Drake's theory of cheese hats – tested

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/dec/12/-sp-drakes-theory-of-cheese-hats-tested

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A gentleman is supposed to take his hat off at the dinner table – it’s a common courtesy. However, yesterday Drake took to Instagram to announce that he was wearing a wide-brimmed Panama hat while enjoying a cheeseboard in his hotel room, and it was somehow making his hard cheese taste softer, more continental.

“I am slowly starting to understand why you constantly wear these,” he began, referring to a fashionable friend who often wears wide-brimmed hats. “It made my meal feel more exotic. Cheddar was looking more like a provolone or a rare brie.”

Not long ago a rapper’s hat was a baseball cap worn at a variety of unusual angles, but now it is more likely to be an oversized vintage monstrosity from Vivienne Westwood’s autumn/winter 82 collection Buffalo, as favoured by Pharrell, or a cheese-platter-tasting accessory, as favoured by Drake.

Once the Notorious B.I.G. advised aspiring crack dealers to “never let no one know/ how much dough you hold, cause you know / the cheddar breed jealousy”. Now, though, Drake lets everyone know that not only is he impossibly wealthy, he also has a magical hat that transmogrifies cheddar into something more akin to a continental delight. (Although, to my mind, provolone and brie are summer cheeses, and inappropriate at Christmas time.)But can a hat really improve one’s appreciation of a dish? Should we always wear a beret with our berries, a turban with our turbot? A homburg with our hamburger, a sombrero with our Solero?

After all, chefs wear hats; puffy toques from 16th-century France, with 100 folds representing the 100 ways of cooking an egg. Homer Simpson, famously, enjoys eating molten cheese from the top of his nacho hat. French gourmands, notoriously, enjoy their dish of ortolan Bunting – a tiny songbird gorged on millet and drowned in Armagnac – while wearing a linen napkin draped over their heads. In part, this is to hide their shame from God; but it is also to trap the bunting’s sweet aromas, and allow epicureans to savour fully its forbidden flavours. Maybe a wide-brimmed hat will hold in those aromas, allowing you to really enjoy your cheese? Maybe a woolly hat will keep you so warm that hard cheeses melt into soft butters in your mouth? To find out, I tried eating a few different cheeses while wearing a few different hats.

1. Coastal Cheddar + Ryan Lo cowboy hat

The closest I could come to Drake – having visited a north London cheesemonger and helped myself to my flatmate’s wardrobe – is savouring a slice of Coastal cheddar while wearing a massive golden cowboy hat by womenswear designer Ryan Lo. “Listen closely,” says the maker of Coastal cheddar, “and you might just be able to hear the sea.” This is a salty Dorset cheese with crunchy crystals of calcium and it’s delicious, although happily it doesn’t taste of brie. It tastes of cheddar, which is nicer.

2. Colston Bassett stilton + New Era cap

Next up I try a black New Era cap, the sort of thing rappers used to wear, with some Colston Bassett stilton – one of the only hand-ladled stiltons out there – and quince jelly. The sweet quince, pungent blue cheese and fitted cap combine to devastating effect. I end up eating the entire stilton in bed.

3. Manchego + Katie Eary headpiece

This sheep’s milk cheese from La Mancha cries out for a magical hat, so I pair it with an elaborate, red-plumed one by Katie Eary. She worked on Kanye West’s fashion line so she knows all about rapper’s hats. The hat smells surprisingly earthy – I think it’s made of horsehair – and thus really enhances the manchego’s subtle, sheepish notes.

4. Pennard Ridge Red + Disney Mouseketeer hat

A goat’s milk cheese shouldn’t really be orange, and a gentleman shouldn’t really wear a Minnie Mouse hat. Together they are revolting.

5. Sheep’s Gouda + New Era bobble hat

Finally, I put on my own winter hat, an LA Lakers bobble hat in yellow and purple, and tuck into a sheep’s gouda. It’s astonishingly good. The hat’s woolly warmth and bright candy colours transform this Dutch cheese into a crunchy, creamy butterscotch dessert. It’s the sort of synaesthetic alchemy one expects from the Fat Duck happening right here in my kitchen. Why not try it for yourself? If you don’t enjoy it, I’ll eat my hat.