More Provencal Cheese

My goodness, it's been too long since my last post...and there's so much to tell! First, let me catch you up on the cheese news. After Roquefort, Elly and I went back to Aix en Provence where she and her French boyfriend were settling into their new "country house." I really do feel more comfortable away from all the plus posh hustle found in the center of Aix, and it gave me a chance to learn the finer points of a fabulous French lawn game called potonk, similar to bocce ball. I also had the chance to visit a local goat cheese farm and try out a few new recipes of my own the quiet countryside.

Elly and I visited a small goat operation just outside of Puyricard. Sandrine, who runs the farm with her husband and makes the cheese daily, was kind enough to allow Elly and I to watch her make the specialty of the farm and pester her with questions. We watched as she prepared a very rare and delicious ricotta style goat cheese called brousse du rove. It is made from the milk of the Rove goat, a breed that used to be found commonly in and around Marseilles. Nowadays you find mostly Saaen, Alpine and some others, but the milk from Rove goats has a special grassy quality that is super tasty. Sandrine prepared the yogurt style cheese by slowly bringing the milk up to 90°F and then adding a little vinegar to help the small curds form. Then she very carefully spooned the curds into tall, thin plastic tubes and sold them to us right away, no draining necessary. Usually the cheese is served as a dessert with jam or sugar and it was divine. The consistency was much more delicate and moist than ricotta, but much cheesier in flavor than yogurt. We took a bunch home and had some for breakfast each morning. You can learn more about the history of the cheese and the traditions of thier cheese making style here.


With no Hermes store around the corner to distract me, I was able to try out a few recipes I'd dreamed up on Bob Dylan's farm and had the perfect excuse for such elaborate creations; our friends Phil and Eddie from Chateau Brandeau in Bordeax came down for a weekend visit. You may remember this fabulous couple from my earlier posts. Eddie is a deliciously over the top Kiwi and Phil is his quiet, delightful companion from the UK. These men have the most wonderful bromance I've ever encountered and share cheeky rapport that instantly puts a smile on your face. I knew they would appreciate a little culinary experimentation, so I put together some dessert cheeses to try. The first a sugared rose petal with a dollop of fresh chevre rolled in sponge cake crumbs and topped with a healthy smear of dark chocolate. The crunchy petal with the soft cheese and smooth chocolate made for a really dynamic little bite...totally a winner. The next experiment was soaking some slightly aged chevre in various liqueurs. The first was soaked in a fruity, syrupy Minervois red wine, the second in a dry rose and the third in violet liqueur with lavender. The result was an Easter basket of colors and some lovely delicate aromas infused into the little pats of chevre. I loved the presentation but would like to try soaking them longer next time to get a stronger flavor.


That's all for tonight, but stay tuned for wine adventures in Bordeaux, an underground cathedral and a sand dune that swallows entire buildings!

Blue & Smelly

After Elly came and broke me out of goat jail, we decided to take a good old fashioned American road trip to the cheese mecca of the entire country of France: Roquefort. I like to think that this pungent, difficult cheese is what separates the men from the boys in the world of cheese lovers. There's not a whole lot about Roquefort that's accessible or easy.

Roquefort is a protected region and the regulations about its production are strict and specific. The cheese can only be made and aged in the town of Roquefort, an area about 2 miles square. The sheep, from which come the delicious milk for the cheese, must be pastured on the mountainous land surrounding the town. The shepherds have formed a co-op for milk production, helping to organize the 2100 sheep farms, which each year contribute material for the 3 million cheeses produced in Roquefort.

The production of this famous cheese is a happy accident of geography. A fault line runs underneath the town and this has produced a network of underground caves which have steady, cold temperature...perfect for the ripening of large cheeses. Native to these caves is a very special bacteria called penicillium roqueforti. The bacteria is collected by putting under-baked loaves of bread in the caves and allowing the p. roqueforti to proliferate on it. It is then collected and inserted into the core of the cheese wheels and allowed to develop for several months.

And oh how tasty the result is. Having it directly from the source really changes the experience of eating it. First, the cheese was far more delicate and moist than varieties I'd had in the states. It was also far stronger than anything I'd ever tasted. It actually burned my nostrils as I exhaled, the same sensation as the few times I've had grappa or grain alcohol. To balance out this super strong flavor, we ate it with fresh figs, honey and mint. It was divine.

Photos from Le Bouquet

I have now officially added the term "goat herder" to my resume

The only escargot I'm likely to get here...

Daily cheese making.

Fresh milk each morning and evening

The little molds for fresh chevre

The Cat Ate My Quiche

I arrived last week at a new farm in a little town called La Caunette. Our new home, Le Bouquet, sits at the foot of the Pyranees, just a short drive from Narbonne and the beautiful beaches of Southern France. We had finally arrived at our destination for the trip: a goat dairy. Our host, Melissa, came to get us at the train station, greeting us with a kiss on both cheeks. I kid you not, her Bob Dylan fro actually had a caterpillar crawling in it; this woman was a true farmer.

Le Bouquet has a small herd of goats (about 30) that are milked twice per day and this is the mainstay of the business. Melissa inherited the farm from her parents and, amazingly, runs the whole operation by herself. She's a tough broad, and I gotta give her props for the huge amount of work that she manages all by her lonesome. It takes a lot of commitment to work a 12 hour day, 7 days a week and live by yourself with a herd of smelly goats. She really seems to enjoy it, and has managed to make a vital business from cheese-making.

My respect for her is the upside. The downside is that our relationship is characterized by mutual bafflement. I have never thought of myself as a particularly high-maintenance person, and since I started traveling and staying on farms, my expectations for daily comfort have drastically reduced. But somehow, I still seem to come across to this kind farmer as hopelessly posh. My daily shower was interpreted as extravagant. Heating milk for coffee in the morning is greeted with a raised eyebrow and a quick glance at the propane tank. I have never felt so bougeois in my entire life.

The entire WWOOF program is predicated on a basic agreement of three things:
1. You come and work
2. You are fed
3. You receive a place to sleep and bathe.
I have had no trouble with adapting to the lifestyle of my hosts...until now. We arrived on Monday and by Wednesday had eaten, literally, the same thing for every meal: the same loaf of bread, the same block of cheese, the same pot of plain, cold pasta, the same bowl of salad. Not that there's anything wrong with that...I just was in the mood for something, say, warm or perhaps, not pasta. Melissa went to the farmers' market on Wednesday morning to sell her cheese and left Elly and I in charge of making our own lunch. I got super resourceful and made a lovely quiche with whatever I could find; a bit of flour we found in the pantry, some leftover cheese from the evening before, a few eggs we had collected from the hen-house, a bit of mushroom and onion we scrounged from a bin and voila! delicious quiche.

Melissa came home and looked a little skeptical. I could see that she thought this was a bit of a production for an afternoon meal, but I was really ready to have something tasty and sat down to munch. I thought myself very clever to have made two so that we could have a bit for dinner as well and was congratulating myself for being so thrifty. It felt like a small victory. But I really had only won the battle not the war. This quickly became evident when I went into the kitchen post-lunch to clean up. On the counter was the bloody cat, hovering over my perfect, tasty, live-affirming quiche. She had eaten big bites out of the whole thing and I thought I might break into tears on the spot. Here's the thing about staying on farms: your whole world is reduced down into the most basic elements. You do not have movies or parties or social circles or any of the other things that make life so full and busy and rich from day to day. All you have is a full day of hard work and the promise of a bit of relaxing and eating in the evening. These basic elements take on a new meaning since they are literally ALL that you have to look forward to each day. So when that damned cat ate my quiche, I felt like someone had sucker-punched my new puppy.

And here's the real kicker: Bob Dylan served it for dinner anyway.