived after a day’s struggle.  Do you know how difficult it is to find bacon, in Newark, on New Year’s Day?  Not easy, but I found some after a long walk to the nearest Spar shop, and combined with a plain burger it was heavenly.  But not quite good enough.  Months later the next breakthrough was the quarter pounder with chilli, available in most good supermarkets.  I felt it needed onion, but I had none, sadface.    Then, in a moment of inspiration I found a jar of caramelised onion relish and voila.

Not done yet though.  Later in the year I read that McDonalds’ Big Mac dressing was similar to Thousand Island Dressing so off to the shops I went and that evening I slapped some on the other side of the chilli quarter pounder to the onion relish.  Do you hear the sound of angelic singing?  As Adam Richman (Man v Food) might say “Oh my goodness, oh, my, goodness”.

I’ve tried adding lettuce, tried substituting the Thousand Island for beef chilli (need a smock to eat that one), and tried adding salami to the mix, along with occasional experiments with various cheeses.

The result of all this?

My personal favourite – lightly toasted soft large sesame bap (Morrisons) + caramelised onion relish (Asda) + chilli quarter pounder (Morrisons) + Wensleydale cheese with or without cranberries (Anywhere) + Thousand Island Dressing (Morrisons) + two crispy onion rings on top of the dressing

You bite in, and experience not an explosion of flavours and textures so much as a sequence as you hit crispy onion, tangy sauce, frisky spicy beef then sweet onion.  Eat with thin fries dusted in salt.

I love it, but that’s just me.