Justin Grapes - Winter Cheese Paste

This entry was posted on 8th February, 2018

At the start of this winter’s campaign, the first thing to do was to sort out the bait for the coming cold months. Over the years, I’ve changed my ingredients to try and make the perfect paste, and this year I think it’s getting very close.

The main ingredient is always Stilton, and the stronger the better. Most Stiltons have a strength gauge on the packet to show how strong the cheese is, and two blocks of number 5 were my first purchase.

Next on the list is short crust pastry, and this session I was going to make double the amount, so I didn’t run out, so two 500g packs were put in the basket.

This winter I planned to take some of the stickiness out of the mix by putting a whole loaf in the paste, so the other half’s food blender came out and the loaf was blitzed ready for the mix.



Finally, I planned to put in some extra flavour, and something I was hoping would be an edge on some of the more pressured stretches.

Stage one was to roll the pastry out as thin as I could on the worktop with a little flour just to stop it from sticking, then I grated all the Stilton into a bowl, so it was easier to handle. Next, I got my flavour, which was a crayfish bait wand, removed all of the wand and smeared it evenly over the pastry. The Stilton was next, and then a little of the bread.

I then rolled the pastry up to try and keep the mixture even throughout.

Kneading the pastry mixture was next, and as much time as possible is taken with this to keep the paste as smooth as possible.

I kept adding the remainder of the bread to the paste until the paste was not sticky, but still soft enough to allow it to come off the hook when striking.

With the paste finished, I then made it into smaller balls and bagged it, ready for my winter campaign.