I love cheese and it’s a good thing too, because with 350 to 450 distinct varieties of cheese, you might say that France is synonymous with fromage.
In many French households, the cheese at the end of the meal is sacred. When I first came to France, the passing of the cheese plate was a stressful moment full of self-doubt. What if I didn’t cut the cheese right? What if the knife slipped while cutting into a hard cheese and came crashing down on the board or plate? What if I took too much, or too little? To make matters worse, everyone at the table tends to watch as the cheese plate is passed around meaning that the entire table would witness my social snafu. At each dinner party, I felt that as the token American, it was my duty to dispel the Velveeta myth surrounding American cheese practices. As I soon discovered, however, being an American turns out to be a major advantage when it comes to cheese precisely because their expectations of us are so low in this department. If you profess even the tiniest appreciation for any of the cheeses on the cheese plate, they will be impressed. And if you dig into a stinky cheese with gusto, you will practically feel their approval radiating across the table.
Other regions specialize in cow and sheep cheeses, but in the Poitou, goat cheese rules the roost. The other day, I was driving to the nearby town of Neuville when my eye chanced upon a goat-shaped sign on the side of the road advertising a family-owned goat cheese production. Without thinking twice, I abruptly swerved into the small road, which quickly turned into a gravel road filled with potholes, which eventually led into a courtyard full of parked cars and free-range chickens. The place was bustling and in the center of an astonishing array of goat cheese products, Raymond was running back and forth greeting customers with a smile and exchanging good-natured jokes.
“You want to see the farm?” he asked when it was my turn to order.
“Well, yes, I would,” I hardly had time to reply before he was bustling past me out the door and across the courtyard to the goat barn. For the next several hours, Raymond gave me the most complete personal tour of my life, not only showing me their 28 goats, but every step in the cheese-making business that he runs with his lovely wife Claudine, right down to the limestone cave where they age their cheeses.
At the end of the tour, I left with two traditional goat cheeses, the comforting smell of hay lingering in my nostrils, and a whole new appreciation for the bacterial miracle that is cheese.
Want to know more about Raymond and Claudine's goat farm or see more pictures? Visit: http://www.bienvenue-a-la-ferme.com/poitou-charentes/vienne/vendeuvre-du-poitou/ferme/fromages-de-chevre-coudret/359679 OR check out their Facebook page: Fromages de chèvre Coudret.
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