Recently in Cheese category

“Goopy” isn’t a word used too often when writing about food. Am not sure why, but perhaps because there aren’t a lot of things that are goopy, that you actually want to eat. Mont d’Or has been called the holy grail of French raw milk cheeses. It’s goopy for sure, and if that bothers you, well, that’s something you’re going to have to work on for yourself. In the meanwhile, I’ve been lapping up this Mont d’Or I recently acquired, enjoying every single goopy mouthful.

Called “the holy grail of raw milk cheeses”, Mont d’Or (also called Vacherin Mont d’Or, and Vacherin Haut-Doubs) is truly a spectacular cheese. And even though they’re widely available in the winter in France, because of their richness, it’s something I reserve for special occasions. For me, that special occasion was lunch yesterday.

Continue Reading Mont d’Or…

The French are rightfully proud of their cheese, but one they can’t take credit for is Gouda Étuvé – which is very popular in France nonetheless. And I don’t blame them for going gaga over this Gouda. At my fromagerie, they keep the giant half-wheel right on the counter, in front of them, because perhaps fifty-percent of the customers order a wedge of it. Or in my case, 100%.

Foreign cheeses in France are either fully embraced, or ignored. Le cheddar is just now gaining some recognition and Stilton is pretty widely praised. Gouda is a non-offending cheese, and is one of the more popular imports in France. Like Emmenthal, it’s a cheese for those who want something milder. Or wilder, as is in the case of the Gouda with stinging nettles at Pascal Beillevaire.

The name étuvé means “cooked”, usually in a covered casserole or similar vessel. Since the milk for nearly every kind of cheese is cooked, I’m not sure why it’s designated as “étuvé”, because whenever I ask, the cheese-sellers are so busy slicing cheese for the long line of customers, they just say it’s cooked à la vapeur, or with steam. And I keep my mouth shut, so as not to distract them from their very important duties.

Continue Reading Gouda Étuvé…

I’m not going to say it’s the top reason I live here, but one of the main reasons that I live in France is because of the cheese. It’s not just that I like cheese – which I do very dearly – but it also represents something that France has held on to, and still defies modernization. You just can’t make Comté or Bleu de Termignon with a machine. Each is made in a certain region, with milk from certain pastures, then molded and ripened, then sent to a skilled fromager to be offered to customers.

My dream job used to be to work in a cheese shop, until a friend who worked in a cheese shop told me how hard it was. (As those of you who read my Paris book know, I found working at the fish market quite different than I initially thought, too.) But no matter what people say, the idea of being surrounded by cheese in every direction, learning about the different regions and styles of cheesemaking, and just inhaling the funky, pungent aromas also sounds like heaven to me.

Continue Reading Fromagerie Pascal Beillevaire…

A while back, someone sent me a message asking about the availability of a certain French cheese that a French friend, who now lives in the United States, was constantly raving about. It took me a moment to figure out how I knew the name, until I realized that they were talking about fromage à tartiner, otherwise known as cream cheese.

Cream cheese is very popular in France and many pâtisseries even have a version of le Cheesecake in their showcases. It’s never as rich or dense as the American version because there isn’t the overload of cream cheese in it (I don’t have my recipe handy, but I think it calls for four blocks of cream cheese), but some aren’t bad. Many of the versions in France are made with a high proportion of fromage blanc, a fresh cheese with a gentle tang, vaguely similar to yogurt or sour cream, but not-so-rich and missing the aggressiveness of yogurt

The French have taken so much to cream cheese that last year, the company that makes Philadelphia cream cheese finally wised up and dropped their prices dramatically, making it the same price as the other brands. But none can replicate the appeal of Kiri.

Continue Reading Kiri…

If you live in the United States, you probably are going to want to scratch your head at this one. Because it’s about something very common back there, otherwise known as le cottage here in France. Yes, it’s true. I used to take cottage cheese for granted. You could pick up a large tub of it in any grocery store, because somehow, it’s become a fixture in American dairy aisles along with fresh milk (sold by the gallon jugs with handles, which after living with slender liter bottles of milk for so long, seem absolutely gargantuan), yogurt, sour cream, and other creamy goodies.

I used to eat cottage cheese fairly regularly and fell into the ‘large curd’ camp. As some of you might know, there’s the small-curd and the large-curd people, and I like the bigger soft, pillowy blobs of cheese, which rest in their milky liquid, waiting for my spoon to plow into the container and spoon them out. Then there’s the full-fat, low-fat, and non-fat people, but at this point in my life, it’s all moot due to where I live.

Continue Reading Le cottage…

When I came back from Australia, something in my refrigerator stunk to high heaven. I was pretty sure I had done a good job before I left, making sure all bits and pieces of anything that could spoil in the frigo were tossed. Since my head was in another hemisphere, I just chalked it up to my fridge not being opened in a while. But a friend had stayed in my apartment while I was gone, and I remembered something in one of the e-mails about leaving “un peu de fromage” for me, to enjoy upon my return. So I did a little more investigating and found that indeed, wrapped in crinkly waxed paper and a loose covering of foil was a hulking round of Coulommiers.

Continue Reading Coulommiers…

The last time Peggy Smith, co-owner of Cowgirl Creamery, came to Paris, we did some cheese tasting and shopping. We’d worked together at Chez Panisse for many years and she’s one of my favorite people—ever, and I wish she’d come visit more often. As we roamed a salon de dégustation of cheese, looking around at all the astounding cheeses from France (as well as a couple of beauties from Ireland, England, and Italy as well), I said to her; “What is the one cheese you would tell someone from the United States that they absolutely should try while in France, which is not available in America?”

Continue Reading Bleu de Gex…

After spending a few mornings in the steamy, warm confines of the fruitières, where cheese making begins, I visited several of the fromageries, which are what they call the caves de affinage; the cavernous cellars where the cheeses are ripened.

Continue Reading Comté Cheese Ripening and Tasting…