Making Mozzarella

Photo by Charlotte Moore

The Daily Cure blog written by Charlotte Moore has a great photo article from 15 October about how to make mozzarella.  It is definately worth taking a look at!

Les Fromagers de Tradition @ la Fromagerie de la Houssaye

What makes a great cheese?  Contented animals, good raw milk, traditional methods of production, know how, but most important - passion! 

Serge le Chevallier at Les Fromagers de Tradition, la Fromagerie de la Houssaye makes some of the most amazing cheeses from Normandy you will ever encounter. Livarot and Pont l'Eveque are the specialities of the house. All made with raw milk from their herds in the lieu-dit called la Houssaye, located in the Pays d'Auge, these are award winning cheeses.  

The Livarot won the Silver medal and the Pont l'Eveque won the Gold medal at the 2013 Salon d'Agriculture in Paris. We had the privelege of meeting Monsieur le Chevallier at the Fromagerie where he was kind enough to give us a tour of his facility and explain their fabrication techniques and then let us taste his cheeses in situe.  

A natural presenter, le Chevallier regaled us with the techniques of this artisanal process he and his 17 employees use for cheese making. It was truly fascinating to learn that a Livarot, round in form, and a Pont l'Eveque, square in shape, start out exactly the same and do not start to become their respective cheeses until around the salage (salting stage). 

While Livarot, otherwise known as le Colonel, is big and meaty, a very masculin cheese; Pont l'Eveque is soft and milky, like milk fresh from the cow and could be described as feminine. We tasted these cheeses with a beautiful, crisp white wine, but some say a dry cidre brut would work equally well. 

With their cousin, Camembert, these cheeses make up the Normand big three and typify all that is good about Normandy. For us a Domaines & Terroirs, we were truly honoured to be able to sample the very best of these cheeses with a most talented cheese maker.

Why Raw Milk?

A quote at Graindorge in Normandy

Vive le Terroir

A very interesting article called Vive le Terroir in the NYTimes recently by Steven Erlanger discusses the idea of French terroir as it exists today here in this wonderful country.  Having just spent eight days in this very region on a Domaines & Terroirs Journey with a wonderful family eager to discover this very concept for the southern Causses, it was extremely timely.

Home of the Cathars, Templiers and some of the most beautiful villages in France, terroir in this region of ancient wine varieties and wonderful cheeses like Roquefort, Bleu de Causses, Pérail, Cabécou, Pélardon, Rocamadour, le Rouelle du Tarn from la Fromagerie du Pic and la Cardabelle from la Fromagerie de Hyelzas and safran, lamb from Quercy, chesnuts and walnuts, foie gras and all things duck, make it a region full of things to discover and terroir is everywhere.  (More on the Journey in later posts!)

 

Cheese - the soul of the earth

 

ter·roir 

[French ter-wahr / ter' wa] noun

The conditions in which a foodstuff is grown or produced giving the food its unique characteristics. 

The French Ministry of Agriculture definition : a combination of land specificity and human savoir-faire.   

Origin: French: literally, 'soil, land', from Medieval Latin terratorium 

In France, this mythical word represents simply the land. And yet, it is more than the soil and climate or geological and hydrological conditions. It is the quintessence of agriculture, the combination of geography, people and culture. While the meaning has been greatly debated across the wine world as to whether it is a real factor or not, in the art of cheese, it is self-evident. This is not an elitist concept; rather it is a respect for the locality, the history and the people who create the product. 

With cheese in France, as with many other artisanal products here, these elements of tradition can be traced to when people were isolated from one another and other communities. With their particular climate, the vegetal species, the race of their animals and the chemical structure of their milk and personal interaction, individuals in small communities began to produce products particular to their region; each exhibiting differences in taste, in texture and in shape. 

Terroir represents locality, continuity and consistency which we find in region specific cheeses. Each of them provides us with a vision of the cultural diversity of their area as well as the shared habits of the local people and their interaction with the surrounding environment. We come to realize that "terroir is all about human intervention."  

Terroir represents locality, continuity and consistency which we find in region specific cheeses. Each of them provides us with a vision of the cultural diversity of their area as well as the shared habits of the local people and their interaction with the surrounding environment. We come to realize that "terroir is all about human intervention." 

Interactive map

To codify this combination of the basic identity, the knowledge it represents and to help preserve the regional specificity of a group of categories of foods, produce, wine and cheese, the French developed a system known as l’Appelation d’Origine Controllée (AOC). The process is in-depth and exacting. It documents the essence of the cheese: its historical framework, the its agricultural dictates such as breed of animal, location, vegetation and all the processes used to create the cheese. 

The process attempts to define, if not the soul of a cheese, its roots. The first AOC cheese to be protected by this status was Roquefort in 1925. Currently 46 cheeses have l’Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée designation in France; 29 cow, 14 goat and 3 sheep milk cheeses. There hundreds more French cheeses which display unique regionality and typicity.  There are some fun websites that let you view the regions and their associated AOC cheeses, which you click on a region and the AOC cheeses will come up. 

The European Union has used it as the basis of an EU wide programme – l’Appellation d'Origine Protégée (AOP) which is of similar scope and more stringent in some of its requirements.

Our fascination with this intervention, this interaction, this portal into the soul of the earth is what we here at Domaines & Terroirs seek to discover through journeys into the countryside.