A perfect cheese trolley

Cheese trolleys, as I've discovered from previous exchanges, divide cheese lovers. There are those who think no restaurant worth its salt offers anything less than 30 cheeses and others of us (betraying my own preferences) that reckon there's no way most restaurants can keep even 20 in good condition.

But Le Pot d'Etain in L'Isle sur Serein can, it seems. Its cheese trolley - or rather tray - unfortunately snapped in the gloom of a low-lit dining room this week, was simply superb. It included the best Epoisses I've ever eaten (matured by Fromagerie Berthaut), full-flavoured but not overpowering and just ripe enough but not so runny as to form a pool of molten cheese on the plate, a perfect Soumaintrain and another Burgundian cheese whose name I didn't catch, washed in Chablis. Even better the cheese course didn't attract a supplement as it does almost everywhere else. It was tempting to dive in for more but I was already full of snails and rabbit.

I guess the locals love their cheese so there's no problem with sad cheeses left lingering and unloved on the trolley but I'm sure it's more that the proprietor has a long-standing relationship with his supplier, gets his cheeses delivered at exactly the right moment and - crucially - knows how to keep them that way.

Le Pot d'Etain also has a stupendous winelist with the best collection of Chablis I've ever seen. Oddly the bottle we were drinking - a 2007 La Forest Premier Cru from Vincent Dauvissat - wasn't as good as I'd expected with the cheese. I usually find white wines better than red with washed rind cheeses but these very ripe cheeses possibly needed a sweet wine or a marc de Bourgogne.

Oh, and they also serve the most gigantic gougères, pictured alongside some mini cheese and ham 'cakes' (what the French call the quichey sort of savoury loaf they serve with an aperitif). Cheese heaven.

Pomi-fritti fromage Corse

Apologies, first of all for the unannounced absence from the blog. I've been devoting my energies to the relaunch of my website Matching Food & Wine and to tell the truth haven't come across much in the way of cheese to report on lately. But this is the mother of all melted cheese experiences!

It was in the unlikely venue of a Corsican wine bar and restaurant in Bordeaux called A Cantina which, as you'd expect, had great artisanal charcuterie and cheese (Corsica being noted for both). And a CHIP MENU! Including a dish, pomi-fritti fromage Corse, with chips and melted cheese.

It was at the end of a long day and the bar was packed so I failed to get round to asking which cheese they had used (lax but we were knackered) but it had a tangy edge that suggests to me it was a sheeps' cheese and a wondrously molten consistency that indicated it was quite young. You'll have to play around with different cheeses.

The potatoes they used, by the way, still had their skins on and were hand-cut and there were a few little slivers of fried ham dotted about just to add to the calorie overload. I like the three forks impaled in the potatoes which encourages you not to eat them all on your own ...

The restaurant also offered a delicious warm crumble of goats' cheese and pistachio we had to try and which I might try to recreate. Again, young goats cheese, I suspect, layered with sliced tomato (I'd be inclined to skin it first) and topped with finely chopped pistachios, possibly blitzed with a bit of flour. Served with toasted baguette. It's very rich - you need to slather it on something.

I'm going to have to get experimenting.

How far should you let a Brie go?

Here is a picture of a practically perfect Brie. IMHO although some people might argue it had been allowed to mature too far.

It was served as part of a food and wine tasting I conducted at the cookery school Leiths the other day.

True, it made it trickier to find a wine match. The Chilean pinot noir I'd picked to go with it seemed a bit lightweight, it was so decadently creamy. On the other hand it hadn't got that sort of ammoniac character that Brie can acquire as it ages which can give it an unpleasantly bitter edge.

All you need is a hunk of crisp, freshly baked baguette to slather it on. And maybe a few grapes. The perfect lunch . . .

Beats the sort of underripe Bries you find on the supermarket chill counter hands down. You should never serve Brie straight from the fridge either.

But should you let it go this far if you value the wine you're drinking with it? What do you reckon?

Gorgeous gougères

There's nothing nicer with drinks than something warm, crisp and cheesy and gougères fit the bill perfectly. I made a batch last night for a couple of friends and wondered why I didn't make them more often. (Probably just as well, on reflection. We scoffed the lot.)

Basically they're a cheese-flavoured choux puff and choux pastry is the easiest type of pastry to make. You simply melt the butter in water, tip in the flour, beat in the eggs and spoon it out. Well, pretty much. Here's the actual recipe from my book Food, Wine and Friends which is out of print though you should be able to find a second hand copy.

Makes 20-24
50g (2 oz) butter
75g (3 oz) strong white flour, sifted with 1/4 tsp salt and a pinch of cayenne pepper
2 large (but not extra-large) eggs and some extra beaten egg
50g (2 oz) mature Gruyère or Comté, finely grated (but not as fine as parmesan. I used Beaufort which I happened to have in the fridge which worked just as well)

You'll also need 2 lightly oiled baking trays

Preheat the oven to 220°C/425°F/Gas 7. Measure 150 ml (5 fl oz) of water into a saucepan and add the butter cut into cubes. Heat gently until the butter has dissolved then bring to the boil.

Take the pan off the heat and tip in the sifted flour all at once. Beat vigorously with a wooden spoon until the mixture forms a ball and leaves the sides of the pan clean. Set aside for 5 minutes.

Beat the large eggs and add them to the pastry bit by bit, working them in till the mixture is smooth and glossy (This is much easier and quicker in a food processor) Add all except 1 heaped tbsp of the cheese.

Beat the remaining egg and brush the top of each puff lightly with a pastry brush, sprinkling them with the remaining cheese.


Run the two baking sheets under the tap to make them slightly damp. Shake off any excess water. Using two teaspoons place spoonfuls of the mixture onto each sheet then bake in the oven for about 25 minutes until puffed up and golden. (Some people pipe the paste which gives you more perfect results but I can't be bothered.)

Remove the gougères from the oven and cut a small slit in the base of each to let the hot air escape and keep them crisp. Pop them back in the oven again, base side upwards for a minute then remove and cool on a wire rack.

Eat warm so if you make them ahead - and you can - just heat them through for about 4 minutes in a moderate oven. (Very good with Chablis and other white burgundy or a glass of champagne.)

The perfect Brie de Meaux

Brie has become so devalued as a cheese you forget what it's like when it's perfectly matured. Too often it's too cold and slightly chalky in the centre or allowed to age to the point where it's oozing over the cheeseboard and the rind has acquired a bitter, slightly ammoniac smell.

But this is how it should be, as served at a Parisian bistro called Le Baratin I've just reviewed on my natural wine blog. Beautifully rich and buttery with a delicate mushroom flavour, evenly matured right the way through, it was just a joy to eat and shows the benefit - as if it needed pointing out - of buying cheese from a supplier or shop where they know how to treat it.

Two new ways of serving goats cheese

Our fortnight in France has produced a couple of new ideas for serving cheese - as it usually does.

The first was an elegant course in a restaurant that should by rights have had a Michelin star, La Renaissance in Argentan which is also considerably more interesting than it looks from the website. Small balls of goats cheese were mixed with apricot and chopped lavender and set in the centre of fine, crisp savoury biscuits. There were also shards of apricot alongside and some kind of apricotty syrup, hard to determine, admittedly, in the rather fuzzy low-light picture above.

You almost certainly wouldn't want to go to that trouble but you could easily prepare the cheese that way and serve it with homemade breadsticks or biscuits. We'd finished our wine by that point but it would have been perfect with a sweet wine like a Jurançon or a Pacherenc-de-Vic-Bilh.


The other was at a wine bar in Bédarieux called Chai Christine Cannac where they served goats cheeses of different ages with honey, fleur-de-sel (coarse, unprocessed sea salt) and olive oil. The rather dishevelled appearance of the slate is due to the fact that it was ordered not by us but the next door table. When I was asking Ms Cannac about it she said she was sure her friends wouldn't mind if I took a snap of it. So I did.

Serving cheese with salt is of course not the healthiest option but I can imagine it would add an appealing crunch. A bit like that gorgeous French butter with salt crystals.

Where to buy cheese at a service station (in France, of course)

One of the redeeming features of French service stations is that they almost all sell a good selection of local products. At the aire Les Volcans d'Auvergne on the A71 just north of Clermont Ferrand, however, they go overboard selling giant packs of dried mushrooms, industrial-sized jars of potée, Puy lentils (of course) and all manner of weird and wonderful liqueurs and eaux de vie. But the main attraction is a full-blown cheese counter where you can buy the Auvergne's many excellent cheeses.

On Thursday as we were passing through there were whole Saint Nectaires and piles of garlicky Gaperons, Salers and Cantal, Bleu d'Auvergne and at least half a dozen goats cheeses. And not just from one cheesemaker. Several local producers were represented.

The only downside in this heat (38°C today) is how to transport them without them deteriorating or stinking the car out. But if you've got tightly sealed cool box and are travelling down to - or back from - the south take advantage.

How runny do you like your cheese?

I've been spending the past couple of weeks in France (hence the absence of posts), the last few days in Burgundy where smelly cheese reigns supreme.

This is the Epoisses they serve at a restaurant called Ma Cuisine in Beaune which, as you can see, is so ripe it forms liquid pools on the plate.

For me this is too ripe. I find cheese acquires a bitter note if it's allowed to mature this long which overwhelms its natural flavour. It also tends to knock the stuffing out of any accompanying wine - especially reds. (You can find the alternative pairings I suggest here.)

I also think it looks unappealing - like three large buttery cowpats. I prefer my cheese to retain its original shape.

But I'm aware I may be in a minority. Many cheeselovers, I know, adore their cheese to get as runny as this. What about you? And what do you drink with it once it's this far gone?

Vacherin baked potatoes

I was given a Vacherin the other day by the Cheese Detective and was thinking of a new way to serve it when the idea of Vacherin Baked Potatoes came to me. You simply bake your potatoes the normal way, cut a cross in the centre and drop in a quarter of a Vacherin (having first removed the cedar band that encircles the cheese. That should read spruce, as my friend OstreaEdulis has pointed out.)

Rustled up rather hurriedly in between two shopping trips today I admit it doesn't look too elegant but it tasted sublime. A refinement might be to top it a few sautéed mushrooms - ceps would be perfect but chestnut ones would be fine - or simply a sprinkling of salt crystals. The perfect Christmas snack ;-)

Have a happy time everybody.

Crazy Cantal

This is not a piece of arid desert or crazy paving but a cheese. A 5 year old Cantal, according to the stallholder at Agde market who was proudly displaying it the other day.

I have to say it didn't taste like a very old cheese. I've sampled 4 year old parmesan and Oude Gouda and that they both had an incredible intensity that this lacked (it was more like a mature Cheddar). And I'm not sure a well-made cheese should break up internally like this.

But it was quite a spectacle. I've never seen a cheese quite like it!

The cheese with no name

I guess most people would still think that France was one of the best places in the world to buy cheese. I hate to disabuse you but it's not - or not down in the Languedoc anyway. The choice is either between the industrially produced cheeses that fill the supermarket shelves or nameless cheeses like the ones above that sell from small market stalls. You can actually buy better French cheeses in my home town of Bristol - and wouldn't pay a lot more for them.

The one above - a semi-hard goats' cheese similar to Pecorino in style - was actually quite tasty with a pleasing firm texture and tang - as indeed it should have at around 24 euros a kilo, roughly the same price as a good piece of steak. But the other day I came across an ill-made very 'cowy' cows' cheese for much the same price that wasn't appealing at all.

All the fabulous little cheese shops I remember from 20 or so years ago in France seem to have disappeared - unless you're in a big city like Paris or Lyon. Sad.

What’s happened to French cheese?

Having spent the past week in the south of France, I ‘ve been forcibly struck by the fact that I have a better selection of French cheeses in my home town of Bristol than I do in the Languedoc village where we have our long term holiday home. There the only way to buy cheese without making a special expedition is to go to the local village shop which is supplied by Casino or the Intermarché down the road. True there are local markets but the choice of cheese there is limited and not always in good condition. Even the nearest big town of Beziers - a 25 minute drive away - doesn’t have a really good cheese shop.

The French cheese industry now seems dominated by the big companies like Lactalis which have squeezed the small cheesemakers out. You might find a couple of local goats’ cheeses in your local supermarket but that’s about it. Even Roquefort which is produced not far away on the plateau de Larzac comes from one of the big producers or packaged for the supermarkets' own brand range.

The resulting cheeses are not necessarily bad (there are advantages in having a less complex cheese, as I pointed out on my matching food and wine website the other day) just lacking in character. And for a cheeselover that’s a crime.

A good Morbier

I've always loved the look of Morbier with its striking band of ash down the centre but have frequently been disappointed at the taste. However I bought a good one the other day (right) which was delicious, with a nice semi-creamy texture. Better news still it went very well with a glass of the red wine we had open, a ripe, generous garnacha called Higueruela from a relatively unknown denomination called Almansa east of La Mancha. (Semi-soft cheeses of this style usually struggle with reds.)

According to the Morbier website - yes it has it's own dedicated one - it has been produced in the Jura for some 250 years. Traditionally it was made with leftover curd from Comté cheese which was covered with a light vegetal ash to stop a rind forming overnight before the mould could be topped up with the next day's leftover curd. You can see on their step by step slides of the cheesemaking process how the distinctive layer of ash is added these days. It has to be matured for 45 days, according to the AOC regulations, but is more commonly matured longer

If you're a fan you can even send a Morbier e-card. I don't think I'd go quite that far though I rather like the ones of the cows ;-)

The Cheese Nun

Knowing I was writing a cheese book, a friend sent me a DVD of a PBS programme called The Cheese Nun. It's a remarkable documentary about an American nun called Sister Noella Marcellino who not only learns to be a cheesemaker but leaves her closed Benedictine community to study at the University of Connecticut and travel all round France to become one of the world's leading cheese microbiologists.

She's a wonderfully engaging, joyous character (with, incidentally, a beautiful singing voice) and the footage of the traditional cheesemaking methods she adopts is quite fascinating.

It's a bit like a cheeselover's Sound of Music but then that was pretty cheesy too ;-)

Travels with a stinky cheese

Smelly cheese, it has to be said, does not make a good travelling companion.

It was barely 20 minutes since I'd bought a selection of artisanal cheeses from Paxton and Whitfield in Jermyn Street, including what I subsequently discovered was a particularly smelly beer-washed cheese called Saulxurois* that I began to be conscious of their presence. In a café (embarrassingly). On the train - despite being up in the luggage rack. In the kitchen even though I'd wrapped it in a plastic bag and encased it in a box in the fridge. The smell still seeped out.

I consulted Ruaridh Buchanan the cheese buyer for P & W. "Ah, yes" he said. "I am afraid that particular cheese is a very smelly one. It's best to consume it soon after purchase. I think you should invest in some Tupperware, if a second fridge is not an option. It would be fine for about a week if you can handle the smell though. Serve it with a glass of dark continental beer.


Four days on I finally plucked up the courage to remove the cheese from the fridge and its wrapping and try it. Barring the smell I have to say it was magnificent especially with a glass of Orval (dark Belgian beer). And even better, a glass of . . . no I'm afraid I can't tell you that. You'll have to wait for the book ;-)

* Confusingly it's also labelled Carré de L'Est, a style of cheese that is also associated with the Champagne region whereas this one comes from the town of Saulxures which is in Lorraine. The recommended wine pairing, in my copy of Les Fromages, incidentally, is a Pinot Noir d'Alsace - in my view a potentially disastrous combination. The French are still wedded to red wine with cheese.