Our first cheesy post

Note to self: stop getting so het up about unimportant stuff and spend more time on celebrating the good stuff! Today that’s unpasteurised cheese - no doubt a subject I’ll be returning to often as I am a cheese-ophile. So it’s just as well I live in France these days.

You're Swiss right?
In the ’70’s and ’80’s a wedge of old cheddar, a triangle of unripe Brie and a cube of sad Stiton were considered something rather ‘cosmopolitan’.

In those same days [ the days when Chicken Kiev was considered a bit gourmet ] we were just happy to eat something ‘foreign’ with our English cheese fayre.

The pathetic news is that the last time I was in London, in a relatively pricey restaurant, I didn’t do much better! But I expect greater things these days - I don’t settle for Brie I want Brie de Meaux. I adore my English Cheddar but these days I expect a really superb one such as Keene’s Farmhouse Cheddar and not some insipid supermarket crap!

I was in a rather posh restaurant here in Normandy the other week where the cheese tray consisted of at least 50 cheeses. The waitress (who really knew her cheese!) even suggested to me the order in which I should eat the 5 that I chose i.e. leave the strongest, pure ammonia/rotten socks one ’til last - which of course made perfect sense.

Please, please don’t take your lovely cheese-board out of the fridge just before you offer it to your guests whether at home or at work. Get that cheese up to room temperature to enjoy it fully!

Mix that cheese board selection up a bit too. Cheese Boards chez-moi generally consist of a creamy, ripe Camembert or Brie de Meaux, a nice soft blue such as Bleu D’Auvergnes or Bresse Bleu or Fourmes. A tangy Chevre (i.e Goat’s cheese - with maybe a couple of dried out and ancient Goat crottins too).

I also tend to add a bit of Sheep - a soft Brebis or Ektori, the wonderfully salty harder sheep’s cheese from the Basque region.

Finally I have one or two nice harder cheeses such as Comte or Tomme de Savoie.

Oh yes and I usually add a ’surprise’ guest cheese that I’ve never tried before! We’re not talking ‘Fromage a trois’ in my home people it’s a minimum of 8.

And all that cheese that doesn’t get eaten? It ends up in the potato soup or the old fondue with white wine and Kirsch!

Take your cheese seriously!

Here in France the cheese course is served before dessert and, generally without the biscuit/crackers accompaniment that I love (my particular favourite being Bath Oliver’s). But that’s OK - as long as the cheese is superb, unpasteurised and ‘melting’ in the room’s temperature I’m a very happy little ex-patriate.

In the next addition of the Cheese Blog I shall be discussing how to serve Stilton and my smelliest cheeses of all time.

You’ll have to excuse me now - I feel the need for a snack!