A few weeks ago, I made plans to meet my friend Terresa in Pigalle, to check out a new épicerie (specialty food shop). I don't know if you're familiar with Pigalle, but the area has a certain well-deserved 'reputation' and if you're a middle-aged man walking around by yourself in the evening, casually looking in the windows of the cafés and bars, don't be surprised if a very scantily-clad woman tries to catch your eye back, and catch your fancy. And a few euros.

My friend was late, so after I cut my walk short though the quartier, I waited outside the Le Marché des Gastronomes, where we were planning to meet, which made me only slightly less of a target. And within a few minutes, people were handing me business cards for various 'services' of the female persuasion. So I was especially glad when the only woman in the neighborhood I was interested in hooking up with finally arrived and we went inside.

The idea of the store is to be one place filled with many great products. There were indeed some interesting things on the shelves, including Spanish hams and other European specialties. But when you live in France, it's hard to get worked up about shrink-wrapped cheeses, no matter how good they might be, when there's so many amazing fromageries in every neighborhood. But I think they're trying to be both a specialty shop and cater to the locals who need the basics, too. So I give them points for rising to that task, and most of us would be thrilled to have a place like that in our neighborhood.

If you go to Lyon, you'll find Saint Marcellin pretty much everywhere. It's the best-known cheese from that region, and the user friendly-sized disks are inevitably piled high at each and every cheese shop you step in to. Locals bake them at home and slide the warm disks onto salads, and I've not been to a restaurant in that city that didn't have Saint Marcellin on the menu doing double-duty as the cheese or the dessert course. Or both. At the outdoor market stands, you can see how popular they are with les Lyonnais. And if you don't believe me, their presence is so pervasive that I once bought a ticket on the bus in Lyon and instead of change, the driver handed me a ripe Saint Marcellin instead.

Because they hover around €3, I used to pick one up at the fromagerie since they're an inexpensive way to add variety to a cheese platter. The ones I'd buy were decent, although I never heard anyone put a dab on their bread and say, "Good gosh David, that cheese is friggin' amazing!" (Although I'm not sure "friggin" is a well-used word around here.)

It's funny, because some people get the impression that I don't like where I live. Which is kind of strange, because I don't understand why anyone would think that I'd live somewhere where there was a dearth of clothes dryers if I didn't like it. And if you saw the paperwork that I have to fill out just to stay here, well, let's just say that one really has to want to live here to plow through it all.

I've read a lot of books extolling what a glorious place Paris is, with tales of skipping along Left Bank streets, happily shopping for new shoes whenever the mood strikes, and resting in one of those cafés on the boulevard St. Germain sipping a $7 coffee.

They certainly paint a rosy view of the city. But then I realized something: The authors of those books no longer live here.

Like all cities, Paris is a real place. A lot of people understandably come here looking for old bistros and quaint cafés, often to find those kinds of place disappearing, or disappointing. Then they'll step into La Maison du Chocolate, take a bite of a Rigoletto Noir, filled with caramelized butter mousse, and realize that life doesn't get any better than that.

Sometimes I'll be riding my bike around at night by the Seine, under the softly-glowing lights. I'll look around, and think, "Paris is breaktakingly beautiful." Other times, I'll scratch my head when the bank tells me they have no change that day. Or stare at the pile of paperwork that's arrived in the mail, filled with endless forms that need to be filled out, and think, "Can someone remind me why I moved here?"

Anyhow, I still live here and accept that like anywhere, Paris is a real city with its flaws and its fabulousness.

There's sort of some rhyme and reason to my cheese-buying habits. One fromagerie might have the most amazing butter, so I'll trek over to the place St. Paul to buy a packet of it. But if I want a round of Selles-sur-Cher, I'll go to the fromager at the marche d'Aligre who always has beautiful ones on display. For St. Nectaire and Cantal, I'll only buy those from the husky Auvergnate dude at my market on Sunday mornings and refuse to even taste one from anywhere else. His are just so good, I don't bother doing any comparison shopping.

Last week my neighbors from San Francisco came to visit and I took them to my Sunday market, where I figured we could gather the ingredients for a semi-homemade meal, sans the tablescape.

Neufchâtel got a makeover when it crossed the Atlantic, to the states, where it's used to refer to low-fat cream cheese, which bears no resemblance to true Neufchâtel, a cheese that certainly doesn't fall anywhere near that category.

The cheese is from Normandy, a region that few would argue produces the best cheeses in the world. Camembert, Livarot, and the especially creamy Brillat-Savarin are some of the more famous Norman cheeses, but I'm also happy that Neufchâtel is included in that privileged group.

Neufchâtel is available in industrial or fermier ("farm-produced") versions. All versions are made with cow's milk, although sometimes it's made with raw milk, others are made from milk that's been pasteurized.

The yogurt aisle in any French supermarket is the largest, longest, most well-stocked aisle in the store. (Wine, I think, runs a close second.) While there's a disconcerting number of dubious treats there (coconut macaron or lemon madeleine-flavored yogurt anyone?) the simplest varieties are wonderful.

I'm hopelessly boring, but I like whole milk plain yogurt, which is my afternoon snack. I eat it with dried fruits, a tipple of berry syrup, or just slicked with honey. Luckily yogurt here comes in handy 4-ounce portions, the perfect size, and I don't miss those hefty pots of purple, super sweet, gelatin-thickened gloop, which barely resembles what yogurt even is.

In between all the yogurts here, you'll find a few oddities buried in there.

One thing I learned during the last few days of the past year could be summed up in four words: Don't ever turn fifty.

Do whatever you can do to avoid it. I'm still reeling from the trifecta, the one-two-three punch of Christmas, my Birthday, then New Year's Eve, the last of which put me way over the top. And now that I'm in my declining years, recovery is much harder than it was just a mere week ago. I'm going downhill, fast, my friends.

The first thing I thought when I woke up this morning, my head clouded by a combination of Krug champagne, Château Lafite Rothchild 1964 and 1969 (not that I know the difference, but since the '69 was in a 4-bottle, a gigantic double magnum with a funky-looking label...I knew we were drinking something special) was right from the "What on earth was I thinking?" file.

I was wondering why I invited five people over for dinner and drinks tonight.

I finally got a chance to track down that butter I found worthy of rapture from Le Jules Verne. Oddly, when I searched the name, I found out that I actually commented on way back in 2006. How I forgot about it, I’ll never, ever know.

It’s from Pascal Beillevaire, a chain of cheese shops in France. While their cheeses are very good, I have a little bit of difficulty getting past the beret-wearing salesclerks, theatrical straw mats, and hyper-bright lighting.

When I was in Méribel avoiding the steep slopes waiting in line at the cheese coopérative, I wasn't alone: the joint was seeing more action than all those gasp-inducing ski runs.

And just about every person ordered a nice hunk of Beaufort. And since they were in front of me in line, being France, of course each person had to have a 5 minute conference with the saleswoman about how to cut it, where they wanted it cut, exactly how much to lop off, if the other hunk on the shelf was better than the one they were getting, did they have another one in the back?...etc...etc...

The person in front of me scared me a bit when he requested a chunk that were as huge as a baseball mitt. It barely fit on the scale!

Naturally when it was my turn, it took me all of 1.3 seconds to tell her what I wanted and I ended up with a nice-sized piece as well—albeit of a more modest size—and could barely wait until I got home and dug into my chunk.

After dinner at a friend's apartment this weekend, they rolled out a sizable wheel of cheese to eat before dessert...which since moving to France, has become my favorite course of the meal. But usually you present one or a few selected cheeses, not a big round.

Nevertheless, they slapped it down in the middle for the table where the host took a hunting-type knife, started hacking off shards of it, and passing them around the table. As we started eating, all of the sudden the whole table went completely quiet. (Which is a real rarity in Paris.)

We all looked around the table, and everyone's eyes lit up; "C'est incroyable!"

Although you can get an astonishing amount of excellent food in the US, the one thing that I haven't found an equal to is French butter. In my life, I'm probably responsible for a couple of tons of butter being baked, melted, sautéed, rolled, crumbled, cubed, smeared and creamed.

When I arrived in NY late last evening, I made a beeline to Whole Foods to stock up on provisions for the week since they're open late (I love America!) But after a search that involved engaging the entire cheese department in a discussion of butter, the conclusion was that they only had regular American butter and fancy European imports.

And I didn't come all the way back to the states to eat French butter.

It wasn't until I moved to France and tasted the sunshine-yellow butter that's easily available at most fromagers and even in the supermarket, that I noticed a remarkable difference. And I've become rather picky and for eating on my morning toast or melted over vegetables—I'm at the point now where I'll only let the butter from Jean-Yves Bordier cross my lips. I know I sounds like an insufferable snob (more than I normally do), but like chocolate, if you're going to eat it, you may as well eat the best since the good stuff has the same amount of calories as the crappy stuff.

It's pretty overwhelming visiting a fromagerie.

After years of trying as many French cheeses as I could, I've settled on a few favorites that I go back to over and over, which include moist, piquant Roquefort de Carles, which I like drizzled with chestnut honey, little rounds of tangy chèvre and ash-covered Selles-sur-Cher, and nutty Comté from the French alps, which if you taste one that's been aged 30 months, I assure you you'll never buy any other affinage (ripeness) of Comté.

When people ask me which cheese to buy, though, I turn the tables on them, asking them what kind of cheese they like. Do they like dry, sharp, nutty, or powerful cheeses? Thankfully because there's so many choices out there, there's no right or wrong answers. Only what you like. Unfortunately, I pretty much like them all.

Ok, scratch pretty much...and let's just say I like..er..love them all.

But I rarely visit a fromagerie with a laundry list of cheeses I want to buy.

Instead, while waiting every-so-patiently in line, I crane my neck around madame in front of me and use that time to see what looks the best that day. Often the fromager will leave the most popular cheeses, like brie de Meaux, within easy reach of her since invariably just about everyone wants a wedge of that. Especially if it's so oozingly-ripe and pungent that just lifting the big, gooey wheel is virtually impossible. Camembert du Normandie is another cheese that's popular, but I'm always sure to get one that's not industrial, since the artisanal and AOC ones are invariably more delicious.

(I don't understand why anyone buys the crummy ones when the excellent ones are so easily-available. But I guess the same holds true in the states: people choose American-singles over the decent cheddar that's widely available. Tant pis, as they say...)

Where did I find the inspiration for this little bowl of white, creamy cheese?

At la pharmacie!
Pharmacies are at the top of my list of favorite places to visit in Paris. There's everything you can imagine at la pharmacie, and kinda like chain-drugstores in America that stock everything from ear wash to Mint Milanos, les pharmacies are a treasure trove of finds for the body and soul. (Except for Pepperidge Farm Cookies.)
But there's thyme oil. And Rescue Remedy. And baking soda. And Bio-Gauze (the world's best burn treatment). And pills that will make you thin and give you the most amazing abs like the male model shown in the window no matter how much cheese you eat or wine you drink.

Not that I need to, but I practically make up reasons to visit the drugstore. I love going in and seeing everyone lined up seeking advice from the pharmacist. I pick up and look at everything. When I'm poking around suspiciously, they invariably ask if I need help. I always feel funny, especially in a place where people go specifically looking for assistance, saying"No thanks, I'm just looking." It's not like Walgreen's where there's a bunch of magazines to leaf through or anything. People go in for a purpose, not to be entertained.
(Except me.)

One of my latest passions is Roget & Gallet soaps. They're fabulous. I mean, they come in all sort of aromas; pine grapefruit, linden flowers, and lettuce (ever wonder what a salad smells like?).
Here's your chance!

I can't wait to finish one bar so I can try another.
Consequently I am perhaps the cleanest person in Paris.

All French pharmacists are trained to identify any mushrooms, to determine which are poisonous, and which are okay for la bonne cuisine. If you go to a homeopathic pharmacy, you step up to the counter and stick out your tounge. Then they give you a few bags of pills and cures.

And not all of them are administered orally.

(Once I had a cough and they tried to give me some, er, medicine that you don't, um, take directly in your mouth, which would quite a distance to my throat. A that point my French wasn't very good, and I they were trying to explain it with gesture and motions, and thankfully I go it since I think they were about to give me a demonstration.)

And last time I needed a prescription (oral), the pack of pills cost me less than 3 euros. I checked the price in the US, just for fun, and the exact same drug costs close to $200.
And people ask me, "Why do you live in France?"

Do the math.

What is most impressive, though, is that I found out that you can order presure, or rennet, at the pharmacy (Do you think I'm too easily impressed? Or just impressed by the strangest things? Or weird for showering with soap made from lettuce? Or strange for being able to include in one blog entry soap, personal hygene, animal innards, suppositories, my lack of six-pack abs, and 'shrooms?)*

Rennet is an animal enzyme used in cheesemaking and after I'd tasted some of the most sublime cottage cheese of my life at Fromagerie Quattrehomme I wanted to see if I could replicate it at home. Although Americans eat lots of cottage cheese, most of it's bland and watery. It's nothing like real cottage cheese. So it seems that yes, the French have beaten us at our own game and made cottage cheese even better than we could.
And instead of some fancy-ass name, it's simply called le cottage cheese. It's like they're showing off, not even bothering to change the name to something French. So we can't eat it and say, "Oh, this is kinda like cottage cheese, but different." Instead we have to face the fact that yes, it's cottage cheese, and yes, theirs is better than ours. By a longshot.

So to make a long story short, and I don't want keep you since you probably need to get back to work, I made cottage cheese at home. It's remarkably simple and tastes great. And you can too! (Although probably not at work, unless you work at a dairy. Which you probably don't.)
I ate most of mine the moment it was ready. You'll need to get rennet, and I've listed a few sources below. Rennet is an animal product and vegetable rennet is available if you're a veg-head, but I've never used it (heck, I've never used animal rennet before either) so you may need to scout around the internet or in your community to find it. I would not bother asking at Rite-Aid or Duane Reed...athough it might be worth it just to see their expression.
I get a lot of funny expressions around here.

You get used to it after a few years.

Really. You do.

Homemade Cottage Cheese

All utensils should be cleaned very well before beginning.

1 quart (1 liter) whole milk
4 drops liquid rennet
½ teaspoon of salt, plus more to taste
6 tablespoons heavy cream (or half-and-half), or a mixture of heavy cream and buttermilk

Heat the milk very slowly in a medium-sized, non-reactive saucepan. Use the lowest heat possible and if you have a flame-tamer for underneath the saucepan, now's a good excuse to use it.

Insert a thermometer into the milk (I use a chocolate thermometer, which is easy to read) and heat until the milk until it reaches 85 degrees F.

Turn off heat and stir in rennet. Stir gently for 2 minutes.

Cover the saucepan with a clean tea towel draped over the top and put the lid on. Let stand at room temperature for 4 hours.

After 4 hours, the mixture will be very softly set and marvelously jiggly. Take a sharp knife and cut the mixture diagonally 5 or 6 times, then do the same in the opposite direction.

Sprinkle in the salt then set the pan over extremely low heat and cook, stirring gently, until the curds separate from the whey. It will take just a few minutes.

Do not overcook it at this point or your cottage cheese curds will be tough.

Line a strainer with cheesecloth or étamine, and set it inside a large bowl. Pour the mixture into the cloth and stir it gently to drain off the copious amount of whey (which can be sent to Susan to feed to her brood.)

Fold the ends of the cheesecloth over the cheese and chill the strainer (keeping the bowl underneath) in the refrigerator. Let drain for about 1 hour, stirring once or twice.

Spoon the cottage cheese from the cloth into a bowl and stir in the cream, or cream and buttermilk. Taste, and add more salt if necessary.

Here are a few sources for liquid animal rennet in the United States, available here, here, and here.

As you may know, I've been nominated for the Best City Blog. Someone wrote that I wasn't really writing enough about Paris to be qualified, so I thought I'd better get on le stick about that!

The pressure! La pression!
Hmm, what's very French and very Parisian that I can write about?

Um...How about my lunch...?

Yes! That's a few slices of my pain aux ceriales from Le Grenier à Pain paired with some delightful cheeses that I discovered when visiting one of my absolute favorite fromagers here in Paris this morning.

Disclaimer:
I confess to a secret and unfulfilled ambition.

Except for working outside in the icy-cold winter and freezing my bourse off, getting up at a godawful hour, and lifting heavy wheels of cheese, my fantasy job is to work as a fromager. Being surrounded by big wheels of cheese and small pyramids of goat cheese, the smell of all those gooey, runny, and nutty cheeses...it all makes me delirious with pleasure
Ok, I guess I could deal with lifting the wheels of cheese, but getting up at 4am?
Now that's another story...

As a fromager, I would make recommendations to les clients. "Qu'est-ce que vous desirez, madame?", I would ask, ready to council the customer. (Using my perfect French, of course...this is my fantasy, remember?) I'd slice and wrap a fine selection of cheeses to serve to her her family after a well-prepared supper of roast pintade and pommes des terres rôti with a fine, crisp Sancerre or gravely, full-flavored Pomerol.

We'd make witty banter about Johnny Halliday and socks with whimsical cartoon figures on them while I selected a few fine cheeses, perhaps a dead-ripe Camembert de Normandie and a Corsican Brin d'Amour, covered with fragrant mountain herbs.

Ah, je rêve...

I visit many cheese shops, oops, I mean fromageries here in Paris. I search for shops that have unusual cheeses, since many of the best ones seem to focus on a particular region or type of cheese like les chèvres or fine mountain cheeses from the Savoie.

Although many of the outdoor markets have people selling cheese, I've found none better than N. Caillère at the Popincourt Market in the 11th arrondissement on the Boulevard Richard Lenoir. Twice a week, the two cheery women who run their stand never fail to prompt me to discover a cheese I've never tasted.
Such as this triple-crème Délice de Saint-Cyr...

Triple-cream means the cheese has a minimum fat content of a whopping 75% (although that percentage refers to the amount of fat in the solids, and most cheeses are about 50% water and 50% solids...still, it ain't no rice cake.)
Although I ate it at it gooiest best, at room temperature, the cheese left a sweet, suprisingly cool aftertaste.

They also had a lovely, and well-aged Comté de Jura, a marvelously-nutty, full-flavored cheese made from raw cow's milk and is the most widely-produced cheese in France.
And it's popular for good reason; it's always excellent and pairs well with most other cheeses on a cheese plate as well as both white and red wines.

I'm in love most goat cheeses; I seem to like them all. With their smooth, dreamy-white interior and their soft, gentle aroma of the farm, it doesn't matter to me whether they're fresh or aged. It's a rare day at the market for me if I don't have one tucked into my market basket.

This Tomme de Chèvre is from a small farm and is called Vendômois. Although the outside has the fine crust of mold, I was told the cheese is rather young and the elasticity and suppleness of the p&acurc;te indeed suggests less affinage, or cave ripening.

N. Caillère
Fromager

-Popincourt Market
(Tuesday and Friday)

-Place Réunion Market
(Sunday)

Perhaps it's wrong to blame the cheese.
But cheese doesn't have any feelings, it's just exists for our pleasure.
So for once I don't have to worry about offending anyone on my blog. Now that's a relief.

A friend of mine came for dinner the other night who's on le regime, a diet. While shopping at the supermarket I spotted this reduced-fat cheese, checked out the short list of ingredients on the reverse (which listed no icky ingredients), so I tossed it in my handbasket and headed to the checkout.

I got home, unwrapped it and immediately my apartment smelled rather, um, funky.
And not like that good-funky that a fabulously-ripe camembert or brie smells like, but a vaguely familiar funky, with a smell that I couldn't put my finger on it. When my friend arrived a bit later (who's quite refined and sophisticated, and lives in the swank place des Vosges), she removed her Hermès jacket and scarf, took a whiff then looked at the sorry specimen, screwed up her face, and said, "Ugh. That smells like a fart."

If you happen to be eating cheese while reading this, sorry about the analogy.

And before you pooh-pooh low-fat, there's a long list of low- or non-fat items that rock our world: pink marshmallow Peeps, dried sour cherries, gumdrops, Berthillon's bitter chocolate sorbet, prunes, candy corn, rice, meringue, pasta, cranberry sauce, matzoh, Cracker Jack's, dark brown sugar, Jewish rye bread, dried-out leftover turkey breast meat, sushi, and orange-flavored Chuckles.)

But this cheese was indeed the worst cheese I've ever come across.
It had absolutely no flavor. But still, I kept it on my kitchen counter for a few days pondering another use for it. Perhaps macaroni and cheese? Melting it for a sandwich?
I hate throwing anything away, especially food...after all, I am my mother's son.

That was my first and last experience with fromage allegé. Finally after a few aromatic days I suffered in my apartment, I tossed it. I'm sticking with the real thing. If you're going to live in France, why bother with anything else?

When people ask me the rather silly question, "Why do you live in France?", I simply direct them to the nearest fromagerie. Yes, there's great food to be found everywhere: Spain has great ham and crisp, almondy turrone, Italian olive oil and gelato is the best anywhere, and I love the briny oysters from the San Francisco Bay Area. When in New York who can resist the chewy bialys and bagels? And the puffin in Iceland is reputably delectable.
But there is nothing comparable to the cheeses of France...

In the small city of Rouen, in Normandy, is one of the few remaining affineurs in France. As you may know, once milk is formed into molds, it needs to be properly ripened to become cheese. The ripening can be for just a few hours or can last up to several years for a hard grating cheese such as Parmegiano-Reggiano. There's just handful of affineurs left in France, who ripen cheese in caves just below their shops. The last time I visited François Olivier with my friend Susan Loomis, he welcomed us into the caves. This time, he told us that as of a few months ago, European Union regulations forbid visitors. Perhaps that's one of the reasons the French voted against the constitution.
(Don't toss those old francs quite yet...there's fear we'll be using them again.)

Of course, I was immediately attracted to the butter that François salts himself. While I was there, a steady stream of customers came in for a hunk. (Of butter, that is.)

But mostly I came for the camembert, since François carries one of the few artisianally-made camemberts left in Normandy. Although camembert is the unofficial symbol of France (there was a giant wheel of camembert balloon 'float' to lead off the parades at the commencements of the Tour de France this week) but there are few remaining true camemberts left. Like Brie de Meaux, which I mentioned in a previous post, true camembert is actually called Camembert de Normandie and will be labeled au lait cru (raw milk) so if you come to France, be sure to choose a cheese labeled as such, not simply 'camembert'.

The French are a famously stubborn lot and are refusing to compromise the integrity of their cheeses (as well as a few other things...)
But why not? They make the best cheeses in the world. And Normandy is arguably the most famous cheesemaking region here in France. At François' fromagerie, you'll find the elusive Maroilles, a hulking square of cheese aged for 100 days and weighing in at a hefty one-pound, with a powerful, pungent fragrance that cheese-expert Steve Jenkins describes as "...about as subtle as a bolt of lightening--get out a clothespin."
One whiff, and I agreed.

More subtle was the soft, dewy-white wheels of Delicor. When sliced open, the pleasantly chewy rind gives way to a soft, milky cheese that is sweet and slippery on the tongue. This is the one cheese that François makes entirely himself and is justly proud of it. Another famous cheese of the region is represented here, Neufchâtel (not to be confused with the low-fat cream cheese in the United States) which is often heart-shaped since the women cheesemakers would often make them for their sweethearts. You'll find Graval, a mound of buldging Neufchâtel, enriched with extra cream with a velvety yellow mold on the exterior. The nutty, complex vieux Comté, aged for 2 years, was the best I've had. And I've had a lot of Comté.

Properly made raw milk cheeses have been consumed for centuries and he noted that raw milk that's less than 1½ hour old is full of natural antibodies. He compared cheeses made with cooked milk to wine made with cooked grapes.

When reflecting on the new changes in cheesemaking because of EU regulations and strict US importation laws, François sadly noted that in most of the world, quality means hygienic, whereas here, quality means good taste.

Fromagerie François Olivier
40, rue de l'Hôpital
Rouen
tel: 02 35 71 10 40

In summertime, I follow Parisians who're making a mass exodus from the city. We scurry from the city, jamming crowded autoroutes and packing the train stations. The city offers few trees or shade, and the sunlight reflecting off the white buildings means little respite from the withering heat no matter how hard you look-and there's only so much icy-cold rosé that I can drink!

So I often make weekend trips to the village of Coulommiers, where there's a lively outdoor market selling the most famous cheese in the world: Brie.
Brie is not a town, but a region to the east about one hour away by car or train. The sunday market in Coulommiers is one of my favorites because no where else in the world will you find so many cheese vendors selling all kinds of Brie, many unavailable anywhere else.

There are two true Brie cheeses. The classic is Brie de Meaux (Bree-du-Mohw), about 14-inches across, each disk weighing approximately 5 pounds. Brie de Melun (Brie-du-Meh-Lahn) is slightly smaller, a tad higher, and doesn't ripen all the way to make a creamy pâte, like Brie de Meaux. Often you'll cut open Brie de Melun and discover a drier layer of underripe cheese in the middle (at left). These cheeses have the most superb flavor in the late spring-to-early summer, when the cows feast on mustard blossoms, giving the cheese a musty, complex flavor and slight golden tinge.

Brie de Melun is aged longer than Brie de Meaux. It has a firmer texture and many aficionados prefer it because of it's stronger and more aggressive flavor. Both cheeses can be made with raw or pasteurized milk, although I prefer the raw versions, which are rarely available in the United States due to regulations in the US (where you're allowed to drive at high-speeds on freeways while talking on a cell phone and drinking a giant latté, but prohibited from eating cheese that has been prepared the same way for centuries.)

These two Brie cheeses are AOC (Appellation d'Origine Contrôlée) as of 1990, a product designation given by the French authorities, which states that these specific cheeses meet certain criterion for heating, coagulating, and salting the milk, the subsequent ripening, as well as being fabricated within the specific region. Most cheeses you'll find labeled Brie are not a true Brie unless the AOC label is affixed to the exterior. In the US, you'll only find it at a specialty cheese store...if you're lucky to find it at all. In France, a notable exception is Brie de Nangis, which is a young, milder Brie from the region but does not carry the AOC label, but it's good. The AOC designation has also been given to 34 cheeses as well as other products like the tasty green lentils from Puy, Haricot Tarbais (the dried beans used to make cassoulet), and the free-range Poulet de Bresse.

Although AOC is often a sign of quality, other products don't carry the appellation, since they may be made in a neighboring region, or a slightly larger size, or stirred a few more times than the regulations allow during production. So as with anything, let your nose and the taste be your guide. No matter where you live, always seek out a good cheese shop and ask the fromager for advice: they're a wealth of knowledge and should be proud of their cheeses and happy to help you.

Coulommiers is another excellent cheese from the region, and not AOC. It's a smaller round, about 6-inches in diameter, and not widely known outside of France. Coulommiers has the same barnyard-like smell that is delectably appetizing in Camembert and indicative of a truly ripe Brie, but is a bit more pungent.

Locals in Brie are perhaps the only ones who have developed an appreciation for Brie Noir. Normally Brie cheeses are ripened for between one and two months. Brie Noir is ripened much longer, often 8 to 10 months. It's such a regional specialty, and only appreciated by people of the region, that you're likely never to see it anywhere else.

As you can see, Brie Noir is dark, brown, and crumbly. It's covered with dusty powder and it tastes, well...horrid. After my first eaglerly-anticipated bite, I could not get the vile taste out of my mouth. It's bitter and acidic. A friend from Coulommiers suggested I dip it into my café au lait at breakfast, which I suspiciously tried, which actually moderated the flavor and made it more palatable. Who knew?

Brie Q & A's

But my supermarket cheese says Brie...isn't that Brie?

Real Brie is almost always Brie de Melun or Brie de Meaux. Most of the other cheeses labeled 'Brie' are not true Brie. They often won't ripen properly and taste worlds apart from real Brie.

Should you eat the rind?

The general rule for eating the rind of any cheese is that you may eat it as long as it won't interfere with the taste or experience of the cheese. For example, something with a lot of mold growth obviously wouldn't taste very good. A tough rind, like the rind of Parmesan, you wouldn't want to eat either.

How do I cut Brie?

Think of any round wheel of cheese like a pie or cake. You should slice a triangular wedge out, so that you have a nice portion of cheese.
When presented with a full cheese plate to serve yourself, never cut the 'nose' off the cheese, the pointy end: It's very bad manners!

Can I bring back raw milk cheese into the US?

That depends. Most of the time, I've found Customs Officers (oops...I mean 'Department of Homeland Security') officers will look the other way as long as you're bringing in cheese that's for personal consumption. Obviously if you have 60 wheels of Brie, you will likely get busted. Many fromageries in France will Cryo-vac (sous vide) cheese for transport to contain the fragrance, which I recommend. I once traveled with cheese in zip-top bags and by the end of the flight, the overhead bin totally reeked of cheese.
Luckily the other passengers were French...and for some reason, the US officials quickly waved me through customs.

If you live in the US and shop in supermarkets, usually there are just a few choices of yogurt, ranging from lots of mass-produced store brands to a few upscale organic selections. But visiting the yogurt aisle at the grocery store in France is always an exciting event for me.

The choices just go on and on and on and on and on and on and....

There's plain yogurts made from cow, sheep, and goat milk.

There's reduced-fat.

There's soy yogurt (à la vache! in this land where cows are sacred...)

There's names like Fjord and Jockey.

There's off-beat flavors like fig, kiwi, prune, and wheat (yes, wheat.)

Small fromageries sell dainty glass jars filled with tangy, farm-fresh yogurt. Enormous hypermarches like Auchan boast multiple refrigerated aisles stocked with nothing but yogurt and fromage blanc, a cousin to yogurt (fromage blanc and fromage frais are soft, fresh cheeses, eaten with a spoon.)

When yogurt is sweetened, the labeled usually proclaims avec sucre de canne, with cane sugar, which is highly regarded here as a sweetener, in spite of the many sugar-beets harvested in France. In the US, high-fructose corn syrup is used, which is much cheaper than sugar but has an icky syrup-y aftertaste that I don't like. If you've ever compared a American Coke with a Coke from Mexico or Europe, you'll know what I'm talking about.

I've always been tantalized by le Petit Suisse since stories of French people descending on a San Francisco supplier during their
Open Warehouse events which are legendary.

Le Petit Suisse is not yogurt, but a very rich little pot of fresh, sweet fromage frais. The first thing you notice is it's about half the size of the standard (4 oz) French yogurt (left, which is about half the size of a standard American yogurt (8 oz).

Le Petit Suisse is made from skim milk, cream, and ferments lactiques. It was developed by a Swiss dairy worker, Monsieur Gervais, whose name is still emblazoned across the packaging. He's credited for developing it over 150 years ago in Normandy, a region justly famous for it's smooth, creamy, and unctuous cheeses like Camembert de Normandie, Epoisses and Pont L'Evêque.

Being France, naturally there are lots of rules involved if you want to enjoy it properly.

Overturn the little pot and squeeze it slightly to release the cylinder. Tip le petit Suisse on its side, then unroll it while peeling off the paper. Then you sprinkle a generous amount of turbinado sugar (called cassonade, or unrefined cane sugar) over the top, or serve it with a spoonful of jam. And dig in. It's tangy-sweet taste lends itself to being served with a fruit compote as well, although I prefer it as shown. And I like to savor it with a tiny spoon; its richness is best enjoyed in small doses.

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