Cooks mean: melt the hard cheese (8)
I believe the answer is:
emmental
'hard cheese' is the definition.
(I've seen this before)
'cooks mean melt' is the wordplay.
'cooks' indicates an anagram.
'mean'+'melt'='meanmelt'
'meanmelt' with letters rearranged gives 'EMMENTAL'.
'the' is the link.
(Other definitions for emmental that I've seen before include "Gruyere-like cheese" , "Swiss cheese with large holes" , "Swiss 8 across" , "Hard Swiss cheese" , "Variety of cheese" .)