Cheese Part 3 (he said)
by Kent 27 Aug 2013It’s been a while since I’ve talked about French cheese in depth, so it’s probably time I share with you our latest finds from the French dairy industry. I have tackled this subject before, in Part 1 (Cheese!) where I present Brebis, Vieux Cantal, Salers, and Époisses de Bourgogne, and Part 2 (Fromage, part deux), where I talk about Saint Albray, Aisy Cendré, Laguiole, Rocamadour Chevre, and Tentation de St. Félicien.
“Comment voulez-vous gouverner un pays qui a deux cent quarante-six variétés de fromage?”
– Charles de Gaulle
The first cheese on our latest list is Crottin de Chavignol, from the Loire Valley. It is sold in small disks, the same thickness but half the diameter of a hockey puck. The best time to eat is after about one to two weeks of aging, when the rind starts to get crumbly and the center has dried out a bit. You can tell in the grocery store or at a cheese vendor by giving the disk a quick squeeze; if the puck feels like a ripe avocado, it’s too early. Find one that feels more like an unripe lemon or lime. The cheese tastes great on its own, or crumbled into salad, or on little toasts and heated under the broiler. And one more thing; “Crottin” is related to the slang word for goat “droppings”.
Page from M. Brillat-Savarin’s book, courtesy of Wikipedia
Brillat-Savarin is a relative newcomer to the world of cheese, since it was first made only in the 1930’s, and was named for an 18th century French gourmet and political figure, Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, who literally wrote the book* on eating well — sort of the Julia Child of his day. The cheese in his honor is a triple cream (!) soft cheese, which basically looks like Brie, but tastes oh-so-much better. It is made in Normandy and Brittany from cow’s milk. The taste is slightly salty, and it goes very nicely with both Champagne and Pale Ale.
Délice de Bourgogne is quite similar to Brillat-Savarin, in that it’s a triple creamed cheese made from cow’s milk, but is made in Burgundy. The aroma and taste are a little stronger, and the wheel is a little thicker, and it’s just different enough to merit its own entry.
If you thought we only liked soft creamy cheeses, this next one will put that idea to rest. Mimolette is a very hard, orange cheese made in Lille, up north near Belgium. It is a cow’s milk cheese that is aged anywhere from two months to two years. It is effectively a Dutch Edam, but Louis XIV decided that France needed its own native product, so they copied the Dutch version and then added orange food coloring. The rind is pretty interesting; it is natural (as opposed to cloth or wax or paper), and its unique pitted surface is caused by cheese mites that are intentionally introduced to give it a unique flavor. Mmmm, cheese mites.
The presence of cheese mites actually sparked a minor international incident this year. Food inspectors in the United States began rejecting imported shipments of Mimolette because of the presence of Acarus Siro, even though a) no one has actually ever gotten sick from these mites, b) the mites are what give the cheese part of its distinctive flavor, and c) Americans have been importing and eating Mimolette for decades. We committed ourselves to enjoying Mimolette early and often during our time in France, in a sign of solidarity with the French cheese exporters.
This is probably not my last post on the subject of French cheese, since there are still many varieties we’ve never tasted.
* The book’s full title is Physiologie du Goût, ou Méditations de Gastronomie Transcendante; ouvrage théorique, historique et à l’ordre du jour, dédié aux Gastronomes parisiens, par un Professeur, membre de plusieurs sociétés littéraires et savantes (translation: Physiology of Taste, or Meditations on Transcendental Gastronomy, theoretical work, history and the agenda dedicated to gastronomes of Paris by a professor, a member of several literary and learned societies). A modest man, I just hope Monsieur Brillat-Savarin was also a man of of his word, since he used so many of them.
We were in our favorite neighborhood restaurant in France and the owner had just translated his menu into English. He showed it to us quite proudly. But we got no further than: “warm dung of goat salad” You can imagine how he got that translation out of crottin de chevre. We just roared and the owner laughed with us. We took the menu home and fixed it into decent English.
Some things are untranslatable by Google Translate.That is absolutely priceless!
Hi Guys.
I have been following your blog and I’m really enjoying reading about your canal boating.
In fact my husband, Alan, and I were in St Jean de Losne late last month and we saw your boat up on the hard 🙂
We are intending to buy a boat either this year or next and we are contemplating getting an ex-hire boat from Le Boat.
Am I right in thinking your boat was a rental with Le Boat?
If so are you happy with the service you received and the state of the boat when you purchased it?
We were thinking maybe a 12-13 metre boat which has 4 cabins and converting 2 of them into 1 cabin with a centre bed.
Any thoughts or suggestions would be gratefully received and thanks again for the entertaining reading.
Cheers
Karen
Hi Karen and Alan-
That’s funny that you saw our boat up on land! And you are correct, Apres Ski used to be a Le Boat charter boat called “Comet 13” that spent her previous life in the south running between St Gilles and Port Cassafieres on the Canal du Midi.
In general, our experience with Le Boat was good. It was frustrating dealing with their salesman at the time (Fred Molina), who only seemed capable of answering one question at a time (we’d send an email with 5 questions and get a reply back with the answer to only one). It took a while to figure out that we should send each question in a separate email. But now there’s a new sales guy based out of St Jean de Losne, and he’s GREAT (we met him a month ago).
We found that the level of service you get during the purchase is greatly dependent on the individual base manager. The “official” policy from Le Boat is that your boat will be delivered to you basically stripped of everything useful (pots, pans, dishware, utensils, pillows, linens, gangplank, mop, etc.). But we made friends with the base manager at St Gilles, and he in turn helped us out greatly by giving us a bunch of used stuff that was maybe no longer suitable for sending out on charter but which was still functional for our purposes. We reciprocated by giving him a new iPod.
We also negotiated to use various bits and pieces from the maintenance shop, so I was able to build all kinds of shelves, holders, racks, etc., using the help of one of the mechanics who spoke English.
And your idea of getting a mid-sized boat and tweaking the layout makes total sense. If we were doing it again, that’s what we’d do – since the old “Comet” series was pretty thin on storage space, we’d get a 4 cabin boat and convert one of the cabins to storage/workshop, and convert another pair to a big master suite, which would still leave a cabin for guests.
One thing we did that was incredibly useful, we chartered Comet 13 for 10 days before purchasing her. That way we could really get to know the boat, and determine if she would work for our needs. It also gave us time to look under the floorboards, behind the walls, etc., which gave us confidence that we were getting a boat that wouldn’t fall apart after a few months. The biggest thing I’d recommend is to get a qualified diesel mechanic to give the engine a once-over; if you need to replace the engine down the road, that’s a 12k to 15k euro bill.
So our advice would be to go for it, but make sure you are really friendly with the base manager where your boat “lives”, as they can make or break the process.
Keep us posted!
-Kent & Heather