Trial by Cheese
France is rightly famed for its gourmet cuisine, but how would two staunch defenders of 'le fromage français' fare against a challenge by invaders from across the Channel?
Like many Frenchmen, Claude Norrin was of the misguided opinion that the heathens who lived across the Channel knew nothing of gourmet food and how it should be cooked. While I suspected that there might be a grain of truth in this – for I was hard pushed to bring to mind a national dish of particularly outstanding pedigree – I felt honour-bound to defend my homeland’s battered reputation. Claude’s particular bugbear was the subject of le fromage.
‘The cheeses of France are par excellence, the finest in all the world!’ he claimed outrageously. ‘There is no such thing as a bad French cheese! But your English cheeses are tasteless pap!’
Now I had a healthy respect for the cheeses of England and the Frenchman could not be allowed to cast this ill-considered aspersion so freely. Although I adored French cheeses, I found that there was little to compare, for example, with the firm texture and intense flavour of a good strong Cheddar.
‘So there’s no such thing as a bad French cheese, huh?’
‘Non,’ he responded firmly.
The evil curd
In an attempt to counter this ludicrous claim, I retrieved what I had come to regard as a particularly pungent example of the French cheesemakers’ repertoire. It currently existed in a state of icy stasis, double-wrapped and incarcerated within a Tupperware container buried deep in the furthest recesses of my fridge. Although I was aware that proper etiquette demands that cheeses such as this should never be refrigerated, I had been driven in desperation to this sacrilegious act, having not at first heeded the warning of Daniel, whose mobile shop visited the hamlet each week. As part of my education à la française, I had attempted to purchase a new variety of local cheese from the van on each visit. This time it had been the turn of the evil Le Gouzon, a round, soft cheese made from unpasteurised cow’s milk, which originated in the Creusois town from which it takes its name. Basically creamy white, its soft rind was tinged with brown stains so that it resembled an extremely ancient and mouldy Camembert. It was wrapped in plain, waxed paper and came with an ominous warning.
‘Be sure to keep Le Gouzon in the frigo, Richard!’ Daniel had urged. ‘Or you will be plagued by flies.’ A Frenchman advising that a cheese be refrigerated? What sacrilege was this? Now I am not averse to sampling pongy cheeses and have eaten many rancid varieties that others would curl up their noses at. But this particular cheese stank to high heaven from day one and each day its stench became increasingly unpleasant. Daniel’s omen had rung true, since the house was visited upon by a veritable pestilence of flies. Thousands of insects swarmed around the mesh dome beneath which the foul cheese festered.
Even my brother, who had popped in for a visit, was fearful of getting downwind of the horrific curd: and this was a man generally regarded as having an adventurous palate (or, in my opinion, his selectivity was highly suspect). Not to be considered cowards in each other’s eyes, however, we brothers had shaken hands for perhaps the last time in our short lives and had bravely nibbled a corner of the cheese. Resisting the urge to throw up there and then, Phill had eloquently described it thus: ‘It has a taste reminiscent of the inside of a byre at milking time.’ I had to agree. The cheese was imbued with the very essence of cow. In effect, it tasted like I imagine cow slurry would taste. I hereby apologise to the brave producers of the cheese – but this delicacy is one whose pleasures escape my sensitivities.
‘So would you care to take some home with you?’ I tempted, having swilled my mouth out with Coca-Cola in an attempt to rid myself of the foul and pervading flavour of cow shit and stale milk.
‘Thank you, brother, but I would not,’ he had responded flatly, looking quite green around the gills. ‘Not if you paid me. Never in a million years. Pass the Coke, please...’
Taste test
Why I did not cast the deadly curd from the house then and there I will never know, for I had no intention of ever eating it again as long as I lived. But I had stubbornly kept it for another two weeks, buried deep within the fridge, on the off chance that my friend Claude Norrin would, as was his habit, pop in for coffee. This cheese, I felt sure, would have him on his knees begging for mercy. How wrong I was. I set Le Gouzon on the surface in front of my friend and delicately unwrapped it, trying not to infect my fingers with its noxious oozing. During its incarceration, I noticed, it had assumed a pallid, sepia hue. Claude’s porcine eyes widened and I could detect beneath his bushy moustache the pearly glint of his two front teeth. The madman was grinning at the cheese.
‘Oooh, un petit Gouzon…’ he purred. I thought he was about to stroke the cheese, so handed him a knife. He cut off a large triangular portion and popped it straight into his mouth. Without chewing, he seemed to suck the creamy slime from within the rind, then swallowed.
‘Délicieux…’ he breathed ecstatically, promptly cut off another chunk and downed that, too.
‘You must be joking!’
‘Now that is a cheese!’ he said, smacking his lips. ‘A little cold, perhaps, but – you are anglais; so what do you know about how to keep a cheese? – it does have a subtle flavour. It just goes to prove what I said, Riche. How can your puny English cheeses hope to compare with that?’
Why would they want to? I mused.
‘Right!’ I said. ‘You’ve asked for it, Claude! I challenge you to a duel!’
The cheese challenge
And so the cheese challenge was conceived. On a brief working trip back to England, I scoured the supermarkets and cheese shops for a selection that would typify the finest the country had to offer, including some staunch old stalwarts. On my return I had managed to gather one dozen examples of cheeses representing a healthy cross section of the counties of England and Wales. Exporting this melange of odoriferous produce had been mildly embarrassing, however. When taking the train to the airport, while waiting in the departure lounge, and when sitting in the cramped aircraft seating on the hour-long flight back to France, the heady air of putrid socks had surrounded me like an aura. Curiously, I had managed to commandeer three seats to myself. (After Brexit, of course, importing dairy products such as this in the EU was not permitted.)
I had arranged for Claude and his wife Martine, Jill, an English friend and her French partner Jean-Michel, to join me for an English-style Sunday lunch. The meal kicked off with slices of roast beef, crunchy-skinned roast potatoes, steamed cabbage with black pepper, and florets of broccoli tossed in walnut oil. I had also prepared my pièce de résistance, two large, square, crusty Yorkshire puddings, after the recipe of my Auntie Mary (who had been universally adjudged, at least in our family, as the person who made the best Yorkshire pud in all the world). The course was served with lashings of unctuous gravy made from beef stock. The French contingent eyed the bulging platefuls with curiosity and a large measure of suspicion. Despite their reservations as to the inclusion of a wodge of batter in their meal, they all tucked in with relish, although Claude had shyly asked for a chunk of baguette to accompany it.
After a dessert of treacle sponge and custard, we sagged back in our seats to take a breather before I brought out the bulging cheese board. I had arranged the slabs of cheese on a round, revolving wooden board and set it in the centre of the table, giving it a gentle twirl for dramatic effect. Claude and Jean-Michel, as one, adjusted their spectacles and regarded the yellow, white, orange, and blue-veined chunks of cheese. In unison, both men rubbed their jaws thoughtfully, intoning, ‘Hmm, hmm, hmm!’ as I rattled off the names of each cheese and its place of origin: ‘Organic Lancashire; Oxford Blue; Shropshire Blue; Organic Cheshire; Clifton Leaf, a goat’s cheese from Avon; Stilton; Extra Strong Mature Cheddar; Wild Garlic Yarg from Cornwall; Old Worcester White; Sussex Yeoman; Caerphilly; Wensleydale...’
Mustn’t crumble
Claude picked up a knife with a flourish and, holding his other hand above the board seemed to be in receipt of ethereal vibes emanating from the cheeses. Making his choice, he carved off a portion of the deathly white Lancashire, which promptly crumbled into many pieces. I winced. This trait, common to Lancashires, clearly confused the Frenchman, for in his book no self-respecting cheese should do this. Nevertheless, he scooped the pieces onto his plate and popped a morsel into his mouth. The look of distaste that befell his face, however, revealed what he thought of the cheese. Bad start, I thought.
Jean-Michel had carved himself a portion of the Oxford Blue, a vegetarian cheese first made from cow’s milk by Baron Robert Pouget in 1993 as an alternative to Stilton. He smeared the creamy, blue-veined cheese onto a fragment of Bath Oliver, sniffed it, and popped it into his mouth. His round, open face assumed a look of extreme pleasure and his lips curled into a broad smile.
‘C’est bon, ça! C’est très bon! I can taste dark chocolate and white wine!’ he announced floridly.
Prompted by this, Claude followed suit and also had to agree that this was indeed a fine cheese. ‘Effectivement, it does have all the hallmarks of a classic French cheese,’ he added generously. ‘Oui, it is aromatic, spicy and I can detect a hint of tarragon.’
Next up was the Clifton Leaf goat’s cheese, mild, creamy, made from unpasteurised milk. The decorative leaf was peeled back and the cheese within sampled by all. ‘Champignons!’ said Claude, wide-eyed. ‘It has a subtle mushroomy flavour...’
My guests treated the cheese tasting with the utmost seriousness and Claude even produced a little notebook and wrote down comments on each, apparently to be used in the final judgement.
The other cheeses were tasted and commented upon with a variety of grimaces, wan smiles, pitying expressions, but also with a number of positive nods between the two fussy Frenchmen. Some cheeses were even given a second tasting.
Cornish tasty
One of the cheeses that intrigued my guests most was the Cornish Wild Garlic Yarg made by Lynher Dairies, using the creamy milk from their herd of Ayrshires. Ramson, wild garlic, leaves wrapped the semi-firm, rindless cheese and imparted a herbaceous aroma to the butter-coloured interior; not blatantly garlicky, but perhaps tinged with flavours suggestive of onion and spinach. The cheese obviously found favour, since it was soon dispatched.
‘And this word ‘yarg’,’ mused Jean-Michel. ‘It is a word from an ancient Cornish dialect, I expect?’
‘Oh, I’m sure!’ I bluffed, ignorant of the truth. Later research proved otherwise: it is simply the surname of the cheese’s creator, spelt backwards. Back in the 1980s, Bodmin Moor farmer Alan Gray first produced Yarg, based on a 17th century recipe in which the leaves of chestnuts, grapes or nettles were used as a protective wrapping.
At the end of the cheese tasting votes were given by all the party and the out and out winner was adjudged to be the Cornish Wild Garlic Yarg. At the bottom of the ratings languished the poor crumbly Lancashire cheese, its similarity to polystyrene unavoidable in the eyes of all the guests. As they departed in the early evening, I felt satisfied that I had, in some way, helped to salvage the reputation of British cheesemakers in the eyes of at least two sceptical Frenchmen.
This essay is abridged from Bonne Chance!, the second book in my ‘Life in France’ trilogy.
Dedicated to the memory of Claude Norrin.
Seems a bit hard on Lancashire. Especially as Crumbly is meant to do what it says on the label.