Cheese & Dairy Archive
(Not So) ChiqueBeurre de Brebis
Cabécou
Cheese Course
Fondue Savoyarde chez nos Voisins
Homemade Yogurts
Lait Ribot
Les Petites Horreurs de Cécile
Les Petits Suisses
Ossau-Iraty
Our Smelly Travelling Companions
Parmesan by the Hunk
Ricotta Maison
May 1, 2007
Beurre de Brebis
[Ewe's Milk Butter] Every once in a while, life presents the gourmand with a scintillating novelty that tickles his curiosity with such insistence that he is left with the willpower of a charmed snake. So when I read about ewe's milk butter in ELLE a couple of weeks ago (you would do well to keep an eye on those Vie Privée/Cuisine pages at the e...
"Beurre de Brebis" continues »
May 22, 2006
Parmesan by the Hunk
Earlier this year, I received an email from an Italian blogger named Massimo, who announced to me that C&Z had been voted Best Non-Italian Food Blog in the awards he'd been hosting on his website, Peperosso* -- I'm sure that having an Italian word in the name of my blog helped. And since Massimo puts his mangoes where his mouth is (Lost, season 2...
"Parmesan by the Hunk" continues »
November 11, 2005
Ossau-Iraty
When I was a wee little girl I was sent to colonies de vacances (the French equivalent of summer camp, except it can be at any season) once or twice a year during school breaks. Both my parents worked and us kids had way more vacations than they did, so partir en colo was a good way for us to breathe fresh air and make new friends instead of stay...
October 26, 2005
Fondue Savoyarde chez nos Voisins
[This is the republication of a post originally featured in October of 2003.] [Cheese Fondue at our Neighbors'] We are lucky enough to be very good friends with our next-door neighbors: Stéphan and Patricia live on our floor, in the apartment to the right of ours, and we met on the night of our housewarming party. We had posted a note to apolog...
"Fondue Savoyarde chez nos Voisins" continues »
September 28, 2005
Cheese Course
I have a new piece appearing today on NPR's weekly Kitchen Window column: this one is all about putting together a cheese platter, how to serve it and what to enjoy it with. And on the picture above, you will recognize -- from left to right -- an ash-coated goat cheese from the Deux-Sèvres, a Pont-l'Evêque from Normandy, and a Perail des Cabasse...
August 8, 2005
(Not So) Chique
One often hears complaints about how things aren't the way they used to be, how everything is going downhill fast, how nothing works the way it should and nobody cares anyway, but back in the days, boy, <insert whatever was so great back then>. I am wary of this kind of statement, not only because hindsight is subjective -- ten years from...
August 3, 2005
Ricotta Maison
[Homemade Ricotta] The minute I read Heidi's post about making your own ricotta and her comment that "this ricotta tastes and smells like the milk it is made from so use the best and freshest dairy you can find", I instantly thought what a perfect use it would be for the bottle of raw milk that Christoph and Susanne gave me for my birthday as pa...
September 27, 2004
Les Petites Horreurs de Cécile
Cécile's Little Horrors. What a fantastic movie or book title this would make. So far though, it is merely a sign in the window of a cheese store in Bergerac (Périgord), where we bought our tray of Cabécous. Handwritten on a thin circle of wood taken from the bottom of a cheese box, it is here to introduce a selection of extra extra dry -- and I...
"Les Petites Horreurs de Cécile" continues »
September 20, 2004
Our Smelly Travelling Companions
Try spending eight hours in a car on a sunny day, with a tray of twenty cabécous in the backseat. It's an interesting exercise in willpower and determination to bring home the magic. Not the most orthodox way to age fresh cheese for consumption at their optimal stage of ripeness, but it certainly works! Ah, what one woudn't do, for the love of c...
"Our Smelly Travelling Companions" continues »
September 15, 2004
Cabécou
Maxence and I have left the Vosges, and after a diagonal drive all across the Great Kingdom of France, we now find ourselves in the Périgord, the Land of Aplenty. We will spend a few days here, enjoying the breathtaking sights, walking around medieval villages, and eating as many Cabécous as we can lay our hands on. Cabécou is this little jewel ...
May 6, 2004
Les Petits Suisses
[Little Swiss Cheese] Un Petit Suisse, literally "a little swiss", is a fresh cow milk cheese, shaped like a small cylinder. The story, I gather, is that it was originally invented in Normandy in the 1850's, at a milk farm owned by a Madame Hérould. One of her garçon-vachers (an employee who tends to the cows, literally a cowboy), who was from S...
"Les Petits Suisses" continues »
April 7, 2004
Lait Ribot
Lait ribot is a traditional fermented milk that has been made in Brittany for thousands of years, dating back to the Gauls. It is in fact fermented babeurre, or bas-beurre (litterally "low-butter"), which is the white liquid that remains after you've beaten cream to make butter. Ribotte, besides sounding cute, is an old word for churn, hence the ...
October 7, 2003
Homemade Yogurts
The yogurt maker (yaourtière in French) is often used to illustrate the concept of an appliance that seemed like a good idea at the time of purchase (back in the seventies), but ends up collecting dust in the dark depths of a kitchen cabinet. It strikes me as terribly unfair a way to disparage a perfectly respectable peace of household equipment....
"Homemade Yogurts" continues »