"MaxShrem" news and stories

Roquefort. Photo: Furey and the Feast, Flickr

This summer Slashfood blogger Max Shrem is apprenticing at renowned Paris cheese shop Fromagerie Trotté. In 'Le Cheese Course,' Max will share his impressions and opinions of French cheese à la francaise!

In the United States, Roquefort -- which has undergone quite the year in the press -- most frequently winds up in salads. Stateside cheese shops usually carry just one or two varieties.

In Paris, however, the stinky blue fromage is a staple; it's nearly impossible not to find several varieties at local supermarkets and an abundance at the fromageries, where varieties range from mildly spicy and sweet to pungent and creamy.

Three main factors cause this: the specific culture of Penicillium roqueforti (the fungus used to create the blue veins in the cheese) used; the types of caves and the quantity made. There's a bit of mystique, too: "What distinguishes one strain of Penicillium roqueforti from another one is part of the cheesemaker's secret," says Mme. Barthélémy, fromagère at Paris's Barthélémy cheese shop, which sells a to-die-for artisanal Roquefort.

Five fave Roqueforts after the jump.

Salers. Photo: The Cheese Store of Beverly Hills

This summer Slashfood blogger Max Shrem is apprenticing at renowned Paris cheese shop Fromagerie Trotté. For the next two months, in 'Le Cheese Course,' Max will share his impressions and opinions of French cheese à la francaise!

Like drinking wine, tasting French cheese is like going on an exciting journey through different terroirs: The diet of the nation's goats, cows and sheep thoroughly permeates the cheese itself. About a year ago, we wrote about the history and production of Salers, a hard cheese with a cheddar-like texture and meaty, mineral-like flavor. Recently, we discovered a specific wheel of Salers aged by affineur André Bruel that was so intensely meaty we felt compelled to revisit the fromage's intriguing flavor.

Bruel's affinage powerfully highlights the rich flora of the Auvergne in southwestern France, where Salers hails from. Aging Salers in the region's renowned Duroux tunnels, he produces a cheese with a more complicated array of flavors -- from eggy and meaty to fruity and vegetal -- than traditional Salers.

Brique Des Flandres. Photo: Max Shrem

This summer, Slashfood blogger Max Shrem is apprenticing at renowned Paris cheese shop Fromagerie Trotté. For the next two months, in 'Le Cheese Course,' Max will share his impressions and opinions of French cheese à la francaise!

While many French cheesemakers tend to stick to age-old techniques, numerous others break away and establish new methods. The quirky, hard-to-place Brique des Flandres is a result of an innovative process that involves a mixture of two well-established cheesemaking methods: the one that produces stinky Livarot (pronounced lee-vah-ROH) from Normandy and that of Dutch-inspired Mimolette from the Calais region.

Brique des Flandres is a raw cow's milk cheese featuring the same washed rind as a Livarot and an identical bright orange interior paste to Mimolette. After the jump, I'll explain what sets it apart from both.

Fromage Blanc with pears and honey. Photo: Marylise Doctrinal, Flickr

This summer, Slashfood blogger Max Shrem is apprenticing at renowned Paris cheese shop Fromagerie Trotté. For the next two months, in 'Le Cheese Course,' Max will share his impressions and opinions of French cheese à la francaise!

If you like eating thick, creamy French cheese such as Chaource, you're likely to enjoy fromage blanc. At Fromagerie Trotté, customers come in weekly for what at first blush resembles chunks of cream, large pieces of mascarpone or crème fraîche. They are not ordering cream, of course, but are lining up for fromage blanc -- also called fromage frais, which literally translates to "fresh cheese."

Fromage blanc is a young cheese that is made from cow's milk. It's essentially an un-aged fresh cow's milk cheese – that is, it represents the beginning stages of cheesemaking before the addition of rennet and salt. Therefore, its texture is soft and milky, similar to that of cottage cheese and yogurt. Like yogurt, it has a relatively low fat content (assuming that there is no added cream.)