French Food Fool

Cooking & Eating & Living in Paris (& Leaving it, sometimes)

Main menu

Skip to content
  • A recipe, quick!
  • About

Category Archives: Cheese University

Show Grid Show List

Post navigation

← Older posts

Cheese University (XXIX): Mothais sur feuille

April 4, 2013 by Ullrich

Let me introduce you to the Mothais sur feuille, a great French goat cheese widely unknown. It hasn’t got its AOC yet but it should only be a matter of time. It’s just too good.

Categories: Cheese University, Dinner, France, good food, nature, skills • Tags: Cheese, Food, France

Leave a comment

Cheese University (XXVII): Pouligny Saint-Pierre

February 4, 2012 by Ullrich

In the world of cheese, pyramids normally don’t speak of exotic places but of comfy, cozy ones like the Parc naturel de la Brenne stretching in the middle of nowhere, not far from France’s geographic center that is. I haven’t been there in person, so I can’t tell whether the descriptions are true that this was a “land of a thousand ponds”. What I can say is that the park gives home to the smallest Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée of French […]

Categories: Cheese University, France, good food • Tags: Cheese, Food, France

13

Cheese University (XXVI): Saint-Nectaire

September 13, 2011 by Ullrich

Here comes another high representative of the rustic Auvergne region, I very much like the description of its smell by my colleagues from the Eyewitness Companions who call it “old, the smell of a dark and humid cellar, of rye straw, and of mould”. The then Marshal of France, Henri de La Ferté-Sennecterre, a native from Auvergne, brought it to the royal table of Louis XIV in the 17th century (amongst other cheeses from his home country) – and it has […]

Categories: Cheese University, France, good food • Tags: Cheese, Food, France

1

Cheese University (XXV): Chaource

July 10, 2011 by Ullrich

Today’s cheese is made south of Troyes, not too far from Paris after all, I very much like the Eyewitness Companions’ judgement that it “melts in the mouth like light snow”. That is true, actually, it is a cheese only poets could accurately describe given its many astounding features and flavors and textures. A native from Burgundy and the Champagne region, it’s a grand old French classic cheese with a long, long history. Chronicles from 1362 mention it first and […]

Categories: Cheese University, France, good food • Tags: Cheese, Food, France

3

Cheese University (XXIV): Abondance

July 9, 2011 by Ullrich

In the year of the Lord 1381, when the conclave was sitting in Avignon to elect a new pope, the clerics ordered 15 lumps of this cheese, made high up in the Savoy mountains. It was already famous back then, imagine, a dairy product from the alps with a history of more than 300 years – which means that we today talk about a cheese with origins dating back over a thousand years. Louis XIV, the splendid “sun king” was […]

Categories: Cheese University, France, good food • Tags: Cheese, Food, France

4

Cheese University (XXIII): Picodon

May 28, 2011 by Ullrich

France’s Ardèche and Drôme regions are so breathtakingly beautiful that they both deserved an entry in one of these guides listing “1000 places to see before you die”. They give home to culinary sensations as well (of course) and today’s cheese is only one of them. Its name used to be a generic term for this kind of disc-shaped goat cheese, there might be a linguistic link to the French word piquer (meaning “biting” or “stinging”) because in the old […]

Categories: Cheese University, France, good food • Tags: Cheese, Food, France

4

Cheese University (XXII): Pont l’Evêque

May 13, 2011 by Ullrich

This cheese has come a long, long way, it is fair to assume that it was already made and sold back in the Middle Ages, in the backward villages of lovely Normandy. It is in fact mentioned in documents published in 1560 and 1588, a square thing, strong and spicy, it used to have a washed rind, a croûte lavée, displaying flashy orange colours. Nowadays, producers have modified their procedures, there’s an argument about it, but there’s still only one […]

Categories: Cheese University, France, good food • Tags: Cheese, Food, France

7

Cheese University (XXI): Langres

May 3, 2011 by Ullrich

Maybe I write this a little bit too often but the cheese presented today is again one of my favorites. It’s a subtle, soft, soothing yet powerful dairy product, a real character coming from beautiful Burgundy. The colour – flashy orange as you can see in the picture – is misleading in the end. It makes you think of strong tastes, of salty, beastly pleasures but this cheese is not one of those rural hammers. On the contrary, its elegance […]

Categories: Cheese University, France, good food • Tags: Cheese, Food, France

2

Cheese University (XX): Crottin de Chavignol

May 2, 2011 by Ullrich

The Loire valley has offered quite a few fine products to the world and our today’s cheese is one of them. A native of the beautiful region called Sancerrois, it calls villages like Amigny, Asnières-sur-Sancerre, Bue, Champlin or Verdigny its home. In a man’s world you’d call it a short guy, displaying a diameter of hardly 6 cm and a height of around 3.5 cm, weighing only 60 grams. Small but powerful, that’s what you should call the Crottin de […]

Categories: Cheese University, France, good food • Tags: Cheese, Food, France

4

Cheese University (XIX): Ossau-Iraty

April 27, 2011 by Ullrich

Here’s to a fat guy in every respect: the entire cylindrical pieces weigh up to 6 kilograms and the ivory coloured pâte contains at least 50 percent of matière grasse, in other words: fat, and so I guess it’s what Americans would call a devilish sin (or even a threat to homeland security). To French people and other cheese lovers it’s one of the rare, expensive yet popular AOC products made of sheep’s milk, a native from the Béarn and Basque […]

Categories: Cheese University, France, good food • Tags: Cheese, Food, France

3

Cheese University (XVIII): Reblochon

March 11, 2011 by Ullrich

We owe today’s cheese to the shrewdness of French farmers who wanted to conceal the real amount of their milk production in order to reduce their tax burden. They did so at some point of time towards the end of the Middle Ages, transforming their milk into (easy-to-hide) small soft cheese discs that served as a source for minerals and fat during winter time up in the mountains. It took quite a while until this “hidden” cheese hit the markets, […]

Categories: Cheese University, France • Tags: Cheese, Food, France

2

Cheese University (XVII): Bleu d’Auvergne

March 5, 2011 by Ullrich

This is the rare case of a cheese which literally has been “invented” like the steam engine or the iPod. French farmer Antoine Roussel, living some 40 kilometres west of Clermont-Ferrand in the Auvergne region, had the (somewhat weird) idea, to inoculate his cheese with mould fungus that appeared on his rye bread. Roussel must have been a handy man, obviously, because he also came up with the idea to pierce his cheese loaf in order to get some air inside […]

Categories: Cheese University, France • Tags: Cheese, Food, France

Leave a comment

Post navigation

← Older posts

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

What's up?

Apéro Bread Breakfast Cheese University chefs Dessert Dinner direct Drinks dvd France Fumiko Kono good food hero butchers images Lunch malbouffe Michelin musée nature Paris poetry Savoy seafood signature dish skills Snack Whatever Works Wine World

AAAAA

  • Mad About Paris

Best choice

  • Michael Pollan
  • simonsays
  • Airline Meals
  • delicious days
  • WordPress.com
  • Maangchi
  • The Ethicurean
  • Keiko's Paris
  • With a glass

Sprechen Sie deutsch?

  • Fichtners Tellergericht
  • Tellergericht, the book

Why not?

  • Michelin
  • Restaurant Row
  • Marmiton
  • Food for the Thoughtless
  • Slashfood
  • Ethical Consumer
  • Serge the Concierge

Archives

  • August 2014
  • May 2014
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • October 2012
  • February 2012
  • September 2011
  • July 2011
  • May 2011
  • April 2011
  • March 2011
  • February 2011
  • January 2011
  • October 2010
  • September 2010
  • July 2010
  • June 2010
  • May 2010
  • April 2010
  • March 2010
  • February 2010
Blog at WordPress.com.
French Food Fool
Blog at WordPress.com.
Cancel