Cheese, Glorious Cheese

If you think of French food and cuisine, one of the top items must be fromage (cheese). In a country that has more than 400 varieties of cheese, how can it not be so? General De Gaulle supposedly famously said “How can you govern a country that has 246 varieties of cheese? “, a statement that reflects both the varieties of cheese (at that time) and the variety of ways of looking at cheese (=life)—part of the French people’s character is very individualistic. You could eat a different cheese every day of the year and not go through all the possibilities.

 

Where to buy all these cheeses?

Many options, but the best places are the local markets (marchés), or the speciality cheese shops, les fromageries. If you’re a cheese lover, these places are cheese heaven. As Rod says, “what a heavenly smell from the fromagerie. It’s true, the smell wafting out can be very strong, and is not to many Americans’ taste. But, as a food lover you owe it to yourself to visit a fromagerie at least once.

 

Go early and watch how the workers set out the cheeses, wrapping, unwrapping, and placing with great care in these shops, often known as BOF (beurre, oeuf, fromage—butter, egg, cheese). Sometimes a canopied table brings the shop out into the street, and this might have plates of cut cheese for sale, or a display of camembert or goat cheeses.

 

The front window displays usually group different cheeses—often an amazing selection of goat cheeses. Balls, tiny triangles and pyramids, cylinders, circles. White, yellow, blue-tinge, greenish, grey, black (from charcoal). The shape and color indicate where the cheese comes from, an important point in a country that values terroir, a concept that encompasses the area, soil, amount of sun and rainfall, the exact field that produced the grass for the goats or cows etc. This is of course also important in wine making, and both wines and cheeses in France have a regulated system of AOC (Appelation d’Origine Controllée, translated roughly as ‘name from a controlled origin’). So, for example, real Roquefort cheese can only be called that if it’s produced in a very small area of France by farmers in a certain radius whose animals feed only on certain fields, and the cheese must be aged in the local caves, which produce that special mold/marbling.

Inside the shop are huge wheels of hard cheeses (like Emmentaler, Gruyère, Comté) and many others, such as Rebluchon, Cantal, Livarot. A poetry of names.

At a French meal, the cheese course comes before the dessert (sometimes, instead of). A good cheese plate has 4 cheeses: a hard cheese, a soft cheese (like Brie or Camembert), a blue cheese, and a goat cheese—served with a little green salad and lots of crusty French bread.

But, you can also eat cheese with an aperitif, and it’s famously paired with Beaujolais Nouveau, the new wine that appears with great fanfare every mid-November.

In fact, I know some people who could eat cheese 3 times a day, given the chance!