Cheese: Cantal

Cantal is a pressed, mild semi hard cheese made from unpasteurized cow’s milk.  It comes from the Cantal region of France, which is centrally located and is about 2/3 way down the country.  It is believed to be the oldest cheese in existence and there is evidence to that dating back to the 1^st Century.  It holds the AOC or Appellation d’Origine Controlée title, which means it needs to be made within a certain region.

Cantal cheese is firm, and depending on its age, very mild.  It has three distinct categorizes:

·         Cantal jeune (aged 1-2 months)

·         Cantal entre-deux or Cantal doré (aged 2-6 months)

·         Cantal vieux (aged more than 6 months).

The best way I can describe the difference between the aged cheeses is to compare this to the terms “mild” and “sharp” used for cheddar.  “Mild” is just that; it is creamy and soft on the palette.  A young Cantal, or Cantal jeune is nutty, sweet, and milky in flavor.  A “sharp” cheese has more of a bite, almost astringent, and has a distinct character, just liked a Cantal vieux.

            There is also a Tomme version of this cheese, which is an unaged Cantal and used in aligot, a very popular mash potato dish rich in cheese.  The dish is unique in the sense that it is often made in giant pots stirred with wooden paddles for a large amount of time to obtain the desired consistency.

Pleasures of the Season: Quince

“Pleasures of the Season” is a series of posts which appear from time to time.  They focus on something special that occurs only seasonally, often fleeting, and something we anticipate.  The posts are sometimes food related, sometimes not, but highlight moments of what I’ve learned about living with the seasons since moving to Southern France.

A quince or coing (k-wǎ) in French, is a strange looking fruit.  It looks and tastes like a cross between a tart apple and a pear.  It’s extremely hard, cannot be eaten raw, and its pulp changes from white to bright orange when cooked.  It is an autumnal fruit and its production is limited, so it truly is a seasonal pleasure that passes quickly.  It is used to make jams, eau-de-vins, or pâte de coings.  Pâte de coings is a combination of fruit pulp and sugar cooked for a long time and then dried.  In Spain, it is known as membrillo and commonly paired with manchego cheese.  Basically, it like a thick fruit bar without the cereal jacket.

I’ve never had the pâte de coings – cheese combination, but I have eaten it for breakfast.  It is easy to make, but takes about a week a dry before it can be served. 



Pâte de coings, pain perdu avec groseilles

Quince pâte on French toast with red currants

Pâte de Coings
I don’t specific how many quinces to use because it all depends on what you get.  The important issue here is to use equal parts sugar and boiled quince.

1.      Wash the fruit; make sure to gently scrub away the light fuzzy jacket.

2.      Leaving skin on, cut fruit in quarters and remove the core and seeds.  Discard any damaged part of the fruit.

3.      Place clean, cut fruit in a large pot, cover with water and boil over high heat until the fruit it soft.  This takes 45 minutes to one hour and the fruit is ready when a knife easily pierces the skin and can be removed without force.

4.      Drain fruit; discard water.

5.      Pass the boiled fruit through a food mill using the medium or large grate.  The end result should be a thick “mash” or paste.

6.      Weigh the paste and then place it into a large cooking pot.

7.      Add to the pot an equal weight of sugar.  This is why the paste is weighed.  The fruit – sugar combination needs to be 50-50.

8.      Cook on high heat, stirring regularly.  This step can take anywhere from 45 to 90 minutes.  This is where the quince’s color starts to change.  The pâte is ready when it easily lifts up from the bottom of the pot when stirred.  The pot should look “clean” when this occurs.  It is crucial not to undercook the pâte because it will not firm up later, so error on the side of a longer cooking time.

9.      Line 9x13 pan with lightly greased wax paper and pour cooked pâte over it.  Smooth to a uniform layer.  Cover pan with a clean dish towel, making sure towel does not touch pâte.

10.  Let dry 5 to 7 days.

I grow gold.

Red goal, that is: saffron.  It is the world most expensive spice and comes from the red stigmas of the crocus sativus plant.  One gram of the real spice goes for 20euro or with the going rate of the dollar, about $27 a gram.  I say “the real spice” because fraud is becoming quite popular due to its hefty price tag.  Some tests have shown it mixed with beets, pomegranate fibers, turmeric, paprika, and even dyed silk threads.  Real saffron is red, not yellow and should be bought in threads, not in powder form to prevent other forms of alteration. 

When harvested, the red stigmas of the flower are cut at a specific spot.  Above the cut, the stigma is flavorful and valuable; below the cut, it is tasteless, pale dead weight.  The stigmas are dried and shrivel to less than a third of their original size, so it is impossible to tell just by looking at them if they have been cut in the right spot.  If the bottom part is left attached, it can increase the saffron’s weight by 25%, but adds no culinary value.  Basically, it just pads the check.  Therefore, the quality of the saffron is determined by a light test called photospectometry;  it is a standards test written by the  International Organization for Standards (ISO) which determines the intensity of the red and hence the color strength or “purity” of the saffron.  Any quality saffron will have this test; if not, there is no guarantee of the product.

            This is all very complicated, and since we don’t sell our saffron, we don’t do this; we use what we grow.  But waking up to a small field of purple flowers smiling at me makes me want to dive into this adventure.  I am trying to convince Christophe that we need to blow out the lower garden terrace and take some saffron cultivation classes to get started.  After all, it is more expensive than caviar and a lot less complicated to get.

            Facts:

·         Each flower has three red stigmas; each flower produces .007 grams of dried saffron

·         It takes 150 flowers to produce 1 gram of saffron, or 150,0000 flowers to produce 1 kilo, or 450,000 individual stigmas.

·         Saffron is hand-picked; its harvest cannot be mechanized.

·         Saffron production dates back over 3,000 years.

·         Iran produces 76% of the world consumption of saffron.

The red stigmas are removed after the flowers are harvested.  They are then dried before using.

Pleasures of the Season: Collecting Chestnuts

“Pleasures of the Season” is a series of posts which appear from time to time.  They focus on something special that occurs only seasonally, often fleeting, and something we anticipate.  They highlight moments of what I’ve learned about living with the seasons since moving to Southern France.

            The chestnuts are starting to fall.  There is no turning back now; fall is here and winter is on its heels.  We gather and prepare a lot in this season; the garden is still producing (September is its bumper month) and nature unwraps many treasures.  I think chestnuts are my favorite.  The chestnut trees here were planted eons ago.  Their wood was, and still is, used for housing beams because it is immune to almost any insect.  The nuts, ground into flour, became the nutritional base for people who once lived here.  Wheat was rare, so all breads were made with chestnut flour.  Today, we use the nuts in cooking, pastries, and most often, in jams.

            When I first arrived here, I really thought collecting chestnuts was like picking apples.  I imagined climbing trees like I did years ago and tossing the fruit down into the bushel basket below.  Picking chestnuts is nothing at all like that.

            First, chestnuts fall from the tree; there is no climbing high into the branches between colored leaves to get them.  They are enveloped in a thorny bog which needs to be removed to reveal the nut inside.  The needles on the bog are small and fine and one prick leaves a handful of embedded needles in the skin that are impossible to remove.  Clearly, this presents a problem, but one Christophe learned to overcome as a child: he would step on them.  This is not unique to him.  In fact, outside being a professional chestnut producer, this is the proper way to harvest them.  Christophe showed me how to sandwich the bog between my shoes and gently squeeze the nut out.  All contact with the bog is avoided and the nut is collected, pain free.

            It’s clearly not as poetic as hanging from a branch in an apple orchard, but it is fun all the same.  I like knowing we do something people have done centuries before us.  It is part of the culture, and a rhythm of life coming full circle.  The repetition of an act, like the seasons, is something taken at its moment because things change and quickly disappear, and then, it's too late.

Autumn's Arrival

            After a brief reprise, autumn clearly announced itself this morning with its hollowing winds and overcast skies.  Autumn is a wonderful season here (hunters aside, of course), but it is quite different than the falls I knew in Chicago.  I loved the reds and yellows of the changing maple trees and the quiet calm of the early morning as I left for work.  Bright blue skies would appear as the day unfolded and the leaves poetically floated down to the ground.  Idyllic, I know, but there were days like that, even if they were rare.  I recall the other fall days too; the cold rain, bare trees, and hard frosts.  Those days announced the arrival of winter, and even though I grumpily scraped the frost off my car and waited impatiently for the heat to kick in, I look back with nostalgia on those days too.

Living in the middle of a forested mountain range, I expected the foliage to rival Vermont with its waves of color on an endless flowing landscape.  I was wrong.  Some of the trees here, like chestnut and popular, do change color, but most do not.  They are only small yellow specs in a sea of green and brown.  Some trees, like the fig, simply drop their dried leaves, and many others, like the white oak, do not lose leaves until the spring.  I get glimpses of color, but it’s something I search for.

The wind is another issue.  It almost sounds comical coming from “The Windy City”, but the winds here are ferocious.  Fall is a very windy season, and it is not uncommon to have winds at 100-110 kilometers per hour for days on end; that is, day after day of wind at 65 miles per hour, just 10 below a level 1 hurricane.  The wind whips through the trees, creating a tremendous amount of noise which often ushers me quickly back inside.  Everything here grows or is constructed with the wind in mind; the trees bend at an angle and no window faces north.  I didn’t know this force until I moved here and still cringe when the weather announces strong winds.

But, like I said, autumn is a wonderful season.  It’s the season of gathering, of preparing, and of harvesting the rewards of hard work.   It’s about change, transition, and acceptance.  Autumn does have something amazing to offer.  It shows what nature can do; the changing colors, the violent winds, and the adaptability of all living things.  And for that, I am still in wonder of the season.

What do the French have against peanut butter?

I guess this is really a cliché, but most French people I meet do not like peanut butter.  In fact, just its name often triggers a repulsive grimace, much like my face when Australians mention Vegemite; it just looks gross.

I defend peanut butter with my life; after all, my school lunch memories consisted of it smashed between two pieces of white bread with grape jelly.  Being pulled out of the brown paper lunch bag and slightly crushed from the unwanted apple, the peanut butter and jelly sandwich was my favorite part of lunch.  That is where my life time love of it stems; peanut butter rests in my memory as something comforting and consistent, and I still revisit it as an adult.   

I was disappointed when Christophe said he didn’t like it.  He’s French for Pete’s sake, and they’re known for eating anything, so how can a simple jar of crushed peanuts turn him off?  I’ve begged and pleaded for him to try it, but he just shrugs me off. 

Then, one day, he dropped the bomb, “I used to like it as a child.  I ate it for breakfast.”

Sitting in the shock waves of this information, I wondered, “How he could still not like it?  What happened to turn him against this creamy goodness?”

After pondering this for a very long time, I think I realized why: he never brought it to school for lunch.  In France, children do not brown bag their lunches, they eat in the catine or cafeteria, where equality is practiced on each child by serving them all the same lunch.  Their collective memory doesn’t revolve sitting in the lunchroom with their half pint of milk and pulling a sandwich out of bag.  Instead, they have memories “catine classics”, like boiled endives in a béchamel sauce, canned tuna salad, and blood sausage with beat salad -  all good examples of French haute cuisine gone bad.  They didn’t have a choice, so it’s no wonder they don’t have found memories.

Despite the general dislike of it, peanut butter can be found at the grocery store, as my photo attests.  I eat it from time to time, but never have been able to get Christophe to taste it again, even at breakfast.  He tells me, “It just looks gross.”

And with that, he’s got me because I’ll never Vegemite no matter how good someone tells me it is.

What is the future of small winegrowers?

            With the wine harvest still in full swing, some conclusions have been made from the 2010 vendanges, and not all news is good.  The Languedoc-Roussillon region where I live produces the most amount of wine in France, but it has lost 10,000 small vineyards in less than 10 years.  These vineyards are on average less than 7 acres and often represent an additional modest income for a family.  Of these, almost 80% brought their grapes to a cooperative which represented 71% of regional production; hence, even small business means money.  The irony is, the decrease in acres harvested does not translate into a decrease in the quantity produced; 83% of the vineyards that remain are harvested mechanically and therefore are more profitable.

            While these are just numbers from a country far away from “2 Buck Chuck”, they do show a growing trend: small producers are being forced out and that will have an impact on the local economy and the end product.  Less money in mean less money out and quality can decrease when there is less of a choice, or does it?  If your vineyard only produces a small benefit, is it worth holding out if a better offer is presented?  Half of winegrowers hold an official label, such as appellation d’orgine protégée or indicate a geographic protection, so their quality has to meet certain expectations that are not found from its two dollar counterpart. 

Personally, I am for all the small vineyards; after all, it is the culture here and not too long ago each family had a vineyard to produce its personal wine consumption.  I would like to see all the vineyards stay, but it should not mean a loss to the winegrowers.  It’s a quandary, what should the small winegrowers do?

(Data: L’Hérault de Jour, September 29, 2011.)