Pleasures of the Season: Baked Camembert de Normandy

I couldn’t help with the clichés in the photo, but it’s true: nothing goes better with an aged Camembert than a darn good baguette and a glass of red wine.

“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.

Camembert cheese, a product of the Normandy region in Northern France, is probably the most widely consumed cheese in France.  Supermarket aisles are reserved for it alone, and consumers take their time choosing one.  A good cheese needs to be soft and it needs to smell.  If it doesn’t, the cheese is put back with a grimace and another one is picked up for inspection. The wooden boxed stored cheeses are opened, smelled, and squeezed.  I’ve witnessed heated discussions over cheeses and Camembert coinsures have probably spent days over the course of a lifetime picking out the right cheese.

Traditionally produced from unpasteurized cow’s milk, Camembert was first made in 1791 by Marie Harel, a farmer from the Camembert village.  Caving into market demands, most mass produced Camembert cheeses are now made with pasteurized milk, and therefore cannot carry the label AOC (Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée), which is only reserved for those traditionally made with unpasteurized milk.

Camembert cheese is what American nightmares are made of; it is stinky, strong, and builds character the more it’s aged.  We bought a wheel two weeks ago and let it sit in the fridge.  Three days went by and the smell was getting so strong we had to pop it into a Tupperware.  We opened it Saturday night and were almost knocked to the floor the odor was so strong.  Our timing was perfect; it was ripe, soft, and ready to be cooked.

We bake our Camembert in a true country style: in the chimney.  The wooden box is wrapped in foil and placed on glowing ambers.  I’d be hard pressed to find a Parisian who would admit to doing this; however, anyone I’ve spoken to about it speaks rather enthusiastically, so I’m convinced this is a guilty hidden pleasure.  I refuse to hide my guilt; this is a simple gastronomic bliss.  Camembert is rich, creamy, and unctuous.  We reserve it mostly for the winter months when fresh cheeses are scarce, and when it can be devoured in front a warming fire.