"le cheese course" news and stories

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.

Fontainebleau. Photo: Marie-Anne Cantin

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!

This odd-looking fromage is oh-so-French (and, in fact, available solely in that country). Those planning a trip there would be wise to look up the delicious Fontainebleau, which is here pictured with the net that covers it when it is sold.

France has many varieties of creamy cheese, from crème fraîche and fromage blanc to petit-suisse and Chantilly. Combining characteristics of all four mentioned above, Fontainebleau, which must be eaten the day it's put out for sale, is especially worth trying for a rich, sweet taste and fluffy, light texture that's similar to whipped cream.

It's so light, in fact, it requires strange packaging. "The reason for the cloth is to protect the very light structure and to maintain the freshness," says Thomas Le Goff, cheesemonger at fromagerie Marie-Anne Cantin.

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.)