Calendar Highlights

See the bottom of this page for Charlie's immodest blog

Meanwhile...

Rose Prince book signining at Turnbull

Rose Prince, the local literary food hero will be at Turnbulls Deli for a book signing on Saturday 12th April.  The team are delighted to offer customers the opportunity to meet Rose and acquire specially signed copies of her latest book The New English Table, which is launched this week.

As a cook and food journalist, Rose is well-known for her columns in many papers, including the Independent on Sunday and the Telegraph, and her previous books.  Rose is an ardent supporter of seasonal and locally sourced food, and The New English Table is as inspiring as ever.  Readers can browse through 200 completely new, delicious recipes using unusual English fare (such as cobnuts and red Duke of York potatoes) and learn how to make the most of special occasions with more expensive ingredients like organic and rare breed meats.

To celebrate Rose’s visit, Turnbulls will be making two of the recipes for customers to taste during her visit, which takes place from 12.00-2.00pm on Saturday 12th April.  Turnbulls already has copies of the book for sale, and everyone is invited make a date and book a space at the Shaftesbury launch of The New English Table.  

 

Weekend events at Turnbulls

It may be doom and gloom on the high street according to the papers, but not at Turnbulls.  We are putting on a tasting every weekend because we want to. 

In February we have pancakes, Mother’s Day Hampers, Valentine’s Day and Purple Love Week.

In March there is a celebration of Wales over St David’s Day, Ireland over St Patrick’s Day, and the small matter of Easter.

Come along and try something special at Turnbulls.

See the full calender for details.

 

Turnbulls Catering Summer Menu

Corinne's summer menu is now available for the coming season. If you are thinking of an summer evening dinner, a birthday party, drinks and canapés for friends and family, or simply the wedding of a lifetime, give Corinne a call for the best caterer of local food in Dorset, Wiltshire or Somerset.

Download a Turnbulls Catering & Events summer menu

 

Shaftesbury Local Food Festival 2008 - From 1st to 5th May 2008 

The success of the festival last year means we are already gearing up for 2008.  if you are a food producer and would like a stall at our event in 2008 download a Food Festival Supplier Information Pack,email me , or call 01747 858 575.

 

Charlie T's blog from France

Journal and blog, April 6th to April 20th 2008

Travels with the Duchess, Trip 1

Sunday, April 6.

I set off this morning from Somerset and headed across the Channel on flat seas and in bright sunshine.  Somerset had been covered in snow, and although snow puts me in a good mood I have two weeks of camping ahead of me and good weather will be preferred: I was glad to see the back of the white stuff.  I will be staying at a campsite in Argentan in the Orne district of Normandy, and I have rung ahead to confirm my reservation.

I had unfortunately miscalculated my arrival time at Caen, meaning I would not be getting to the campsite until midnight. Two hours since the owners had gone to bed, I would be relegated to the car park.  To make it worse the snow started again as soon as we docked.  By the time I was in Argentan I was in the middle of the blizzard.  Stuck in a parking lot, experiencing a whiteout, and struggling with my tent bolted to the top of the landrover (named Duchess), my great cheese expedition was off to a slippery start.

 

Monday, April 7.

Complications with locked showers apart (French campsites have a rhythm I have yet to keep pace with), I was on my way to Camembert with the window open letting in the morning sun.  New to Normandy and I have been immediately struck with how beautiful it is.  There are elements to remind me of Somerset and Dorset, slightly rolling hills, green pastures and all-to-pretty farmsteads.  Wine is not grow up here because the ground is too good, suitable “only” for lush green grass and their Normande cattle.

The Norman cheeses that have the AOC mostly prescribe Normandy cattle.  They are a mixed breed descending from a local cattle (no one seems sure what) mixed with Danish breeds brought down by the Vikings in the 8-9th centaury.  In the 18th century the genetics were mixed again with our Durham cows.  I am not familiar with the Durham breed; I must look it up when I get back. 

To call Camembert, or rather the village of Camembert, cute is to understate it. But it was so cute everything was closed.  I had to hunt down the mayor's office to find if anything was going on. 

Fortunately in a slightly French way, the mayor's assistant was just on her way home to lunch and will be very happy to guide me to the farm M. Francois Durand.  M. Durand is the only fermier producer (a farmer who makes cheese on his farm from his own milk) of camembert left, and only one of five who make it with the raw (unpasteurised) milk.

I got my second break when two journalists from our own Guardian newspaper turned up to interview Mr Durand about the so-called Camembert wars.

For those who don’t read the cheese papers, the Camembert AOC has been going through some controversy to do with ladling.  The original Camembert AOC rules prescribe hand ladling of the curd into the moulds, and the ladle has become a kind of symbol to the artisan camembert makers.

The ladling process is supposed to protect the curds from breaking up and reduces the amount of air that gets into the pate.  However this manual process massively limits the bigger producers’ ability to mechanise the process, and have been trying to change it accordingly.  A week before my arrival there was a decision to commit to continue using the traditional method: good news and something I support entirely. 

However, controversy remains and the Guardian on the case.

Angelique and Rebecca had also arranged to meet two Grand Fromages of the Camembert world to be interviewed and discuss the matter.  As far as I'm concerned this was a bonanza.  I spent the rest of the day talking cheese as best I could in franglais to two pukka established cheesy Frenchmen.  We also tasted some of M. Durand’s finest calibre.  I am not exaggerating to say this is the best Camembert I have ever had. (Note later experience: Ed.)

At this point I have to be slightly frank about the Camembert I sell at Turnbulls.  The versions I sell come from a producer called Gillot, and I had arranged to meet them later in the week.  They are one of the other five who make traditional raw milk Camembert, so their pedigree is good, but the one I stock is clearly not the right choice. 

This is a disappointment, but I am here to learn, so I must take it on the chin.  The gap between what I sell and a good camembert is not like wanting to upgrade your mini metro from 1.2L to 1.4L: it is more like taking like eyeing up a BMW cabriolet from the front seat of your Ford Mondeo. 

And I simply don't believe that it is all the manufacturer.  Asking questions of my two cheese gurus (M. Durand is very quiet man and moves around like a slightly tall mouse), it is clear that the problem is also in the affinage or maturing process.

Camembert is a wrapped 21 days after it is made, at approximately the time it usually passes to a wholesaler.  If is properly stored for best eating it must be around 10° to 13°C, but during transportation by a wholesaler on its way to Turnbulls in Somerset, they must stay at 4°C. 

A maturing camembert is alive as it matures: 4°C is like putting it to bed and turning out the light – the active ingredients (if they survive the process) hibernate not mature.  Hence, much of the maturing for imported French cheeses does not happen.

The cheese I tasted at M. Durand’s was made a short 7 yards away from where I tasted it, 50 yards away from where I met his cows munching on their winter fodder.  It had been stored for 40 days in ideal conditions, and had been given every opportunity to come to perfection and consequently tasted divine.  It was soft and floppy at the edges with a crumbly line though the core.  Herbaceous, balanced and tangy, it was gorgeous.

My camemberts are firm and clearly defined in shape, sometimes softening all the way to their centre, but they never have the lightness and flavour of these.  We in England judge the level of maturity by the degree of creaminess but it seems this is not the best you can get, but the best we can get (usually) given the limitations of the transport system.  Mine might soften all the way through, but not in a balanced way, and they never develop their potential for flavour that was imbued by the care and attention of the cheesemaker.

Frequently this means that the very centre of the French camembert may still be firm and chalky; something we think of as a sign of immaturity.  Because our camemberts are asleep when they arrive, we are forced to rush our cheeses to maturity before their use-by date.

It may be that the white bloom becomes over active and damages the over all balance of the cheese, but hey, that is just a guess. 

Anyway.  I have seen and what Camemberts can be.  This is already setting the standard high when I return to Dorset

After a brief stop at the Graindorge Fromagerie and an unsuccessful encounter with an Orange mobile phone shop (if you think an automated answering services are frustrating in English, you should try them in French), I decided that another night in the snow may be best avoided, and I booked myself into a Gites.

We West Country folk know thing or two about holiday homes and bed-and-breakfast's.  All I can say is, it is a miracle I got out of there alive.  She was the nicest lady (I assume there was a husband somewhere) and I was the only one there.  When she showed me the power point for the heater carefully suspended by its own wires underneath the sink in the bathroom, and the dining room that smelt of carbon monoxide (no doubt coming from the little heater conscientiously positioned by my chair) I finally saw a decent argument for all those checks and inspectors we are crowded by in the UK.

One last point: after the most astounding meal she offered me a cheese board that included a Durand camembert.  It was very poor.  Acidic with ammonia, it was harsh and not enjoyable.  Perhaps she liked them that way and I was not being French enough to cope with the stronger flavours, but it was unbalanced and completely at contrast with the example from earlier in the day.  It seems that affinage can not only make a cheese but also break one.

 

Tuesday, April 8

Up with the sparrows.  It was fractionally warmer than my tent habitat, but not by much.  Given the risk of weight gain due to two weeks dedicated to cheese tasting I had packed running shoes and I meant to use them.  Normandy in the early spring sunshine was all ice and sunshine, fields not yet grazed from the winter and thick woodlands dense on the horizon. 

My first appointment was with the Graindorge Fromagerie.  An evangelical attendant the evening before had promised cheese making this morning but this turned out to be over-optimism.  My tour was off a lot of empty vats and unmoving machines.  Whereas M. Durand makes 400 Camembert each day, these people make thousands.  They have a machine that looks exactly like the one that writes Picasso on the sides of that car in the adverts to cut all the curds for their Pont l’Eveque.  The even have machines that automatically wrap cheeses and put them into their little boxes, and another for boxing little boxes into bigger boxes.

But their museum shows the history of Normandy cheeses very comprehensively and laid out a comprehensive understanding of the land and its history.  This context is important. 

I bought one of their camemberts washed in calvados.  I had tasted one before when judging at the World Cheese Awards and some notable judges gave it the thumbs up.  This is rare for a cheese that has been bastardised in the name of commercialism.  I thought I should try it again.

I popped into Liseux to get some information: this is a town that has a church complex.  The first church I saw I thought was pretty big and pretty impressive.  Then I realised, they also have a cathedral.  That was bigger and more impressive.  I had a little joke with myself about getting it wrong and remembering a similar experience once when visiting Wells: we had confused the parish church at the wrong end of High Street with the cathedral.  However Liseux goes even one better: they have something called a basilisk dedicated to St Marie Therese.  It is enormous, and with its two colonnades stretching out to left and right, it stands at the top of the town like some enormous white tiger.

Three more cheese places in the afternoon.  The first, Domaine de St Hippolyte a 16thc manor near Livarot, was not making cheese, but is a vision of a remade in a touristy way.  It gave me the opportunity to see the Normande cattle up close and resulted in having my hand licked by one of these overly friendly beasties with a 9 inch tongue.  It is quite scary when you're not expecting it.

The second in Avernes Saint-Gourgon had been recommended as one of the best Livarot producers, but had closed six years ago due to too much bureaucracy, paperwork and red tape - something we Brits can sympathise with. 

The third, La Houssaye in Boissey(recommended by the second), won gold in 2007 for both its Pont l’Eveque and Livarot at the prestigious French Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries awards.  I also bought one of their Pays d’Auge I went on to have for supper.  It's a simple but excellent cheese, and is probably the most authentic descendent of the original cheeses of the area.  It is roughly the same size and shape as a Pont l’Eveque but a bit deeper.  It has a creamy flavour and firm body which can be dull, but this one is beautifully balanced and was very easy eating!

I am now parked up with a bottle of most excellent cider next to a river in Putanges. Supper with the duchess as my table and listening to a Scottish folk band called Cappercaille … I should do this more often.

 

Wednesday, April 9.

I had to be up bleeding early this morning to get packed up in time for an 8 o'clock meeting at the Gillot dairy in St Hilaire Briouze.  Of the five AOC raw milk Camembert makers this is the largest.  The bigger an operation the more difficult it is to meet the lait cru regulations, and these guys have around 100 farms.  Lait cru does not mean simply unpasteurised, but also means that the milk has not been micro-filtered, homogenised or treated in any way.  Exactly what makes the perfect milk for raw milk cheeses is currently a very hot topic in French cheese circles, but the most common line adopted is not to mess around with it in any way.

The milk inside the udder of the cow is completely free of all micro-organisms and bacteria.  When the cows are milked the first few squirts from the teat are discarded, whether by hand or by machine.  The milk is then extracted and put into storage before being ready for the cheese making process.  It's only once the milk has left the cow that the hidden extras that make lait cru cheeses so special come alive. 

However, nasties like salmonella and lysteria may also enter, and every farm is checked individually and repeatedly to ensure this doesn't happen.  The French are every bit as careful in checking as we are, but they seem to have a more practical approach.  Because raw milk cheeses are so much part of their culture (and for many cheeses required by law) it is not a question of whether you should be making raw milk cheeses, but how.

In England, the process of making raw milk cheeses is now reasonably established, and the HSE has accepted that it can be done.  However, the HSE comes down like ton of bricks should it deem there to be a risk.  It has very strong powers to shut down businesses and condemn foods even where the actual presence of contaminated food or milk has not been shown.  There have been two cases that I know of where a cheesemaker has been severely damaged by what turned out to be unfounded accusations of pathogens present in their foods.  The damage done to their businesses was devastating and there is often no compensation.

In Ireland and Scotland they have both been cases where individual cheesemakers, not people who tend to have any money, have fought protracted legal battles to establish raw milk cheeses as both safe and worth manufacturing.  The government relevant bodies had simply retreated into the tick-box rhetoric of the nanny state.

Anyway, I digress.  This creamery is owned by a butter company called Flechard.  I did not know this time and I was met at the door by Maxime Flechard, a young bloke in sweatshirt and ripped jeans.  I had been pointed in Maxime's direction because he spoke English and he handled the exports, including dealing with the supplier from whom I get my French cheeses.

From the beginning it was clear I was buying the wrong cheese from them.  The Bocage Camembert is neither AOC nor lait cru, although Maxime said that it was very popular outside France because of its creamier and less strong characteristics.  It seems there is a difference between the camembert preferred in France and those preferred abroad: Frenchmen prefer theirs to be tangier and less creamy than we Johnny foreigners.

The tour of the factory was amazing.  They have two separate production lines: one for the traditional handmade method of Camembert that qualifies for the AOC and a second more mechanised version without hand ladling.  The AOC line is split into two so that should a batch be found to be defective and had to be discarded, only a limited amount is lost.  The whole impression made upon me was of a well thought out balance between tradition and cost saving mechanisation.  Where there was a conflict, tradition and quality seemed to be winning out.

My thanks to Maxime for his tour and his time.

My next stop was Neufchatel.  This is quite a long road north into a separate department of Normandy. I had quite a difficult time finding a producer on the net, and a couple of leads had come to nothing.  However, the Office to Tourisme pointed me in the direction of several farms that sell over the farm gate, and kept ringing one until we found one that was open.

Fermier cheeses are completely different to more mass produced versions.  The obligations on farms are less onerous than those on creameries because the milk only travels across the farmyard.  The risks of external contamination are lower and more effective controls can be put on a smaller enterprise. 

However, I was completely surprised by the rustic attitude of this form.  Whereas with many cheesemaking processes, the cleanliness requirements mean that either I cannot visit the rooms were cheesemaking actually occurs, or I have to be suited and booted in a white coat, hairnet and shoe coverings (I look very fetching).  With this lady we wandered straight in, me out of my car, she from her farmhouse.  Rock on the French.

The process was basic, simple, and clearly had not changed in decades.  The cheese presses were like the kind of things sheets get pressed with in launderettes, and the mixing bowl where the added that the salt was identical (if older) to the food mixers Fudges Bakery use down in Stalbridge to make their cakes.

Neufchatel is famous for being heart shaped, but is otherwise to us British seen as very similar to Camembert.  It does not go so runny, and in fact is a younger cheese all round.  The process of making Neufchatel is however quite different.  Whereas with all the cheeses I've seen so far, the curd is placed in moulds to drain down to roughly a fifth of its volume, with Neufchatel the curd is drained of whey in large linen-type bags that look very like nose bags for horses.  After this the curd is pressed and salt is added, before it is put into moulds that looked very like cookie cutters.  This means the curd is denser and drier.  The cheeses then go on in the normal way to develop the white bloom in the maturing room.

All the cheese sold from the farm are sold direct to the customer, and consequently individual cheeses are not wrapped for transport.  I pointed out the ones I wanted and they were wrapped for me there and then.

These cheeses are cheap as chips, and I have no idea how she makes any money.  I can only imagine they do not have to pay the same council tax as we do.

I pushed on to Maroilles that night, just to find nearly everything closed.  I ended up giving directions from a short, rotund lady half way through glass of wine in an Auberge.  She was very friendly and pointed me at a very run-down campsite.

I ended up at a restaurant run by a man called Tony with an egg on his head so large it was like something out of Tom and Jerry cartoon.  While listening to Manchester United play some French team on the radio he told me where I should be going for good Maroilles cheese while feeding me a flamiche.  Flamiche is a local kind of pizza where the dough in the base rises.  I must try it at the deli.

 

Thursday, April 10.

La Ferme du Pont des Loups was Tony's choice of cheesemaker.  This area is near Calais and consequently is relatively highly visited by day-trippers.  The shops and cheesemakers are set up for tourists and this one was no exception.  However its food products were all home made on the farm, from yoghurt to butter to cheese to creams.

Alexandre, I guess he must have been about 40, is the boss and cheesemaker, and he obliged by showing me the cheese making process in his limited English.  Full fat and lait cru, maroilles is not very well known in the UK.  None of my suppliers even import it.  However, in this corner of France it is the only AOC cheese, and they are very proud of it (a taxi driver in Paris described it as his father’s favourite while holding his nose to denote its stinky reputation!).  It is a washed-rind cheese, which means that during the maturing process it is literally scrubbed by a brush with a salt solution.

The curd is ladled into the forms are left to drain, and salted by being dipped in a brine solution similar to Pont l’Eveque.  The key differences in the manufacturing process only really occur in the maturing room. 

After the moulds are taken off and the cheeses are placed on their racks, they are washed with brine twice a week.  Interestingly, Maroilles does not mature once it leaves the farm: it is essential that the white bloom, which has been repressed by the washing process, is not allowed to develop.  In this way it is completely different from Camembert and the degree of ripeness or strength that you want must be requested from the cheesemaker themselves. 

The cheeses are ready to eat from four to five weeks, but they can be matured to up to four months, sometimes longer.  A young maroilles has a firm yet slightly chalky texture and tastes sweet and not too strong.  It cooks and melts very well.

The older maroilles stink to high heaven.  The taste is saltier and more piquant, yet remaining rich and creamy.  The additional saltiness arises due to the brine washing during the additional weeks.  This is the cheese to prefer for your cheese board.

As I was buying some to bring home, Alexandre suggested that he vacuum pack the cheeses for the journey.  I reassured him that I had fridge full of cheese already, and that it would make no difference, but he gave me a look that perhaps said he was going to pretend he had not understood, mumbled something about the smell.  He went ahead anyway and I will no doubt be thanking him by next Sunday.

Before I arrived the only place I could find on the internet for maroilles was La Ferme du Verger Pilote and it had good reviews.  Tony however had warned me off it, saying that their cheese was not as good as Alexandre's. 

When I arrived it was quick to see why: busloads of tourists from every corner of Europe were about to be entertained by accordion players in traditional costumes while they ate set meals for a handful of euros.  This was clearly a tourist trap of some note.  I checked out their shop nonetheless but was very disappointed.  There wasn't even someone there to serve me, although I was thankful that I could leave without being noticed.  There was no sign of any connection to the cheese maker.

Next stop: Paris.

 

Friday, April 11.

Today's first destination is Rungis, a very famous food market to the south of Paris near their Orly airport.  It is for trade users only, and I did not have an appointment, so I was a little uncertain what I might be able to find.

The first thing I couldn't find was the market.  It's about 30 acres and for the life of me no matter how hard I tried the road signs just sent me in circles. 

Finally I ended up parking and walking, but even that was not the end of my travails: there was no reception as such, and I was sent from office to office until finally poking my head through an open door in the marketing department on the 10th floor.  I had found a tidy French looking lady.  She had an expansive desk in an expansive office with an expansive view: she was clearly Important in Marketing. 

Too important to be a guide, she gave me a map and said I should just head into the market and ask around.  This suited me fine.

Rungis is essentially a series of market traders who wholesale cheeses, and anything else you can eat, from across France and to an extent Europe.  The buyers are global.  However, these market stalls are not one guy in an apron standing beneath a tarpaulin, but 20 guys in blue coats shifting cheese around on pallets.  My guide was an export manager for one of these companies, a lad called Michael with a Brummie accent, not too much hair and who claimed to be born in Wales.  He and his product were amazing.

This is where I should buy my cheese.  It is only a question of whether I sell enough to make importing it myself worthwhile.  Michael showed me whole emmentals, gruyeres, cantals, Beauforts, all so big it would take two men to lift them.  We went on to morbiers, gorgonzolas, tomme de Savoie, bries by the palate, Parmegiano Reggiano as big as wine barrels (well small ones anyway).  And there are the goat and sheep cheeses, some the size of a child's fist others small pyramids and others like logs. 

I have never seen so much cheese in one place at one time, and for every one I recognised, there were three I did not.  Michael's company was the largest operator there and he claimed there was nothing he could get me.

We do not yet sell enough cheese to order more than once every two or four weeks, and perhaps not even then.  I'll have to look into joining up with another delicatessen or two to order jointly.  The quality and the choice are superior to what I'm being offered now, and with more interesting cheeses to sell, maybe I can up my turnover.  That the quality and freshness here is superior is not surprising – the top chefs in Paris use this place as their supermarket.

Dropping my car off at Le Camping in the Bois de Boulogne, I headed into Paris for a shop called Androuet. M. Androuet wrote a famous cheese encyclopaedia at the beginning last century, and I'd seen camembert branded with his name in the Gillot storerooms.  My first address was Rue Daguerre so off there I went. 

England just does not have streets like this: there were cheesemongers, butchers, bakers, fishmongers, delis and pasta shops, fruit and vegetable sellers, all bustling up against each other as if for warmth.  Not the foodie towns like Ludlow nor the best streets in London have such a density of good food for consumers.  The Fishmonger, for example, had about 17m of fish sitting up on ice.  Oystrers, clams, prawns/langoustine in every cooked or uncooked form, whole squid, whole monkfish, sole.  It was wonderful.

And at one end across the main road was a McDonalds, sitting brooding like the kid who can’t join the club.  The contrast was acute.

No more cheese on Friday: I spent it walking around Paris seeing the sites and looking for the grave of Jim Morrison.  I did manage a little brie in a bar which had the best live guitarist I have ever listened to.  They served a platter very similar to Turnbulls meat & cheese platter with a glass of wine.  A lovely way to end the day.

 

Saturday 12 April

Still no sign of M. Androuet’s shop.  I had a second address but having walked the entire street, he was not there.  Buying a baguette later, a nice lady (the small rotund version again: I think it is the French equivalent of asking a policeman) said that he had moved, and frankly it was not worth it.  He used to be good, she said, but now not so.  I would be better, she said, going to the food floor of the Galleries Lafayette.

The Galleries Lafayette is not dissimilar to Selfridges, with concessions and the like to all the brand names you can think of.  Like the Selfridges food hall it is heaven and hell for a gourmand, and just passing through adds inches to the waistline, but there is little connection to the underlying producers.  I decided to passed on the lady’s advice this time, but also passed on Androuet’s.

I finally found Jim Morrison’s grave.

I had a name in Jouarre near Meaux of a small affineur for Brie de Meaux (non-AOC), though it took me a while to find it, especially with French traffic and their penchant to run over motorcycles during traffic jams.  The ladies who ran it where a mother and daughter team who took all the brie from local farm and brought it on to sell it.  Another video of the fabrication, and we went down to their cellars to see the cheese before tasting it.  

There seem to be several distinctive features of brie, and as the language gap was quite wide here I was not able to explore them fully.  The whey drain uses the high mould technique similar to camembert, and likewise a ladle is used to keep the air out of the brie.  The shape of the ladle is different, being like a wide flat bowl.  The ideal maturing temperature is lower, 8-8.5oc not the 10-13 oc I was expecting. 

Like camembert again, the bries are often a little chalky in the centre when they are ready to eat, a line no thicker then a pencil.  A key point which was new to me is that the bloom, the white mould, acts only externally for the first three weeks of its development, and only after that begins the process of breaking down the curd into the delicious gooiness we look to brie for.  This affineur did not sell to wholesalers, so I was not able to follow this up, but if they are selling bries on at three weeks, like they do camemberts at 21-23 days, and the cheeses are being held at 4 oc during the critical maturing period, it is unsurprising if the cheese that gets to the UK is not so tasty.

On Saturday night I stayed in an hotel.  It had thunderstormed that the afternoon and I felt like a bit of luxury.  I ate my evening meal in one of those French restaurants that comes straight out of the French book of clichés.  I was all ready not to enjoy it, but the food was gorgeous.  An opening plate of carpaccio of scallops dressed in a mere fragrance of orange zest and orange juice.  This was followed by monkfish, I think lightly poached and then finished off in the oven.  It was the best monkfish fillet I have ever had. 

I felt so on a roll I decided to ask the chef for his recommendation of pudding.  This was a stupid thing to do in a full restaurant.  He (or she) clearly chose the easiest thing on his menu and a soggy tiramisu was delivered.  It tasted like a bowl of Coco Pops with a cup of cold coffee poured over them.

 

Sunday the 13th April

Maintenance day: I wrote up most of my notes and headed for a Lavomatic.

A local museum was having a talk by a professor from Lyon who had written several books on French cheeses and bries in particular.  I went along hoping to be able to understand a little of what she was saying but this was overly optimistic.  For compensation there was a temporary exhibition in the same museum on the making of brie which more than made up for it.

They had amongst their exhibits a series of extracts from a 1970s video of brie making a la fermier.  It had the colour of the early cine films.  Although I suppose only 35 or so years old, it provided a link to the past in a way more tangible than anything I had seen so far. 

To see the ladies doing the ladling, filling of moulds, performing the salting and affinage, it gave a sense of continuity that I found exhilarating. It shows the value of the AOC rules in ensuring that the traditional methods hold true as time passes.

I headed the Loire and the goats’ cheeses of Selles-sur-Cher, Vallencay and St Maure de Touraine.

 

Monday 14th of April

The Loire is well known for its chateaux and wines such as Sancerre, but in France it is equally famous for its goats' cheeses.  There are five AOCs in the region, and all have very distinctive shapes which let their tastes to develop quite separately.

My first stop was M. Riclet, juts north of Selles-sur-Cher.  First his wife and daughter gave me a tour of the dairy.  Miss Riclet was brought in to help with the translations, but for once French schooling turned out to be no better than the English, and the silent teenager look was the order of the day. Mrs Riclet was extremely patient with me, and gave a full account of the goats’ cheese making process. 

It is quite distinct from cows’ milk:

• there is a goats’ rennet from kids
• the starter is optional, depending on the cheese to be made
• the process of caillage – the developing of curds and whey – is drawn out over 18-24 hours.  With cows milk cheeses this generally takes 15-60 minutes
• cheeses, once taken from their moulds, go through a period of drying before being matured
• a mixture of moulds (penecillium) may occur, none of which are necessarily bad but certain ones are preferred

Examining the cheese the Selles-sur-Cher is a flat disc around 4 inches in diameter and about an inch tall.  It is grey coloured, the natural colour of the mould penicillium album.  Inside the pate is pure white, and the cheese shears rather than crumbles.  There is no hint of goat in the smell or taste, nor is it acidy or lemony (although the curd before maturation is very zesty). 

The taste is gently cheesy, lightly sweet and not strong: if that sounds weak it is because it is difficult to describe.  Mrs Riclet says it tastes of walnut (she went and found one to show me) but I could not identify that.

M Riclet then showed me his goats down in the pastures.  While on the road a policeman was drew up to us and they had a few words: the policeman then joined us.  I am generally nervous around the law due to a general distrust of authority, but it turned out this gentleman had volunteered to translate.

First of course, we talked about where I came from and it turned out the gendarme had a good friend in Weymouth, but who used live near Dorchester, and had been in the Dorset Fire Service.  My new fried was very proud of his Dorset Fire Service jersey (at least I think he said jersey – it may have been a hat). 

Moving back to the subject in hand of the goats.  There were a mixture of alpines and sanaans.  Goats provide 2.5 to 3.5 litres a day, compared to cows at 18 to 25, so production is significantly restricted.  The smaller farms keep their goats outside for 8-9 months a year, but the bigger boys keep them in. 

Goats eat everything and keeping their diet under control to provide consistent milk is a trial for the farmers, and for this reason keeping them inside can improve the milk’s quality.  The fodder they were using was hay, alfalfa and clover and it smelt dry and pure and lovely.  Goats’ barns can smell pretty heavily and this one did not, and nor did his cheese. 

Next was M. Moreau, president of the Selles-sur-Cher AOC syndicat, who sported a very eminent beard.  His operation was on a bigger scale, using only sanaan goats which he carefully breed using artificial insemination methods to bring on yield sizes while protecting the protein and fat content in the milk for which the sanaans are known.

He also makes the St Maure: this is a small log shaped cheese very identifiable by a straw through its middle.  The straw is thought to have been added to give the cheese strength, and a straw for an AOC St Maure will have AOC and the producer’s name etched on the straw.

M Moreau also made cheese only from his own milk, and explained the process from beginning to end in great detail: he was very generous with his time and the mysteries of his art.  His half-English and my half-French got on very well, particularly when he opened a bottle of a local AOC wine from Touraine that complemented the cheese I was consuming greedily.

Due to the previous night’s camping in very basic circumstances I booked myself into an hotel that night, an rather ugly Travelodge style concrete number in Vallencay.  CNN was its only highlight.  The French style of hip baths with hand-held showers needs updating.  No wonder our economy is growing faster than theirs.

 

Tuesday April 15

10am and an appointment with David Brault at Fromagerie Jacquin et fils.  Jacquin's is the biggest producer that I visit for the Loire cheese, but remains a family owned and run company.  I was introduced to members of the clan Jacquin but my French was not up to a long conversation: I think they were happy to hand me back to David.  David had chosen to do his national service working for a French company abroad (excellent idea by the way) and he had chosen Jacquin in the UK for two years.  His English was excellent and he had even visited our nook of the west country before Turnbulls’ time.

Jacquin produce the Selles-sur-Cher, Vallencay and St Maure on site as the facility is in the regions for these three.  The other two Loire cheeses, Pouligny St Pierre and the Crottin de Chavignol, are made elsewhere but matured and packed here.

Jacqui do a mixture of their own cheese and maturing fermier cheeses which are delivered daily.  Having been made on the farm, they still require sechage (drying), affinage (maturing) and embalage (packaging). 

Jacquin capitalise on their Loire location and expertise with goats’ cheese to make and sell a range of other cheeses in various shapes and sizes, some pasteurised (the US requires cheeses to be pasteurised), and like Gillot many separately branded for particular markets.  For a larger operation they are only lightly mechanised and a expert eye is required during each section of the process to watch the development of the cheeses, particularly for the right kinds of moulds.

A particular feature, as mentioned before, is that all the cheeses are made exactly the same way until they are put in moulds.  As with the affinage of the camemberts and bries, and the washing of the Maroilles, it is another example, should I need one, that the affinage of the cheese is a crucial and central part of a cheese’s character.

Thanks to David and the family Jacquin for their hospitality.

David set me up with a man who knew his crottin, so off I went to Chavignol.

I had not realised it previously, but by happy circumstance Chavignol is but a few miles from Sancerre, a hill top town of not dissimilar antiquity to Shaftesbury. Also like Shaftesbury it had many of its structures destroyed by royalty for religious reasons, although somewhat more violently. Sancerre tried to be protestant when King Charles IX was violently catholic, so he laid siege to it for 220 or so days in 1572 and destroyed all the town walls before he was through.  Henry VIII’s reason for levelling Shaftesbury Abbey (also in the 16thC) was that he was protestant and the abbeys and monasteries were bastions of Catholicism.  (Or so they both said: both kings benefited financially from their destructive religiosity.) 

Sancerre is now better known for its AOC wine, so a quick tasting tour was clearly required to help more fully understand the cheese of the region.  It was passed midnight before I had finished and somehow tequila became an important part of the region’s unique features to be experienced.  I had bonded with an English speaking barman who was serving his time before getting back to Paris and had met a world champion at handball, a sport I had not previously heard of but is they said is big here I France.  They could have been having me on, I suppose.

 

Wednesday April 16

Not quite as bright and breezy as I might have been this morning.  I had an appointment at 11 o'clock which I only just made.

Crottin are small goats’ cheeses, roughly the size of a slightly squashed golf ball.  I was the guest of M. Crochet from the company Chamaillard, a few miles north of Chavignol.  M Crochet only had an hour for me, so we rushed through his facility. 

He does not make cheese, rather collecting younger Crottin from local farms and maturing them on his.  They say that the Crottin is one of the most robust cheeses in France and needn't be stored in the fridge.  I have certainly seen many Crottin in cheesemongers displayed on un-refrigerated shelves.  At a fromagerie in Chavignol itself cheeses in their hundreds were displayed in large trays behind the counter. 

According to AOC rules, a crottin does not qualify for its AOC until at least 10 days matured, but a crottin will continue to change and be enjoyed for three or even five months beyond.

Initially a mould develops, usually penicillium album again, and beneath the mould shell a creamy layer develops at around one month. 

The Crottin then start to dry out, and the creamy layer firms up into a texture similar say to cheddar.  No blue should penetrate into the cheese, so that inside the colour is pure white to cream on the edges.  The taste comes on much stronger, though not goaty, and very old crottin are particularly popular locally amongst those old men with a gauloise habit and few taste buds left.

The affinage of the crottin develops this singular product in to a multitude of cheeses, diverse in taste, texture and cooking characteristics.  In England cheese storage has been dominated by the strictures of Food Safety rules: as an art it is a skill known only to a few traditional producers and perhaps the Neals Yard dairy.  Crottin coming to me get a use by life of a couple of weeks.  In France they don’t even bother to chill them, and matured correctly they can improve and change for months.  A question I always ask is when does the cheese taste at its best: M Crochet could not answer this question – for him it was whatever the customer wants and it is his job of work to produce the product in the right condition.

He gave me a selection of crottin of different ages for tasting at home, and with great pleasure they joined my growing collection in the Duchess’s fridge.  He also gave me multiple copies of a large selection of recipe cards all in French.  I was not quite sure what he intended me to do with them, beyond the first one or two… The recipe for a crottin fondue, a simple baking of the crottin (1-2 per person) at 180oc for 20-30 minutes in a small china pot, looked delicious and I will need to source more at home for this.

It is very reassuring that the cheesemakers and affineurs of France are not an ageing population, and that people like M. Brault and M. Crochet, even out in the rural areas, are young(ish), enthusiastic and committed to the artisan cheese industry.  Given the poor pay and few promotional prospects in the UK outside the big creameries, there are not many of us like this.  Maybe it is the absence of the medium size companies, like Gillot, Jacquin and Rouzaire, which account for this difference, companies that are family owned but world class in the quality of their output. 

Against a background that is seeing price and convenience as more significant consumer motivation than taste and nutrition, I am coming to believe the AOC rules have helped protect these organisations.  Excessive mechanisation for the purposes of cost cutting and mass production can only be achieved at the expense of quality, and many AOC rules, such as hand ladling and the use of raw milk are bulwarks against this. 

In my opinion the French can be justifiably proud of their achievements in this industry.  It is also up to people like me in the UK to bang the drum for this quality, and show my customers what artisan cheesemaking can achieve, so that perhaps we can create an environment where we too can shelter and build a bigger strong world class artisan cheesemaking industry behind similar AOC style rules.

Enough soap box: because of a cock up with my passport and introduction to the Rouzaire Fromagerie , I needed to be back in Paris for 4pm Thursday, so my final two goats’ cheeses needed to be discovered at a run.

Pouligny St Pierre – this is the pre-curser to Vallencay.  Vallencay which is made further north around the town of the same name is a shortened pyramid covered with mould and cindre (powdered charcoal, I think).  The Pouligny is a full height pyramid of otherwise similar size and neither moulded nor darkened with cindre.  Allegedly it was in deference to Napoleon, who would not be reminded of his defeat in Egypt, that some one (probably Talleyrand) chopped the top off a Pouligny, and the new dumpier Valencay cheese was born.

Pouligny is just north of Le Blanc and on the way to Poitiers where I needed to be that evening.  I met a farmer there who was so typical that he could have been a farmer in any country in Europe.  Balding, middle aged, blue all-in-one overalls and wellies, he came out of a barn pushing a wheel barrow and was followed by his over active spaniel. 

We stood in his shop/office, and he talked me through the Pouligny.  It similar to the other Loire cheeses (except there is no moulding – the cheese remains white), but here was an example of the old fashioned method farming.  With livestock, arable, a large market garden out the front and cheese making to top it off, he must be nearly self sufficient. It must be hard work for him and his wife, and I doubt if his children will continue with it, but for the moment it is old France lived on a beautiful farm that would go for a couple of million in Somerset.

Two cheeses from him later, and we were off to find chabichou.

[Do the French not eat out?  St Maxient l’Ecole, a large town and regional centre, had two pizzerias and a pub open: here French cuisine had had given up in the face of cheap international competition.  And the camp site made the Duchess fear for her wheels, and as for those crouch loos they have, well… ]

 

Thursday April 17

I was in a hurry now, so getting lost on my first appointment was a problem.  However, Elaine, a lady that would not have been out of place teaching chemistry to 16 year olds, was a fantastic host.

Chabichou (one of my favourite cheese names) is a truncated cone, about four inches high and three across at the bottom.  It has a wormy/brains like surface once it has matured, not unlike our own St Nicholas that used to be made by Cranborne Cheese.  The chaibichou, like the crottin, typically age up to three to five months, although I preferred the two month version before they dry out too much.

Elaine makes a wide variety of raw milk goats’ cheeses, and if I had a criticism it is that with such a large product range, perhaps her consistency is not so great. 

But she was very revealing about the chaibichou and another cheese, Mothais a la Feuille which is under consideration for AOC status.  My translation may be inaccurate but she said that the chaibichou had been “compromis” by “l’industrie”.  Chaibichou did not require raw milk, hand ladling and they could use multi-moulds (an essential for mechanisation).  The AOC rules being developed for mothais would be tight on these issues.

Mothias is a similar shape to Selles-sur-Cher, being a disc with sloping sides, but is slightly larger and is presented on (what I believe is) an horse chestnut leaf that makes it look very cool. It is matured more than a Selles, and becomes creamier under the surface.  It was Elaine’s favourite, although the one we tasted was a little salty.  I hope they get their AOC.

Next stop Tournan-en-Brie and the Rouzaire haloirs.  The company is run by two grandchildren (and their respective spouses) of the founder, who started as a fromagerie in Paris.  Now they have 25,000 cheese maturing in their cellars at any one time, all of them soft mould ripened cheese. 

Their headliners are the brie de Melun, coulommiers, brie de Nagis, and the star is Brie de Meaux, but they have others including some very interesting additive cheeses.

The lady in charge of quality, Sandra, showed me round.  The cheese are not made on site as there is insufficient space, but the reason they had not moved their maturing rooms out to somewhere larger quickly became apparent: beneath the street level there are huge cellars, each sealed by sliding metal doors that would keep out world war three. 

You probably think brie has that flat white-grey coating but it only looks that way once it has been packed: during affinage brie mould sticks up like there has been a light sprinkling of snow a centimetre thick: it is a perfect white.

Asking around the fromageries Rouzaire’s name consistently came up as the brie to buy, which reassuring as this is the cheese we sell.

I am not a fan of British additive cheeses.  I am generalising, but the companies making those white stiltons, wensleydales and cheddars by re-mashing cheap cast-off cheese no one else wants, pouring in something sweet and then re-pressing them into a half moon shaped mould are not artisan cheesemakers. 

Rouzaire have taken a completely different approach and retain their integrity in the process.  They have taken very good fougarus (like a big coulommeirs) and sliced it horizontally.  They put in a mixture mascarpone, cream and the additive (eg black pepper, Grand Marnier or truffles), and leave it for two days.  Then they put it back together and mature it for a further two weeks, allowing the flavour to infuse.  This is an artisan additive cheese using ingredients and a process committed to retaining the quality of the original product while allowing for something new.

Does it taste good?  I’ve no idea – I have a truffle version the Duchess maturing as we speak, so I will tell you later.

Thank you to Rouzaire.  It was fantastic experience to see those maturing rooms, and it is a great please to see the brie I sell every day is prepared with such care.

In to Paris for the evening.  It is a very welcoming city, even for those travelling alone: in search of live music I ended up with a Portuguese and a Ghanaian drinking some sort of cane spirit coqutail with a name I could not pronounce while a French guitarist did Tracy Chapman covers.

 

Friday 18 April

M. Foucher is manager of Quatrehomme Fromagerie.  He has a slightly military aspect and we discussed the relative price of cheddar and who makes the best camembert. 

His boss is Marie Quatrehomme, who was voted “Un des Meilleurs Ouvriers de France”.  The award goes to individuals who are masters of their crafts, and is awarded by their peers.  As far as I am aware there is no equivalent in the UK.  It is an example of how passion and quality is institutionalised here in France: here there are powerful voices lobbying on behalf of something other than economic interests. 

On the live music trail again, but the Armenian accordionist in the 11th arondisement was a no-show, and the folk-rock band in the 10th owed more to the Scandinavian death metal than folk or rock, but the jazz at le Duc des Lombards was sublime.

 

Saturday 19 April

I ate one of Gillot’s camemberts today, one that has been gently coming on in the Duchess’s fridge.  It was gorgeous; lightly redding on the outside, with a mixed internal pate from very soft at the edge to firmer and more open at the centre.  And the taste?  Well I have a bunch more for tasting at the deli this week, so come and try some.

I took the time to visit some of the D-Day sights.  The American Cemetery is astonishing (it is the one pictured in Saving Private Ryan).  I grew up next to Pirbright’s cemetery, the largest war cemetery in the UK, so I have seen the like.  However, this one sits overlooking Omaha beach where the worst fighting on D-Day occurred and the US got the lion’s share of the violence.  What was achieved that day in 1944 must never be forgotten.

 

Sunday 20 April

Early ferry and hopefully no snow, to home and diesel at 121p a litre.  Back to the shop tomorrow with my new found knowledge.  A traffic jam in the roadworks just outside Portsmouth quickly brought me back down to earth with a bump.  Me and the Duchess will ride again: the Auvergne next I think.