Snuck down to the cheese shop on the weekend. I love standing in the cheese room, surrounded by all those great wheels of cheese. It's fantastic to stand there in the special temperature and humidity controlled room full of live cheeses in the piece, with the aroma that would instantly tell even Stevie Wonder where he was - though not all, especially young children, like the smell. I point at a wheel and even though I'm going to buy some, they always give me a taste. There was a bit of chat in the room about Australian Customs seizing another container of cheese leaving them a bit short of soft cheeses. Really, can't the government pull their head in? Why is it that we can buy cigarettes, which have the proven ability to kill us, but we have to be protected from the evils of unpastuerised cheese that has an e-coli reading probably less than the local takeaway shop?

Looking around, I saw the wheel of comte had been broached, so that was my first purchase. Comte is the French cousin of Swiss gruyere, but is not as strong with a sweet lactic flavour set of by a rich nuttiness. After that I was thinking about some roquefort, but spotted a wheel of ivory coloured blue cheese on the back counter. After enquiring it turned out to be a bleu de basque, a Spanish sheeps milk, semi hard, blue cheese. If roquefort is the in-your-face reporter wearing a loud red jacket, bleu de basque is your anchorman, all charm and sophistication in an elegant suit. The flavour is unmistakeably blue, but not over the top, it's all about depth and persistance.

Lastly I was thinking goat. There right in front of me was a wonderful looking ring of soft goat's cheese, locally made, but after a taste it seemed to lack for something, there was nothing wrong with it, but it didn't really sing. There were some French crottins, but I eventually plumped for an Australian semi-soft cheese from Holy Goat, an artisanal cheese maker from Sutton Grange near Daylesford. Then it was time to pay.

My wife D is always conflicted when I go cheese shopping. On the one hand she usually adores the cheeses I bring home, but hates the fact we have to take out a second mortgage to have them. With the price of most of the cheese hovering around Australian $65 to $75 a kilo, it's no cheap thing to be in love with good quality, hand made cheese, especially when you consider that industrially made cheese can be had for between Australian $5 and $10 dollars a kilo. But there is no doubt you get what you pay for. Then again, we do limit ourselves to a visit perhaps every one or two months, so the cheeses we bring home always feel special; it just doesn't help that we fall upon them like hungry locusts.

At this time of the year, while chestnuts are still in season, we like to pair them with a soft cheese style like brie or camembert, it makes a wonderful meal along with a good bottle of white wine. I first learned to do this in the country, where we roasted chestnuts over an open fire. The first time I did this it almost ended in disaster. Never having had chestnuts before, I threw some into a heavy cast iron pot with an equally heavy cast iron lid. Just like that. After about ten minutes there was an almighty explosion as the cast iron lid was blown off the pot by an exploding chestnut. Nobody wanted to go near the pot for fear of another explosion, but eventually we managed to get it off the fire with no more harm done and a lesson in the necessity of puncturing the shell prior to roasting.