1) Coffee
2) Love
3) End of summer at le marché
4) Les Deux Plateaux
5) Montmartre colors
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September 17, 2017
August 15, 2017
August 8, 2017
Les Halles De Lyon
Train travel spoils you. No need to get to the airport 2+ hours before your flight, no waiting in long security lines, no strict weight and size limits on your luggage. You arrive a bit before your train is scheduled to depart, stow your bags, find your seat and away you go!
Living in Paris spoils you too. You quickly learn that much of France and many parts of Europe are just a few hours from the city. (and escaping from time to time is good for le moral)
Feel like going to Amsterdam? No problem! Jump on a train and you'll be there in just over 3 hours. Want to taste some wine in Bordeaux? It's only 2½ hours away. Craving some bouillabaisse and time on the beach? You can be sitting in the sun in Marseille in a little over 3 hours.
And of course there's Lyon, a city that is considered paradise for the French food lover and a place that had both intrigued me and been recommended to me by several friends over the years. So last summer I hopped on the TGV and just 2 hours later was climbing up a steep flight of stairs in La Croix-Rousse neighborhood to meet up with old friends.
Lucy, a brilliant cook and owner of the cooking school, Plum Lyon, who I met in Gascony at Camp Cassoulet almost a decade ago, and Mardi, the writer of the fabulous food blog, eat. live. travel. write, who I met in Paris several years ago, were waiting at Lucy's house to welcome me. The first thing we did after I dropped off my bag was head to the covered food market, Les Halles de Lyon.
I instantly fell in love with this place, for the cheese alone! The quality of the food on offer was superb and the people working at the market were genuine and helpful. There was no snobbery here, just people selling products that they believed in and wanted to share with us. I noticed the same thing at the restaurants where we ate. The chefs were proud of their dishes, but they didn't do a great job for the recognition, they cooked amazing food because they are chefs, and that's what chefs do. The lack of pretension was so refreshing.
It was a whirlwind trip, and with Lucy and her family's help, we packed a lot of delicious food, cheese, wine, walking and laughter into 36 hours. But that's all the time it took to convince me; if you love French food, you can believe what they say about Lyon.
It is paradise!
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July 26, 2017
Le Trèfle du Perche
Walk into any fromagerie in France during goat cheese season (April to November) and you will be faced with a tempting array of wrinkly rectangles, fresh drums, blue mold covered cylinders, two-toned cones, grey pyramids, white diamonds, discs wrapped in leaves, and a distinctive four-leaf clover, le Trèfle du Perche.
In the French cheese world, this one is fairly recent creation.
Back in 1999 a group of 7 artisan cheesemakers in the northern part of the Loire Valley and the southern part of Normandy established l’Association des Fromagers Caprins Perche et Loir (after numerous meetings involving copious amounts of local cheese and wine I like to think) and created a new goat cheese. Their goal was to come up with a fromage de chèvre that would be instantly recognizable and that would become associated with their region. During its inception, one of the members spotted an unusual, four-leaf clover shaped clay cheese mold in a local rural museum and the rest is history.
Beneath its thin rind of blue-gray ash and mold, the snowy white interior is rich, creamy and melt-in-your-mouth tender. Depending on its age, the flavors can range from fresh milk and hazelnuts, to peppery with a long finish.
Le Trèfle, which means "clover" in French, has been in production since 2005 and is currently made by a dozen farmers in 4 French departments; the Eure-et-Loir, the Loir-et-Cher, the Sarthe and the Orne. This little goat cheese is unpasteurized, with a minimum affinage* of 10 days and a maximum of about 1 month. In 2012 the l’Association des Fromagers Caprins Perche et Loir (AFCPL) applied for an AOC for their cheese. I'm wishing them the best of luck!
A few wine suggestions to pair with le Trèfle; a Sauvignon Blanc or Chenin Blanc from the Loire Valley if you prefer white, or a Gamay from the Loire Valley if you prefer red.
*ageing
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