One packet is open, the other is sealed. I am securely supplied for at least the next week, assuming I behave in a moderate and controlled fashion. With Carr’s Cheese melts, this is not easy. They are the most ferociously addictive savoury biscuits I have ever encountered.
In fact, they are beyond savoury. They are beyond cheesiness. They are, allegedly, sprinkled with ‘dried cheese’. I do not believe this. I think they have been impregnated with a chemically enhanced essence of extra mature Cheddar and possibly some kind of opiate. There’s an acrid, bitter tang to them that crinkles the nasal passages and fuses perfectly with the stunning texture (thin, crunchy, but with an almost TUC wafer-like shortbreadiness). They are an acquired taste – the Marmite of biscuits – and once consumed, there is no way back, save through extensive therapy. Probably involving the horrors of Ryvita.
Eating Cheese Melts naked (the biscuit, not you; or me) does not adequately communicate their dangerous brilliance. It is as an adjunct to particular varieties of cheese that their cunning qualities take hold. In particular, Cambozola and very strong Cheddar. Anything with a nasty bacterial whiff, such as Stilton, Brie de Pays, Camembert or Danish Blue, counteracts the powerful attack of the Melt itself. Though Roquefort, oddly, works very well. Butter is simply…inadequate. This biscuit begs for the corpse of milk.
Cheese Melts disappeared from the Shetland Islands three weeks ago, provoking frenzied shelf-scouring my myself. They have now returned. I note that Somerfields have a note attached to the shelf upon which they sit, claiming that they represent ‘Scottish tastes’. I fear this is true. High-fat, High-salt, encouraging the addition of even higher fat, higher salt substances. Nurse, the statins!
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