Fromage Tasting at home

After a homemade dinner of squash blossom quiche we put Lilah to sleep and cracked open dessert. FROMAGE! Yep, we're trying to do the French dessert of cheese instead of (or in addition to) sweets. This morning Kimmy picked up two cheeses from the Versailles street market just for the occasion. A goat cheese and a brie. And for good measure we also brought out an aged Gouda we've been chipping away at. Before dinner we brought the cheeses out of the fridge so that they could warm to room temperature. This is suppose to open up the flavors quite a bit.

We started with the goat cheese on the right (rules are you're supposed to eat the soft and mildest cheese first), "Chēvré cendre fermier". The "fermier", means "farmer" and indicates that the cheese was made on the same farm as the goats who provided the milk. This also means that it is unpasteurized. As it is unpasteurized the milk should contribute more flavor to the cheese than a pasteurized cheese version. Also since all the milk came from one farm, it can have a very unique taste that changes depending on the season and what the goats were eating that day. The "cendre" indicates that the cheese was rolled in cinders. Back in the day they would roll cheeses in cinders from the fireplace to keep away the flies. Now it is just done out of tradition. Taking a bite we didn't notice the cinders adding any smokey flavor to the cheese. The cheese had two layers, a 2 cm thick creamy off-white skin, and a thick semi-chalky white core. The buttery skin evened out the chalkyness of the core and really made for a great texture. The cheese started out very earthy and rich with a hint of goat, and ended on a sweet note. As the cheese warmed in our mouth, it melted and mixed together evolving a very creamy texture, that in combination with the sweet-tasting ending almost fooled me into thinking it was cheesecake.

Second up was the brie on the left, "Brie de Meaux au lait cru". This is a brie made in the town of Meaux. The "au lait cru" indicates that it is made using unpasteurized cows' milk. It looked just like the brie we know from the States, but it didn't taste anything like it. The first taste shocked us, it stunk like troll foot and tasted really salty. But then a couple bites in, our opinion totally changed. It didn't smell like foot, but actually smelled like asparagus, in a green verdant way not like that other way asparagus can smell after digested. And the salt mellowed out a fair bit and was nice. It's texture was gooey and we spread it thick on our slices of baguette tradition.

At the end of a cheese tasting you are supposed to have a salty hard cheese then a blue cheese. We didn't have a blue cheese so we ended with the aged Gouda. It was chock full of calcium lactate crystals. They're like pop rocks for adults. Kimmy really thinks the Gouda tastes like chocolate, and I do kind of understand what she's saying. It's like the flavors don't hit the chocolate taste receptor exactly, but they hit a different taste receptor that still innervates the same chocolate part of the brain. It is chocolate but it isn't.

We washed it all down with a tasty white wine. Unfortunately a couple fruit flies that blew in from the open window (they don't have screens in France) also really liked the wine. Maybe we can use the dregs to make a trap.