Category: Food

Camembert de Normandie (Week 34)

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camembert-i
AOP – the Real McCoy

Cheese: Camembert de Normandie

Producer: E. Graindorge

Where: Livarot, Calvados, France

In a French supermarket on the very edge of the Hexagon (the French call their country L’Hexagone sometimes, because of its shape), I experienced one of the blessings of living in the heart of Europe. It is 500 miles to Livarot, but I was able to get my fresh, raw milk Camembert from that very town in Normandy. Because in the US, the FDA watches over you and makes sure you don’t do anything that could be bad for you, you are not able to have a raw milk Camembert unless you leave the country. In our case, we also left the country but we did so in a car and we were back home again for dinner. We brought home a Camembert from E. Graindorge, a rather large producer, with a history going back to 1910, to grandpa Eugène. They have a slick, well done website, and the cheese can be ordered online. They produce some 11 different cheeses, all from the milk of those Normand cows that is transformed into some of the best cheese in the world. Among these cheeses, they feature the blockbusters, Livarot, Pont-l’évêque, Neufchâtel and Camembert de Normandie. All four of them carry the AOP designation, and the other three one day each deserve their own post. The Camembert, a soft cow’s milk cheese with a white bloomy rind really needs no introduction – it is produced all over the world, which explains the long official name of the cheese we brought home: any old cheesemaker can produce a cheese that looks the part and call it Camembert, but Camembert de Normandie is autre chose: something entirely different.

camembert-ii
Curds are hand-ladled into the mold – the seal guarantees it!

The cheese with the AOP seal is made from milk from Normandie cows, the curds are scooped into the mold by hand (very carefully, to guarantee just the right texture, and the milk is always raw. Marie Harel, an intrepid farm woman from Vimoutiers helped a man of the cloth, a certain abbot Bonvoust, as he was hiding from the French revolutionaries and he taught her a method of cheese making from his native Brie, which she adapted to create Camembert as we know it today. All of this happened in the waning years of the 18th century, and most, if not all of it, is entirely made up. Marie Harel did exist, but the cheese bit is unlikely, even if the story is a good one, and there is even a statue celebrating her ‘invention’ in Vimoutiers, paid for by an American who claimed to have had tremendous health benefits from eating copious amounts of Camembert. Whatever the origins of the cheese are or aren’t, Marie Harel’s descendants for many years just rudely claimed to own the exclusive rights to this cheese and tried hard to box other farmers out of the lucrative business of supplying Paris with the very popular cheese. Eventually other farmers got in on the action as well, and it wasn’t before long that Camembert was discovered elsewhere. So the early marketing and subsequent success of the cheese set the stage for widespread imitation and eventually necessitated the current clarification to the name. And yes, there is a difference, and it is huge.

camembert-iii
Sadly, we were too greedy: should’ve poked it gently before cutting it. a ripe cheese gives a bit more than one that isn’t quite done. The lighter, drier part in the middle isn’t quite there yet. Camembert is OK, but not divine at this stage.

A ripe Camembert de Normandie tastes like the Almighty intended cheese to taste. It has a bold aroma, a creamy consistency, and it adds a bit of a kick to a mouthful of barnyardy, mushroomy flavor. But never mind the adjectives, because there are certain things in life you just recognize when you experience them, even for the first time. Every bite from a real Camembert that has ripened to that ‘just right’ stage is, well, just right – but on a cosmic scale.

Torta del Casar (Week 24)

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Torta del Casar I
Torta ready to eat: isn’t she lovely?

Cheese: Torta del Casar

Producer: Hermanos Pajuelo

 Where: Almoharín, Extremadura, Spain

In Salamanca I bought a well-ripened Torta del Casar, a sheep’s milk cheese named after the town of Casar de Cáceres where this cheese originated, in the Extremadura, a region in Western Spain. There are a lot of producers in the area, mine was from the creamery of the brothers Pajuelo (Santiago is the brother who is still alive, Ignacio has passed away). They brand their torta Manjar Extremeño. Which probably translates as ‘delicacy from the Extremadura’ or something like that.  Cáceres has UNESCO World Heritage status and the cheese befits its origin, because it is monumental. Like some other cheeses on the Iberian Peninsula, cardoon thistle pistils are used in curdling the milk, and this process leaves a faint bitterness in the cheese, that only adds to the complex flavors in this bad boy. It has a distinct smell and an equally distinct taste.

Torta del Casar II
Ready, set, spoon!

It is a big fat mouthful, especially when eaten as intended: put the torta on the table, slice of its top (the rind is quite hard as does not get eaten) and start spooning. The milk for the torta comes from Merino and Entrefina sheep and because both are not prodigious producers, it takes the milk of a small herd of sheep to make a single cheese. In turn, that makes Torta del Casar one of the most expensive cheeses in Spain. Cured for a minimum of two months, it is worth getting a cheese that is a little older to get the full benefit of the full-flavored runniness that makes this such an excellent experience. In 1999 the Torta received its DPO protection. There are at least another 3 tortas in Spain (Torta de Barros, Torta del Canarejal, and Torta la Serena) that are eaten in a similar fashion and have similar flavors. Collect them all! This one was eaten with colleagues as the sun was setting over the Douro Valley in Portugal, together with some other splendid cheeses from Salamanca, a dinner where cheese was the main course.

Cheesy Dinner
Cheesy dinner in the Douro Valley

Pannerone Lodigiano (Week 13)

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Pannerone Lodigiano
“You don’t want this cheese, trust me.”

Cheese: Pannerone Lodigiano

Producer: Caseificio Carena

Where: Casella Lurani, Lodi Region, Italy

Just about 20 miles from Milan is a small town called Caselle Lurani and in that town is an easy to miss creamery that turns out this cheese, among others, that is actually on an endangered species list of sorts. Pannerone, a cheese made from afternoon cow’s milk (2% more milkfat, apparently, than the morning take) has a few things that make it unique, and give it an acquired taste which may be why it is not nearly as widespread as it once was. In fact, the creamery run by the Carena family is the only producer left. Pannerone’s (comes from panéra, which means cream) unique qualities come from an unusual production process; the whey is allowed to run off naturally, there is no pressing involved at all and that makes for a soft cheese. Then, it sits for four or five days at 28-32 degrees until all the whey has drained. No salt is added to the cheese, so the bacteria that are at work here are solely responsible for the flavor. The cheeses look impressive in the cheese counter, which is how I happened upon it: a cylinder is about 8 inches high and a foot in diameter. It has lots of little holes and a nice pale ivory color.

My next challenge was to get a piece, after I identified what I wanted. That went through the point-and-use-exaggerated-facial-expressions method, because even if Venice is inundated with visitors from abroad, a lot of merchants do not speak anything but Italian, and my Italian is non-existent. It was clear what the message directly aimed at me was to convey: ‘no, this is not what you want.’

‘But it most certainly is!’ said my English words and my facial expressions and my body language. The gentleman I spoke to decided to bring in the big guns, the owner of the shop, who reiterated: ‘bee-ter!’. I was certainly not going to like it. After this final attempt to dissuade me, I just had to have it, and the experience of finally sinking my teeth into it was rewarding: not that it would make it to the top of my list, but my buying the cheese over some local objection and then reading up on it made the tasting feel like the end of a journey.

Pannerone II
A cheese of many holes

It is creamy and a bit sweetish at first, but it does develop an unusual, mildly bitter flavor in the mouth soon afterwards. It could do with some fruit, to counterbalance the bitter taste, and that is a popular combination in many recommendations. Pannerone has a D.O.P designation and the Slow Food organization recognize it’s uniqueness as well – they are in fact the people talking about it as if it is an endangered species worthy of preservation. Things look good though, at the Carena Creamery: the descendants of Angelo Carena who passed on to that great dairy in the sky two years ago seem to have fun doing what they are doing, judging by the images on their website, adn a determination to carry on the good work, all the way down to the youngest members of the family. Great-grandpa would be proud!

Queso Fresco (Week 11)

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Quesadilla
The end result: delectable quesadillas

Cheese: Queso Fresco

Producer: Quesería Jiménez

Where: La Capilla de Guadalupe

This week I got a gift. A gift of cheese. A colleague who knew about my 52 Cheeses quest brought me something that came with a story. There are few things that connect people to their heritage the way food does, and all of us are familiar with the melancholy sighs bemoaning the absence of some real fill-in-the-blank. In the 1980, when I worked a lot with German tourists in the US, it never took more than about 8 or 9 days before my guests began to lament the quality of American bread, compared to what they like to call black bread. This was well before Whole Foods and in most of the country, burger buns, dinner and breakfast rolls and wonderbread were holding down the bread-fort.

My friend’s family members rejoice and think of a place far away in the old country every time they bite into the pleasant graininess of a soft white Mexican cheese they just call Queso Fresco. She brought me a piece, neatly packaged in a plastic bag to keep the whey from dripping all over my desk. The cheese, she announced, comes from Quesería Jiménez, an unassuming facility that could pass for any other industrial building safe for the cow picture on the door. I was unable to find anything but the streetview google image.

queseria Jimenez
Queseria Jimenez

The quesería is in La Capilla de Guadalupe, and apparently, this modest town is home to the best looking women of Mexico. I am not googling that because lord knows what will come up in such a search. Capilla’s cheese is certainly worth the trouble and the risk – I am pretty sure that bringing it in to U.S. is frowned upon by the FDA. It is creamy, fresh, and not too salty. It melts to create splendid quesadillas which, I am told, is really what this cheese is made for. I enjoyed it just by the slice also, and I realize that I now have the old Playboy excuse if I were to ever travel to Capilla to see if what they say about the women is true: “I am only here for the cheese”, I will be able to claim.

Queso Fresco
Queso Fresco: Cooking up a quesadilla