For All You Cheese Lovers Out There

Paris By Mouth now has an informative Tour de Fromage that offers cheese tastings at several fromageries around town and will introduce you to a wide variety of the more than 500 cheeses produced in France.

Notes on Cheese, The Murray's Cheese Notebook is just the kind of thing I needed a few years ago when I started keeping tasting notebooks.

Did you know that French goat's cheese had it's own ambassador? 
 
Formaticum and the Brooklyn Slate Co. have created the Cheese Survival Kit.
The only thing missing from that bag is a nice, big wedge of cheese!



When I'm researching a new cheese, I turn to these three books;  Mastering Cheese: Lessons for Connoisseurship from a Maître Fromager by Max McCalman, The Cheese Primer by Steven Jenkins and French Cheese (Eyewitness Series).

I love these downloadable Cheese Tasting Note Cards from Culture magazine.
So practical!

Pike Place Market hosts the Seattle Cheese Festival the weekend of May 19-20, 2012. Or if you happen to be in Provence that weekend, check out the Fête du Fromage à Banon, celebrating the village's namesake fromage de chèvre.


Pin It

French Cheese

As Slow Food's Cheese event in Italy goes on without me this weekend, (how could they!) I thought I should take some time to reflect upon my cheese tasting adventures over the last five months.

La Fête du Fromage was born April 18 and since then I've tasted 49 cheeses. Well, 50 if you count the Bleu de Chèvre and Chèvre Bleu as different cheeses. They looked and tasted completely different, so I do.

My favorite fromage has to be the heady, earthy and exquisite Banon.

And the most foul tasting, evil cheese has to be the infamous Boulette d'Avesnes. I know there are those out there who love it, but I'll happily steer clear of this one in the future.

I equally love the different qualities of sheep, goat and cow's milk cheeses. They've all impressed me in different ways. Before la Fête I thought that fromage de brebis would be my all around favorite. Not so.

There are some excellent cheese sources out there on the Internet.
Fromages.com has been extremely helpful, as has univers-fromages.com

I plan on continuing with la Fête du Fromage for a while longer. I've yet to taste Époisses de Bourgogne, Sainte-Maure de Touraine or Gaperon. And I'm still searching for Brie de Melun and Pouligny-Saint-Pierre.

Are there any French cheeses that you can recommend?


Pin It

Tuesday's Tastings

This week I finally tasted a cheese that I've wanted to try for years, Banon à la Feuille. I've read and heard so much about this little cheese that I had very high expectations. Suffice to say, it was out of this world!
We also tasted a wonderful Tomme de Chèvre and a lovely, rich Maroilles.


Banon has to be one of the most alluring, heady and luscious things I've ever tasted.
It is a raw goat's milk cheese that is wrapped in chestnut leaves, dipped in marc de Provence or eau de vie, tied up with raffia and left to mature for a few weeks. It can be eaten young, while the leaves are still green and the cheese is crumbly and tart or aged, like the one I bought, which was ultra ripe and runny and the leaves had turned brown, causing the crust to darken a bit. The flavor was winey, fruity, woodsy and amazing! Banon has been produced in Provence near the village of Banon since the Roman times and it was granted AOC status in 2003.
Good wine pairing would be a Chenin Blanc or a big red from Bordeaux.

before unwrapping


Banon oozing all over the place


The Tomme de Chèvre was made locally, about an hour away in the Pyrénées mountains. It is made from either pasteurized or unpasteurized goat's milk and the flavor was rich and nutty with a firm but creamy texture. Compared to the other two, the Tomme didn't really stand out, but it is a delicious cheese.
A good wine pairing would be a Minervois or a Saumur.

A trip to Les Halles in Narbonne yielded a nice chunk of Maroilles, a cheese from the north of France that our friends Jean-Pierre and Agnès said we must try. It gained AOC status in 1976 and was first produced by monks in the Abbey of Maroilles over 1000 years ago.
I bought the unpasteurized cow's milk Maroilles, but it is also made from pasteurized milk. The rind is bright orange color, the taste is slightly salty and tangy and the odor really makes an impression. You should have smelled our fridge!
Châteauneuf du Pape is the recommended wine to drink with Maroilles.


Pin It