Celebrate St. Patrick's Day with a Ploughman's Sandwich

Enda Howley's story reads like a cheese lover's fairy tale. In 2001, the Irish Dairy Board held a company-wide sensory panel taste-off, searching for the next cheese grader. Only two highly skilled graders are entrusted with the maturing and aging of the company's Kerrygold cheeses, and one was set to retire.

"To my amazement and everyone else's we discovered that I was a super taster. I was surprised myself when I was told I had a heightened sense of taste that enables me to pick up the most delicately nuanced flavors," Howley said. An international food marketer for the Irish Dairy Board, Howley was anointed the next cheese grader, diverting his career to an unexpected new path.

Howley plays a critical role in making natural cheese. He ensures that the right cheeses are selected for maturing and aging. Throughout the maturation process, he tastes the cheeses, and continues to grade and select, month after month, until the cheeses reach perfection.

Dubliner is one of the Irish cheeses that benefits from this careful maturation process. Like all other Kerrygold cheeses, it is made with summer milk from grass-fed cows, using traditional processes. Upon aging for at least a year, the cheese develops the elements of a mature Cheddar, the sweet nuttiness of a Swiss and the piquant bite of aged Parmesan.

An avowed "foodie," Howley has many creative ways to use the cheeses he so carefully nurtures. For a quick but delicious lunch, he turns Dubliner into a ploughman's sandwich, taking inspiration from the classic Irish ploughman's lunch, a meat-and-cheese salad, Howley's version packs everything onto rustic bread, ready to enjoy with a pint.

Recipe

Ploughman's Sandwich

Photos

To download photos, right click (cmd click on a Macintosh, choose "Save Image As") on the photo itself and choose "Save target as" or "Save picture as" from the menu. Because of the large file sizes, the photos may take some time to download depending on your Internet connection speed.