Happy New Year!

Hello and Happy New Year!

2013 was an amazing year for me. There was the competition of course, my book 'The Cheese and I' was published, I spent the summer on farms making cheese with my French cheese-making heroes and I came back to the UK and met loads of brilliant UK cheese people.

It looks like 2014 is set to be a big one too; I’m currently working on a second book, much more about the people who work in cheese than about me, with loads of tips about how best to enjoy cheese including a pile of my favourite cheese-based recipes. I’m also hoping to set up a series of cheese and wine evenings, get married and buy a flat – it’s going to be hectic.

I’ll keep you posted with everything that I consider to be interesting, but in the meantime, why not take advantage of the ridiculously good value of the kindle version of my book on Amazon at the moment – yours for just 99p!

Hope that you’re all having a good one – here’s a happy New Year goat…

More cheese adverts

The Nolan's cheese advert made me think of this one. Not sure that I would like panda cheese, but the advert is brilliant.

Mice

I was asked yesterday how it was going, settling back into London. I had to confess that it took remarkably little time to get back into the swing of London life. It’s busy, expensive and the transport system is frustratingly crowded but, there’s loads to do and see and the food is getting better and better all the time.

One of the seemingly unavoidable aspects of living in London seems to be the presence of mice - they’re all over the place and seem to affect most houses at some point or other.

So it was without too much surprise that found myself face-to-face with a mouse in the kitchen yesterday evening (before clumsily chasing it around the kitchen like something out of a Tom & Jerry cartoon). Our kitchen is pretty clean, and we keep our food up high having had problems before, but hey, mice happen...

As I was laying out the traps, I was reminded of two things.

First was the amazing video for Nolan’s cheddar – not a cheese that features significantly (if at all) in my life but I do like the advert.

Second, I remembered back when I was in the caves and had been sent out to the Savoie on the weekly trip to collect cheeses maturing in the caves. We had set out at midnight to make sure that the cheese was back in time to be put away by the day shift, meaning that our last farm on the trip coincided with breakfast at about 7am.

The warm farm kitchen was packed with family, employees and the neighbours who had come down from the mountains to drop off some of their cheese to us. It was a typical farm breakfast: thick black coffee, strange pappy French cake-things in their individual plastic wrappings, homemade charcuterie and of course, cheese.

The cheese on the table, smallish at about 1.5kg, showed some interesting marks, it had been gnawed by mice - turns out that a mouse had got into the ageing room and had a go at one of the cheeses. Of course, it’s unthinkable to sell a cheese that a mouse has chewed, so they kept those for themselves.

Naturally this became a topic of conversation and I was impressed to find out that in taste tests, the nibbled cheeses were also the ones that humans would consider to be the best – showing that there’s not so much of a difference between us after all. I’m not sure if there’s truth in it, but I love the story.

Mice are pests and spreaders of disease and they absolutely need to be removed, particularly from areas of food prep and storage. That said, it’s hard to hate on a serious cheese connoisseur.

Taleggio on chips

A while ago now, my amazing fiancée Jen won us a 3 night stay in luxury accommodation on Bryher – the smallest of the inhabited Isles of Scilly. Last weekend, we collected the prize.

Needless to say, we had an amazing time: rambling lazily around the islands, relaxing in the sun and eating really rather well. In fact the awesomeness of the food was matched only by its epic quantity (I put on 4 pounds over the weekend).

The view from our window

There were many highlights for me: chatting to the seals in the secluded bays, meeting the local goat, and sampling the black pudding in the gourmet full-English. What I thought I would share today though, is a pub snack that we had at the New Inn on Tresco - Taleggio topped chips.

I’ve talked about Taleggio a fair bit on the blog recently so this is the last post on that subject – promise!

Taleggio on chips - gooey, crunchy and thoroughly delicious. 

Actually, the cheese wasn’t the finest ever, it was a bit on the young side but that really didn’t matter. It had been applied perfectly, Taleggio is, to my mind, one of the finest cheeses for cooking, its washed rind which can have a sandy texture crisps up and the slightly bitter taste cuts the fattiness in a dangerously moreish manner. If you've never tried it, make sure that it goes on your next pizza.

In this case, the chips (hand cut of course) had been piled generously into the serving dish and were golden and fluffy. The cheese had been liberally applied on top and presumably grilled, turning it molten but gloriously stringy as you removed a chip.

The coup de grace? More cheese hidden under the chips! I was a happy man.

As we head into winter, this simple yet perfect dish will definitely be featuring on our menu...

St Mary's

Me and William the goat

A to Z of Cheese

Hi All,

In case you missed it, here’s a photo of an article that I wrote for the Daily Express this week. You can find a more readable image here, or you can head over to the Express site.

My A to Z of cheese

Here are a couple of extra letters that didn't make the final cut:

C is for Casein

Casein makes up most of the protein in milk - it’s usually soluble, and its form is a little like tiny balls of wool. The cheesemaking process starts with the unwinding of these balls or cutting them and reforming them into a big web, often with Rennet. This is the curd part of the curds and whey, once the whey has been strained off, you have a cheese – although you might want to take it to the Affineur before tasting it.

T is for Terroir

A French term used to represent everything that makes a product made from that area unique. It’s a combination of geology, geography, local climate, animals and plant life.

The anatomy of a cheese label

In the last post I wrote about a piece of Taleggio that I had bought from the supermarket. It struck me later that it might be interesting to talk a little bit about the packaging of this cheese and the process of judging a cheese by its cover.

I’ve included a picture of the wrapper below and will talk through what I consider to be the important bits.

Label from the cheese that I picked up

(a) Here we have the name of the cheese and its origin, but the interesting bit is the “DOP”. This stands for ‘Denominazione di Origine Protetta’, which translates to ‘Protection Designation of Origin’ (PDO) for British produce and ‘Appellation d'Origine Protegée’ (AOP) for French produce.

This label is proof that the product conforms to, and is protected by, European legislation that ensures that the cheese was not only made in the area from which the cheese was originally produced but crucially was made using methods considered essential to the giving the cheese its unique character. This is the same legislation that requires Champagne to have been made in a very specific part of France according to a well-defined method.

Cheddar isn’t protected in this way and can therefore be made anywhere in the world (although West Country Farmhouse Cheddar PDO is now protected).

The presence of this label doesn’t guarantee the highest quality but it does set a minimum standard that the cheese must have attained and is therefore generally considered to be a good representation of that cheese.

(b) This is the DOP label that demonstrates that the product conforms to the requirements for this type of cheese.

(c) This is the stamp of approval from the ‘Consorzio Tutela Taleggio’ (CTT) – the consortium for the protection of Taleggio – which was set up by the makers and maturers of the cheese to help create the case for the geographical protection of Taleggio .

This precise label is specific to Taleggio but other cheeses may have their own labelling for their own unions.

(d) This is the identification mark. It’s an identifier for the establishment which produced and packaged the cheese or other consumable. This helps to maintain a degree of traceability despite the branding and packaging of the retailer. With a little internet research, these can also be used to find the producers of supermarket ‘own brands’.

‘IT’ is the country code (in this case Italy), and will be found at the top, ‘CE’ stands for European Community (note that this changes with the country according to their language) and will be at the bottom. In the middle is the national approval number for the processing facility.

A quick google of “IT 03/048 Taleggio” brings up a number of sites that link the number to Emilio Mauri S.p.A., a well-known exporter of Taleggio. You can then review that website to find out more about how the cheese was made.

(e) A standard safety warning for this kind of cheese – note that it doesn’t say unpasteurised milk, implying that the milk is pasteurised. If it was unpasteurised then this would have to be marked on the label.

(f) I quite liked this little snippet of advice.

The use by date was stuck to the wrapper as a separate sticker – with a soft cheese like this; I personally would ignore what the use by date says and pick the softest feeling piece of cheese. You’ll probably find that this is the one with the shortest use by date though.

Also note the absence of a ‘Suitable for vegetarians’ label, which implies the use of animal based rennet – a very common in the production of traditional cheeses such as this one.

I’m not going to discuss the nutritional information in this post – I’m no dietician after all. Let’s just say we should try to enjoy cheese, as everything else, in moderation.

Taleggio (from Sainsbury's)

I was in the big Sainsburys on Clapham high street looking for important household goods (elderflower cordial and silver polish) and wandered over to the cheese isle. It turns out that even supermarket cheeses have a strange gravitational effect over me – let’s call it professional curiosity.

I was actually pretty surprised to find an intriguingly diverse display of European cheeses in the “Taste the Difference” range. Readers of this blog will know that I have previously advised against buying cheese from supermarkets but something about the Taleggio called to me. It was a cheese that I enjoyed selling in the shop in France and often would bring a hunk home with me. I think as well, that this was the first time that I had seen the cheese on sale in the UK.

Soft centred and pale - clearly more liquid just under the rind

Taleggio is an northern Italian cow’s milk cheese, named after the valley in Lombardy of the same name. It’s notable for its square shape and wrinkled terracotta rind; its pale centre starts almost chalky but with ageing softens and turns almost liquid under the rind. The rind, when really pushed in age darkens, even taking on a brown/black colour in some areas.

The taste is somewhere between mild and strong depending on whether you eat the rind, it’s kind of confusing on the palate. The rich creaminess of the centre is cut through by the bitterness that the rind imparts, leaving the mouth salivating and eager for more. When aged, the rind turns quite granular, almost sandy and for many, will be left on the side of the plate, although once grilled, becomes brilliantly crispy – ideal for cheese on toast and pizzas.

Rind was quite pale, showing relatively little development

So how does the Sainsbury’s Taleggio fare?

Actually it’s surprisingly good. I was concerned about how long it had been cut, pre-wrapped and left in the fridge – looking at the range of sell by dates they had, I’m guessing potentially 2 or 3 weeks – but it didn’t taste too flat.

The cheese was ripe enough (it’s a good idea to pick the one nearest the sell-by date if there really isn’t any other way to pick between bits) but the rind really hadn’t developed and was rather anaemic looking. That carried through into the flavour which I found to be a bit lacking, I missed some of the more complex hay and meat notes that I was used to with our product in France.

Crucially, did it make a good cheese on toast? Again, definitely passable and made a nice change from cheddar.

The Taleggio performed respectably under the grill

All things considered, I was pleasantly surprised, certainly a step in the right direction and a sensible starting point for those without access to cheese shops and markets.

On the radio

It’s fair to say that things have been a little hectic over the last couple of weeks. I’m pretty much unpacked and settled into London and of course, the book is now published (I’ve seen it in shops and everything). So I’m officially an author. Blimey.

Live from London

The publicity side of things has been a whole new world of weird for me but has been good fun – lots of interviews, presentations and signing of books. I actually spent most of yesterday in a BBC sound studio recording for local radio shows across the country. It turned out that the next person to use the booth I was in was the awesome Bill Bailey. There was just enough time for a quick photo before I was forced out of the building by the enormous entourage of some singer that I confess to never having heard of.

Hats off to the badgers

So what to do to calm down after the 15 minutes of fame? Fortunately there was a very fine hunk of Roquefort in the fridge that I’d picked up from the Mons stall at Borough Market. Tasting that creamy, melt in the mouth woolliness, cut with through with mildly metallic blue notes took me right back to visiting Roquefort this summer, and reminded me that I have several thousand photos that I really ought to start sorting through...

My new book

Did I mention that I wrote a book?!

An advance copy of my new book

Well here’s a photo of the advanced copy that I was recently sent by the nice people at Michael O’Mara books. It’s amazing to see it finally in print.

You’ll be able to get your hands on a copy on the publication date (5^th September) from the usual bookshops and on-line retailers. 

Salers

Apologies all, a technical problem resulted in this post getting deleted. I have now reinstated it.

Hi everyone. Apologies for the lack of posting recently, I’ve been pretty busy making cheese with some great producers. Internet access has been something of a sore point though and my brilliant plans of posting using my smart phone received a rather crushing blow recently (smartphones, as it turns out, don’t take well to heavy rain in the mountains).

I thought that as a taster of what’s been going on, I would share this photo of perhaps my favourite scene to date in the cheese world – the milking of the Salers cow.

There is no milking parlour, we’re out at high altitude in rich, rain-drenched pastures. The Salers cow provides tasty beef, but it was the the milk that this herd was churning out that we were after. It was exceptional and rich, with deep and complex grassy notes.

The beautiful cows of the Salers breed have a tendency to hold onto their milk unless their calf is present - which is why her calf is in frame, tied to her front leg for the milking (one udder is left for the calf afterwards, leaving plenty of milk to supplement their diet). The cows get all the nutrients that they need from the vast expanses of pasture but they do like a bit of salt, so the farmer places a handful on the back of the calf, which the cow will then lick off - an act which calms the calf.

This is a long winded process - the forty or so cows are free to roam in the milking enclosure and with the addition of an equivalent number of calfs and a bull, the milking could well be described as a kind of organised chaos.

The cheese is awesome, what you’re looking for is “Salers Tradition” the “Tradition” is important, it’s a controlled term that ensures that you are eating a cheese made up in the mountains according to the traditional practises. It’s rich, buttery and heavily scented, with grassy, herby notes battling a strong dose of farmyard and an incredibly satisfying bitterness that entices you to take another bite. This is a ‘real cheese’, as real as they get – made how you would want cheese to be made. But a proper description will have to wait for another post – it’s time to get back to the farm...

On age and cheese

So in a previous blog post, I commented that ‘Comté and Beaufort tend to reach their peaks of flavour and texture at around 15 – 18 months’. A reader asked why that was, given that much older Comté is available and very good.

Opening a Comté - one of the best parts
of working in cheese

I am not a specialist in ageing pressed, cooked cheeses such as Comté, Beaufort and the Swiss Gruyeres, but I have been working around them for a fair while now. In the shop I would open perhaps five or so a week with varying ages, and would make sure to taste each and every one of them – partly to check for faults and problems, partly to enable me to describe it to customers, but mostly because the moment that the wheel is cut open is sacred. This cheese has been looked after, caressed and cared for over many months and I have the privilege of opening it and being the first to take advantage of that labour of love. A newly opened wheel is hugely fragrant, but sadly that fragrance disappears very quickly. You can recreate this effect to an extent by taking a freshly cut piece of cheese and breaking it in two then quickly smelling the break.

I found personally that it was the 15 – 18 month period that was the most interesting, and most of the rest of the staff were in agreement on that score - as were a large number of our clients when they tasted our range of Comtés. Of course this is subjective however, and not everyone will agree.

My personal experience of age and hard, cooked cheeses is that over time two main things happen: the texture changes and flavour develops (and of course the price increases). The texture will become less supple, drier and crystals will begin to form (these aren’t salt crystals but rather the amino acid Tyrosine). In terms of flavour, this will improve steadily, becoming more and more interesting, but after about a year and a half I find that whilst the concentration of flavour continues to increase, its complexity begins to decrease. Heavily aged Comtés taste strong, but I find that I miss some of the more subtle expression of the milk that you would find in a slightly younger cheese.

Next time that you have the opportunity to try a younger cheese followed by a mature one, check for yourself how the taste evolves in your mouth and see if you agree with me.

A final point to note is that age is not always the best indicator of quality. Leaving a wheel of gruyere in a walk-in fridge for three years without taking care of it isn’t going to result in the best ever gastronomic experience...

Handed in on time!

So there it is – the completed manuscript for my first book, The Cheese And I. It's coming out in September and I'm so excited to see the finished product. 

I have to confess that I was a little disappointed that the whole book condensed into such a small file size that it would have fitted three times (with room to spare) onto a floppy disk. All those words!

Anyway, now that’s in the trusty hands of the good people at Michael O'Mara books, I’ve begun touring France and checking out some of my favourite cheese producers. The reception can get a little sketchy in the mountains so apologies if I go off radar a bit. I’ll do my best to keep you posted on what I’m up to. I've got my camera with me and will be snapping away, so watch this space for more pictures and cheesy titbits.

Leaving Lyon (sniff)

These last 10 days have been emotional.

Lyon, it’s been awesome - I'm going to miss you.

I have now officially left the Lyon shop, nearly a year to the day when I started, and handed over the keys to our Lyon flat. Our time in Lyon is officially over.

It’s been a blast but it’s time to move on and so I'm back for a short stay in London to finish up the book and finalise organising my “summer of cheese”. I'm planning a tour around France visiting some of my favourite producers and learning about what makes their cheese quite so special.

Lyon has been brilliant and I've met some fantastic people. This post however, is a specific mention and thank you to my favourite cheese shop team at Fromagerie Mons – Etienne Boissy, who have all done so much to help me find my way in the cheese biz (and put up with me when I was massively stressed in competition training).

I've had a great time working with you and thanks for the send-off!

From left to right:
Sabrina, Bénédicte, Etienne, Me, Victor and Severine

More exciting news

Ok, you might have noticed that I haven’t been blogging much recently - Sorry about that, but I do have an excuse though, so please bear with me.

I am very happy to announce that my current distraction from blogging is that I'm writing a book - also titled “The Cheese and I”. It’s being published by the lovely folks at Michael O’Mara Books and is due for an Autumn release this year. It’s going to be fairly autobiographical, talking about how I went from accountant to (ahem, prize-winning) cheesemonger with lots of detail on the people, problems and cheeses that I've met along the way.

If you’re interested, you might want to check out this article from the bookseller and don't worry, I certainly intend to continue blogging so watch this space.

The Bookseller picture unfortunately only shows my face, and not the much more handsome little fella that I was holding at the time. Here it is in full.

Me and a goat

Abondance

Continuing the theme of presenting cheeses from my platter, I thought that Abondance deserved an introduction. Particularly given this epic advert that has been up in most of the Lyon metro stations recently.

Abondance is a pressed and cooked raw cow’s milk cheese in the Savoie, a mountainous part of France that houses some of the French Alps.

"You're going to eat tradition" (with an implied "whether you like it or not")
Check out the official site

The origins of the cheese are tied to the work of the monks at the l’Abbaye d’Abondance who, from the 14^th century, created pastures in the Val de l’Abondance and carefully selected a breed of cows, also known as Abondance. The goal of this work was similar to that of most alpine cheese producers, essentially to find a way of storing the richness of summer grasses and plants through the brutally cold and desolate winter months. Cheese is a great medium for this, particularly the harder, cooked cheeses which age gracefully allowing storage for anything from months to years.

Abondance, a handsome beast

Sorry, 'cooked'?

Just to clarify, when I say that Abondance is a cooked cheese, I mean that once the curd has been formed from the milk in a big vat (like a big jelly), it is cut into lots of little cubes – this mixture of curd cubes and residual whey is then heated, to about 48^oC in the case of Abondance. This causes the curd cubes to tighten and shrink, expelling more liquid. Generally speaking, the lower the moisture content, the longer the cheese will age.

Abondance is considered to be a semi-cooked cheese. Other cooked cheeses include the classic French examples of Comté and Beaufort, which are both cooked to around 53^oC. As a result, Comté and Beaufort tend to reach their peaks of flavour and texture at around 15 – 18 months (although this can vary hugely) and Abondance can’t really be taken much older than a year.

Personally I prefer this cheese when it’s matured - the best part of a year old, such as the piece in these photos - but it is available as young as 3 or 4 months old where the rind will be much paler and the pâte significantly less craggy looking.

Well aged Abondance, showing off its fissured pâte.

In this well-aged piece, the pâte has dried and fissured but the flavour has also developed significantly, imbuing the natural fruity, hazelnutty quality of the cheese with strength, piquancy and a slight bitterness (which refreshes the palate). Watch out though, with some examples of the cheese at this age, it can develop a very strong stinging finish on the tongue.  

This complex flavour, coupled with a relatively soft pâte give a perfect cooking cheese, that is ideally suited to the tops of gratins and the classic après ski fondue.

Another factor that separates this cheese from the Beauforts and Comtés is the treatment of the rind during aging, typically rubbing with water or a water and vinegar mix to develop flavour characteristics commonly found in the soft, washed-rind cheeses such as Epoisses and Langres (more on Langres coming soon to a computer screen near you). This is generally where that bitterness comes from.

The dark brown rind can take on an almost red tinge when well matured

The name Abondance, and the methods through which it is produced have been protected under the French AOC system (Appellation d’Origine Contrôlé) since 1990. If you can find it, you should really be looking for the rarer Abondance Fermier, which is essentially produced through the same process, but mechanisation is largely prohibited.

Parmesan

Parmesan (as the French call it), or to give it its full name Parmigiano-Reggiano DOP, was another of the cheeses that I put on my competition platter. It’s a stunning Italian cheese that I imagine almost everyone reading this will have come across in some form or another.

Parmesan showing off its brittle texture

In the UK, we tend to use it almost as seasoning, grated onto pizza, or shaved over a salad. But there’s more to it than that, this is a fascinating and unusual cheese that’s well worth a more in-depth look. I could go into huge detail as to how it’s made and aged etc. but there are already some pretty good resources on this on the web, so I would invite you to have a look at these videos.

So, how should you buy parmesan? As I've said before, if you can possibly avoid it, you really shouldn't be buying cheese from a supermarket. Try and find your nearest cheese shop, it is well worth the effort to forge a lasting relationship with an expert, the rewards are greater than Nectar points can ever be.

Parmesan's marked rind

You should look for parmesan in the biggest squarest lump that you can find/afford, it’ll last well in the fridge but the issue, as always, is that a cut cheese dries out. The cheese, for me at least, is always better when freshly cut, the texture will have a crumbly, and is almost effervescent in the mouth; the flavour will be fresher as well. That’s why the best parmesan you will ever taste is prised from the centre of a wheel of parmesan opened just instants ago. It’s worth noting that as soon as a cheese is cut, the wonderful flavour compounds that have been building up over the years of affinage will be released in a short burst that’s almost criminal to miss.

I included Parmesan on my cheese platter because its taste and texture border on unique in the cheese world and it deserves to be treated as a cheese in its own right, not just as a dust on top of what might otherwise be a bland pasta dish. My recommendation is that the next time you have cause to open a bottle of champagne, you buy a reasonably well aged piece of Parmesan (around a couple of years old) that hasn't been allowed to dry out too much and you prise it apart into small bite size chunks at the last possible moment. Paired with the champagne, or a good dry sparkling wine, it truly comes alive.

Any leftover chunks (unlikely though they might be) go well in in a salad, and don’t forget that the rind can be added to the mix to impart a soup or risotto with a richer savoury flavour – just drop it in to the simmering stock.

I wanted to finish with a brief aside on opening and cutting a wheel of Parmesan. The whole cheese is a bit of a beast, weighing in at around 40kg and it tends to have quite an oily rind making it difficult to manoeuvre. 

My boss Etienne having opened a Parmesan the
traditional way with his Parmesan knives

Traditionally it’s opened with a set of specialist knives with flat 10 cm long blades, inserting and wiggling to find the natural weaknesses in the cheeses, this splits the cheese leaving a very uneven surface, giving a great idea of how the curds hold together to form the finished cheese. This opening method is considered to respect the texture of the cheese.

In the Mons caves and shop however, we do it differently. We use a very long, extra thick cheese wire to cut the cheese neatly in half, the benefit being a much lower surface area to lose humidity and flavour, with the advantage that it is easier to wrap closely once cut to further reduce undesired loss of water. Pulling a thick cheese wire through a block of solid cheese is no easy business and requires both muscle and technique - it took me a while to get the hang of it.

It’s with a certain nerdy pride that I framed the badge of the Italian affineur from the first Parmesan that I managed to open myself. It’s now sitting on the mantelpiece.

Parmesan trophy

Tartiflette

A while ago now I held a cheese evening celebrating winter cheeses (see the 'Events' tab for more on these). The purpose of the evening was to show off the cheeses that are at their seasonal best in the colder months and a few ways to make cheese a more central element in a meal, rather than just a quick (and all too often over-looked) course between main and dessert.

Individual Tartiflettes

As part of the evening, I decided to serve my interpretation of Tartiflette, a well-loved French dish that marries hot gooey cheese with potatoes to create the food equivalent of a snug woollen jumper and slippers. Perfect for when all is cold, wet and miserable outside, or you’ve done sufficient exercise to merit such a calorific treat. Although one could easily believe that this après-ski staple has all the hall-marks of a French family classic, the recipe was actually created in the 1980s by the ‘Syndicat Interprofessionnel du Reblochon’ as a means to sell more of the key cheesy ingredient, Reblochon.  

Reblochon is a small flat creamy cheese from Savoie protected with AOP status. Its rind is washed during the ageing process to create a more complex flavour and develop its beautiful orange rind. The cheese came into existence as a rent dodge for farmers renting land in the region. The farmer would halt the milking process before the cow’s udders were empty so as to pay rent on a smaller quantity of milk (rent would have been proportional to the milk obtained). Later the farmer would use the rest of the milk to make a small cheese. Brilliantly, “reblocher” is the verb for this process.

Browning the onions in the tasty bacon fat

In essence, tartiflette is potatoes drenched in a creamy lardon, onion and wine sauce, with Reblochon added to the mix and layered on top. The whole thing is left in the oven or grill to melt and brown the cheese.

Everyone has their own favourite way of preparing this meal. I asked my fellow cheese professionals at the shop for their recipe, they all had their own way of doing it, and they all thought that theirs was the best….

Most of the recipes out there involve presentation in a large sharing dish. Sharing like this is no bad thing, but I wanted to go for something a bit more formal in presentation, so I created this version of the recipe for individual servings in ramekins.

Ready for some wine and cream...

One thing that I ought to point out is that the photos here are of a practice run in which I used Reblochon. On the evening, I replaced the Reblochon with Abbaye de Tamié instead which is a rather similar, monk-made cheese that has a much more robust (and fairly pungent) flavour – it’s an amazing cheese and if you’re a fan of Reblochon, well worth looking up.

When you’re making this you may find that you have sauce left over, in which case, grab some bread and mop that savoury goodness up immediately. If you have sliced potatoes left over, you can pan fry them for brilliant sauté potatoes.

Reblochon disk shortly to be cut in two

Individual Tartiflettes (serves 4)

4 Ramekins

1 clove of garlic

2 onions, finely sliced

200g smoked lardons (or streaky bacon)

750g waxy potatoes (skins left on)

A good bottle of white wine, slightly sweet and not too acidic. Preferably Vin de Savoie

100ml of cream

Half a Reblochon or Abbaye de Tamié

1. Pre-heat the oven to 180^oC.
2. Get the potatoes on to steam (or boil) early - they need to be pretty much cooked through when you put the dish together so it makes sense to get them going ASAP.
3. Slowly heat smoked lardons (or streaky bacon cut into small pieces) in a dry pan to render out the fat, cook until starting to crisp and then add the sliced onion.
4. Soften the onion over a low heat until it tastes sweet and has started to brown. Take your time and don’t rush or you’ll end up with a nasty burnt onion taste. This stage is going to take up to 15 minutes with a bit of occasional stirring. If the pan is too dry, feel free to add some butter.
5. Once the onions are sweet and brown and very tasty, pour a decent sized glass of wine into the pan and stir, cooking off the alcohol, then add the cream and turn the heat right down.
6. Take your cheese and use a biscuit cutter to cut neat circles out of it and then cut each of these in half to leave disks with rind on one side. Roughly chop the rest of the cheese and stir it through the now rich and sticky sauce. Test the sauce for seasoning and acidity - you may need to add more wine if it tastes a bit flat.
7. The potatoes should be just about cooked by now, and if they aren’t it isn’t the end of the world as they’re going to get some oven time. Drain them and let them cool a little, then slice them into ~4 mm disks.
8. You’re now ready to prepare the tartiflette! Kick things off by rubbing your ramekins with a garlic clove that has been cut in half.
9. Now start layering. Begin with a spoonful of the sauce then add a layer of potatoes, repeat until the ramekin is nearly full with a sauce layer on top. Now add your disk of cheese and place the ramekins in the oven for 20 minutes or so. The filling will still be hot so it’s just a question of melting and browning the cheese. Keep checking to make sure that the top isn’t burning though.
10. Serve to your guests (or eat them all yourself).

Rigotte de Condrieu

Over the next few blog posts I'd like to share a bit more about some of the cheeses that were used on my platter in the competition.

As we're reliably informed / desperately hoping, spring is around the corner, and the peak goat's cheese season is starting in earnest. With that in mind, let's start this series of posts with the small but mighty Rigotte de Condrieu. As with all cheeses, there is effectively too much to say about this cheese to fit it into a little blog post, so I’ll just give you a taster…

Rigotte de Condrieu

It’s a small hockey puck of a cheese, made with raw goat’s milk and weighing in at a minimum of 30g. The milk has to come from certain breeds of goat that trace their lineage back to the Massif Centrale and the cheese must be made on the slopes of the Massif du Pilat just south of Lyon - A fairly desolate and remote area which can trace its goat’s cheese making back to the 18th century.

The word “Rigotte”, as far as I can tell, is a derivation of “rigol” or “rigot”, which were words used to describe small streams running off of the Massif and potentially through Condrieu, a former principle market in the region. Like so many other examples (Stilton being a classic one), the cheese takes its name after the market in which it is sold, rather than the area in which it was made.

The rigotte has an ivory coloured rind that can become blue with greater age. In the early stages of its life it has a melt (slowly) in the mouth texture which hardens to become really quite brittle (like the ones in the photos).

Its taste is uncompromisingly goaty, with hints of hazelnut, and, when young, a slight acidic tang.

Hockey puck shape, perfect for
warming through and adding to salads

This is a cheese that goes well warmed through slightly in a salad, or when aged and fairly dry in texture, is excellent as an aperitif. An obvious wine match would be a Condrieu, but essentially, something white and slightly oaked, and neither too dry nor too acidic will be great.

As a brief aside, it’s worth noting that the Rigotte de Condrieu occupies a rather unusual position of being recognised under the French Appellation d'Origine Controlee (AOC) system but not the European Appellation d’Origine Protégée (AOP). The reasoning is that in the eyes of Europe the Rigotte has yet to prove that its qualities and characteristics derive essentially from its geographic environment. They’re currently working on proving that link pretty hard I believe.

The various systems of geographic protection (AOP and AOC etc…) are wonderfully interesting and bureaucratic, and really deserve space of their own to describe. I'll go into more detail about this and try to decode some of the complexities in a future post. 

The brittle texture of an aged Rigotte,,,

More cheese carving

I’m hoping to get a new post out this weekend. In the meantime, here's a picture of a piece of Mimolette that I carved a couple of weeks ago. I’ve been doing a bit more of this recently for work events…

 

Carved Mimolette

The competition

So.

Well.

Err…

What can I say? It’s been an interesting 10 days for us out here in Lyon…

I think now it seems clear that the competition organisers probably aren't going to ring me up to say that it’s all been an unfortunate mistake and that they want their trophy back.

Putting together the cheeses

Looking back on the day, I remember feeling really un-prepared - Like when I got into the shop’s van with my cheeses safely in the back and realising that I had no idea how to turn the hand brake off.

As I imagine is often the case for this kind of event, there was a fair amount of milling around to help ramp up the nervousness. The competitors were split into two groups as we couldn't all work at the same time. I was lucky to be randomly selected as one of the first group as I think that the waiting (2 hours in a separate room with no access to the outside world) would have really put me on edge.

I won’t mention the subsequent issues in un-loading my cheese and driving the van into a crash barrier (at least it was a movable one and there was no visible damage – sorry Etienne…).

The order of the event was as follows:

• Presentation of 3 cheeses (chosen at random from the 10 that we were all required to bring) to the jury for marking on taste and affinage
• Writing a fact sheet for each of these 3 cheeses
• Creating a cheese platter including the 10 required cheeses and at least 15 of our own choice
• A test to cut and wrap cheeses to a series of specific weights without scales
• A blind tasting exercise with 3 unknown cheeses to identify

The competition flew by and it was surprisingly easy to ignore the crowd in front and to focus on the tasks in hand. What was harder though was ignoring the video cameras which were busy zooming in on our work.  I wasted a good few minutes hoping that they would leave me alone so that I could get on with my platter…

In my box, waiting for the fun to start

I don’t have the breakdown of my score across the various challenges as yet (when I do, maybe I’ll go into a bit more detail on this) but there were bits that felt like they went well and others less so. In the ’less so’ camp were the written and oral elements in which my lack of frenchness proved to be a disadvantage. I just really couldn't write as quickly as I would have liked to and my words got caught up when trying to explain why I had picked certain cheeses.

The platter itself took 45 minutes to complete, but I had run through it enough times in practice to know that I could get it done on time, and crucially, where I needed to be at 10 minute intervals. I didn't get everything quite right, but then those that know me will say that I'm always over critical of my work.

The blind tasting was ok, as was the cutting to weight – well, I say that but as I don’t have the marks, I've no idea how I actually did…

As for the prize giving, by that point, I was pretty tired and not really listening to the speeches. I'd sort of convinced myself that I wasn't going to place, and when they announced my name my jaw practically hit the floor…

Anxiously waiting

I’ve said it before, but I’ll keep saying it: I'm massively grateful for all the help and support I’ve received in the run up to this competition, particularly with the Mons organisation and the shop. It’s also been great to hear from all of you who've made contact with me.

I’ll be sure to write more soon!

Coming to terms with the win with my boss Etienne Boissy