The other night we were lucky enough to go to a dégustation de fromage. It was organized by our landlady and the teacher was the partner of our french tutor. First, I should give you some background. When we are in Villefranche, we tutor in french for 3 hours a day, three days a week with our wonderful teacher. She also does lessons via Skype when we are not here for a couple of hours a week. Her partner is also a french teacher who tutors other people. This year several friends came from Minneapolis for two weeks, and they were able to be tutored by our teacher's partner. We had them and our teacher, her partner and their children for dinner before they started their lessons. Here we are getting settled for dinner.
You cannot see the children in the above picture, but here they are playing together.
The children were very good while the adults talked and even though most of the discussion was in French the children were not interested in the conversation. Here they are with their mother.
Now you know the family who we have come to love in Villefranche and who help us learn french and french culture.
The cheese tasting was very interesting not just because the cheeses were incredible but because of the history behind cheeses and particularly the ones we tried. For example we learned that cheese was the first food manufactured by humans. As soon as humans started to domestic animals, they learned that they could preserve the animal milk by changing it to cheese. This fact was discovered when they used animal stomachs to hold milk in. The bacteria in the animal stomach caused the milk to turn to cheese. So the first cheese was made about 10,000 years ago. Of course the methods and recipes have changed over the years but the process of using bacteria to change milk into cheese to preserve it remains the foundation.
It was a large group full of friends we have made in Villefranche and some from home.
Jane, always the teacher's pet, was more than happy to help our teacher prepare for the presentation.
One of the first cheeses that we tasted was a Swiss cow milk cheese called Tête de moine (monk head). Many of the old cheese recipes were saved over the years by the monks. This cheese comes from a small Swiss town. It is a pretty hard cheese that traditionally was shaved off in thin slices. We now have a machine called a girolle that is used to do the shaving, and you can make beautiful flowers of the cheese.
Of course I really do not need to say this because you all know that you cannot have a cheese tasting without the other two ingredients of the basic french meal - bread and wine. Here you can see our teacher preparing some of several types of bread we used during the tasting.
One of the most difficult things about eating cheese is knowing how to cut the cheese. The first rule is never take the nose. It is extremely rude as some consider it the best part, and it makes the piece of cheese look unfinished. Fortunately, we learned the proper way to cut the cheese. In this picture the process is very clear. You find the centerline of the piece of cheese going the long way and begin to cut diagonally from the center line back. These three cheeses are all fairly hard, and the method of cutting works really well.
You can see from the picture below that you can use this cutting method on softer cheeses as well. In this case a nice piece of blue cheese, actually bleu d'Auvergne. We had some roquefort as well, but it is not shown here. Keep in mind that to be roquefort it must be made in Roquefort using the traditional method. In that way, it is like true champagne.
In the picture below, the piece of cheese that has been almost fully eaten is brilliat Savarin which is an incredible cheese made by adding some cream to the cheese. There is no way to gracefully cut this beautifully creamy cheese.
As with all things french, there is an exception to the do not cut the nose off the cheese rule. Note the piece of brie at the top of the platter. It would be very difficult to use the earlier described method of cutting this piece so in this case you can cut the nose off back an inch or so and then use the diagonal method. The nose that you just cut off is considered the best so in order to be polite you should offer it to an honored guest or similar person.
Our teacher got all of the cheeses in a true cheese shop in Nice. In France a true cheese shop buys the cheese and keeps it in just the right conditions until it is ready to sell and then sells it. So when you go to a shop it is best to rely on the seller to select just the right cheese to meet your needs. All of the great advice that we got at the cheese tasting is very helpful for while we are here in France, but will not help us in the United States. All the cheeses we had were made with raw milk. In the United States you cannot sell raw milk cheese unless it has been aged at least 60 days and meets the low level of bacteria required. Consequently the cheeses we tasted could not be sold in the United States. I guess I now know another reason to come here more often.
Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal
