Brillat Savarin cheese

ade from triple cream (that's 75% fat for you!), Brillat-Savarin was created in the 1930s to be as indulgent and over-the-top as the man it is named after, the great French gastronome. It is produced industrially from pasteurised milk and tastes like a cross between Carpice des Anges and unripe Brie. When matured, it is sold as Pierre Robert, which has much more character and reminds less of ricotta.

We paired it with sweet and mellow Montbazillac wine, a congratulatory pat on the shoulder.

Wapenaer Classique: Dutch hard cheese

Dutchies aren't into smelly cheeses. I am not talking about effete and jaded Randstad urbanites for whom runny camemberts are imported from France. I'm talking about your good staunch hairy-footed tulip-sporting clog-thumping Dutchie. All traditional Dutch cheeses like Gouda, Edamer or ... are bland, unpretentious and reliable like your rickety black Dutch bike that doesn't break until you ditch it in the canal. And that's why I don't like them. Dutch cheeses, I mean. They are like Dutch sex: you can trust it to deliver your weekly dose of semen to your bodily orifice of choice but really nothing to write home about.

Wapenaer Classique is an exception. It used to be known simply as Wapenaer Extra Beleegd (Extra Matured) but since it got its AOC - or Beschermde Oorsprongsbenaming, as it is known in the Low Lands - it took on the dainty Classique postfix. This hard and crumbly tawn-tinted dairy masterpiece with almost crystallic texture does not smell like some decadent French cheeses but it has a superbly rich walnuty nez that unfolds in your mouth as you let Wapenaer slowly melt in your mouth.

Surprisingly enough, export-oriented since the nation's inception Dutchies have not yet got around to marketing it abroad so I only can stock up on my visits to Amsterdam. Luckily, it is available at most supermarkets and specialist cheese-mongers. It cost somewhat above average but it's worth every cent. So next time skip your tourist-trap Baby Edamer and get yourself some of this best kept Ducth secret.

Draycott Blue cheese from Somerset

love all things obscure and bizarre. On my last forage to the Cheddar Gorge in Somersetshire, I stumbled upon this rather lovely cheese, Draycott Blue. It is named after a village where it is made, three miles from Cheddar Village.

It is made from unpasteurised milk and that is why it is not commercially available outside the area. It tasted very lovely: moderately sharp, low in salt, with a rather mild finish, resembling Bleu d'Auvergne. The only way to get hold of it without driving to Somerset is to buy it online.

On quest for real Cheddar

eneral de Gaulle once famously quipped about how France has 365 sorts of cheese while Britain has but two. In fact, while France was preserving its cheeses, Britain was busy fighting a war as a result of which (or mostly, rationing and austerity measures) the number of cheese producers tumbled from 3,500 before the war to 100 after it.

That said, English cheddar is one of the most popular cheeses in the world. To achieve this status a sacrifice was made: cheddar has lost its capital C and has become a generic name produced anywhere but the original place, the Cheddar Village in Somerset.

It is on quest for this real, AOC West Country Farmhouse Cheddar that we went there. Coincidentally, it is situated in a picturesque Cheddar Gorge, described by Robinson Crusoe's author Daniel Defoe as a "deep frightful chasm". These days it is a busy tourist attraction where real Cheddar is manufactured from the milk sourced within 80 miles from the Wells Cathedral. What makes Cheddar different from other cheeses is cheddaring, where heated curd is kneaded with salt, and of course maturing in the caves of the Cheddar Gorge.

In our age of marketing gizmos there are a slew of Cheddars with fancy and even bizarre flavours: from whiskey and cranberry to marmite and mango-and-ginger. I find it hard to buy in this gimmickery and prefer to stick to the time-proven good ole plain Cheddar. It is truly a great world cheese: pleasant to taste, versatile in use and easily recognizable.

There is an online cheddarometre that will help you determine the optimum thickness of cheese for your sandwich. If you are crazy enough to use it, enjoy!

French cheese platter: the taste of adult life (assiette de fromages)

oo much sweet can be too much. That's why the French invented the assiette de fromages. It is a grown-up way to finish dinners: not with some puerile sugar-laden confection but something decadently smelly, as if showing that pleasure still could be found somewhere close to repulsion.

It is also one of the few classy, luxury pleasures that vegetarians can indulge in. In my vegetarian days, I would have rewarded myself for my well-intentioned suffering through soya steaks, Tofurkey and fishless sushi with a glass of nice wine and a cheese platter.

Tonight cheeses from three different regions had a nice get-together on my plate: Burgundian Chaource, Bleu d'Auvergne, and Tommette de Savoie. They all are very different.

Chaource tastes like Brie made from goat's milk although with just a hint of sharpness as it is, in fact, made from cow's milk. It is pristinely white and could be very well from the Loire Valley. But it isn't.

Bleu d'Auvergne is, perhaps, the least aggressive of all blue cheeses. It tastes as if it didn't want to be one. Its mild, creamy and not at all as salty as, say, Rocquefort.

Tommette de Savoie is hard and nutty. You would be if you came from the mountains too. It smells funny because water is scarce in the Alps but it makes good for that in the taste department. I have never seen it on sale outside France. The hardy montagnard just won't take to travelling!

Pié d'Angloys cow milk cheese

ome cheeses are only to get hold of in France. Mostly it's cheeses made from raw milk that are difficult to transport. Pié d'Angloys is made from pasteurised cow milk but I fell in love with it from the first bite.

Decadently smelly and drippy inside it is reminiscent of a very ripe brie. As you may have guessed from the picture of a tiled roof house, it hails from Burgundy. As far as I know, it is sold in the Francophone zone only (France, Southern Belgium, Luxembourg, Western Switzerland). It seems a recent - post-WWII - invention but what it lacks in pedigree it makes good in taste.

Caveat emptor: real Camembert is only made from raw milk!

One of Normandy’s trademarks and the inspiration behind Dali’s famous The Persistence of Memory, Camembert had a near escape from being sacrificed to cost reduction and mass production. Traditionally produced on small farms from unpasteurised milk of free-range cows, it gains its unique flavour from a variety of local terroirs. It would have stayed a local delicacy but for the advent of railways, when Napoleon III attending the opening of the Paris-Granville line discovers Camembert for the Parisian gourmet table. From a regional curiosity camembert became one of France’s cultural symbols. In recent times however it has fallen victim to its own popularity. The demands for larger production volumes has made manufacturing shift to factories. Economy of scale requires the streamlining of the costs. Farm-raised cows are nowadays fed mechanically mixed fodder and the quality uniformity of milk is the overriding objective. Starting in the late 90s culinary purists and industrial rationalists have been battling over just how much can Camembert depart for the traditional recipe without losing its essence.













Last year things came to head when dairy giants Isigny and Lactalis, which comprise 80% of Camembert sales, demanded that the National Institute of Origin and Quality modify the regulations for their product. To qualify for AOC Camembert needs to be made from raw milk, but the rebel producers insisted that pasteurising or microfiltering milk would reduce the cheese’s susceptibility to potentially dangerous pathogens. The defenders of the terroir, ODC, reasoned that such a step would kill the “very essence of Camembert”. The Laboratory for scientific research of eggs and milk, stated that health risks are "statistically insignificant". Angered, the two producers threaten to renounce their AOC.

The stand-off finally ended on the 18th of September this year with the issue of the PM-signed decree that stipulates the obligatory use of raw milk for Camembert production. Generic camembert however, stays outside this regulation.

Now watch out for the magic words “Camembert de Normandie au lait cru moulé à la louche” on the packaging meaning that you are getting the real deal, not the mass production imitation.