All about cheese!

Did you know cheese was first invented in Mesopotamia & India in 15C B.C.?
Did you know the word "fromage" dates back to the 15C?
Did you know there are over 350 types of cheese in France ?

And .. do you know how cheese is made?
Do you know how to pair it with wine?
This and more is what participants in our All About Cheese Atelier explore when they take the class!

We start with a coffee and a cheese quizz! We discuss our cheese options and typically every participant chooses a type of cheese.

Then we go to one of the best cheese shops in Paris where, with the help of our award winning "Maitre fromager" (cheese master), we select the various cheeses to sample.

After we have our bounty, we come to my studio to enjoy our "plateau de fromage" (cheese board) with a salad and three different types of wine: one red, one dry white, one sweet white ... and we discuss about our cheessy sensations while we learn All about cheese.
Our last workshop brought a variety of flavors and challenges!

Our group settled for

Saint Felicien, soft cow milk, (top in the clay pot)

Epoisses, from Burgundy

Pyrennees with sheep milk

Mimolette, aged 24 months, cow milk

Roquefort, sheep milk

A goat cheese from Poitou.

All About Cheese ateliers are scheduled once every 6 weeks.

My Pantry

We have a pretty small kitchen in our little house. Not as tiny as many Parisian, New York, Roman, London, San Franciscan (you get the idea) apartment kitchens, but small nevertheless.
And I cook. A lot. Having a well stocked pantry makes life a lot easier when I just want to throw something together for lunch and it's Sunday and nothing is open except for the boulangerie and the local wine co-op. One can only survive on bread and wine for so long...

Our kitchen doesn't have a pantry. I would love one big space to store canned food and spices. It doesn't even have one cupboard big enough to accommodate all the basics (if you consider a huge can of Nopales I bought two years ago and haven't found a use for yet, a "basic") so three of the six cupboards in our little kitchen are bursting with foodstuffs.



The "world food" corner. The giant green and yellow can with the Amigos label are the Nopales. I would appreciate ANY recipe ideas using these!


The baking cupboard is crammed with several different types of flour and dark brown, light brown and white sugar, chocolate, dried fruit and nuts.


Then we have the hot sauce and vinegar shelf. Why do we have so many hot sauces for god's sake? On the far left is homemade red wine vinegar made in my vinaigrier.


The third cupboard is full of canned tomatoes, dried beans and lentils, pasta, a giant box to PG Tips tea from England, more hot sauce, dog treats and other, currently forgotten items tucked away in the back. I need to clean this one out and see what's in there.



The very over crowded spice shelf.


I've made the space work for me. I find that the less room you have, the more organized you need to be so I try to keep it that way.
It isn't the kitchen of my dreams but it is a kitchen in France, and that is a dream!

Photo du Jour

a beautiful, natural centerpiece


Meeting new people can sometimes be a little nerve-wracking for me. This time it was easy.

On Tuesday I had the pleasure of spending a good chunk of the day with a group of eight who have come to stay in a gîte in our village for part of their European vacation. We were introduced through a friend of a friend and hit it off immediately.
They are a mélange of Americans and Germans who currently live in Seattle and love food, wine and traveling as much as I do. And they all have a magnificent sense of humor.

After a shopping trip to the morning market in Olonzac, we gathered in the evening and cooked together and shared stories and drank some stunning local wine that they introduced me to (yes, I was embarrassed that I'd never had it before, so I owe them one).

Here's to new friends!

Franks & Beans: Recipe

Last week it was so cold I was desperate for recipes that would warm the kitchen and the house, so I made baked beans. It was a long slow recipe that took 7 hours of baking. I used salt pork, onions, molasses, brown sugar and spices. The beans were good, but I got tired of eating them plain, so I made my version of franks and beans.

I hesitate to post this recipe because, it is pure white trash cooking, not exactly my specialty. But the truth is, it's delicious! I've seen this recipe called something like "Hawaiian Beans" which is kind of interesting because of course pineapple comes from Hawaii, and beans are very popular in Hawaii, especially in Portuguese Bean Soup. But also because this recipe has frankfurters in it. All kinds of processed meat--specifically Spam and hot dogs are very common in Hawaii and make their way into fusion food like Spam musubi and hot dog maki sushi.

While my parents have very sophisticated tastes, I credit them with this very budget friendly recipe. They made it with Heinz vegetarian beans, probably kosher hot dogs and French's prepared mustard. But what I've discovered is that it works well with baked beans, any kind of sausage and any kind of mustard you like. It's really less of a recipe than a formula. Please, don't hate me for posting it! I promise I will get back to regular programming shortly!

Franks & Beans, Hawaiian Style
makes 4-6 servings

4 cups canned or homemade beans, about 2 cans
4 hot dogs or sausages, any kind you like, sliced into bite sized chunks
1 cup canned pineapple chunks
3 Tablespoons ketchup
1 Tablespoon mustard, any kind you like

Dump all of the ingredients into a large saucepan or dutch oven and gently heat through. Season to taste with additional mustard, ketchup, etc. Enjoy!

Photo du Jour

Parading through the French Quarter.

La Fête du Fromage - Le Caillou Creusois

Though le Limousin is famous for its lush, rolling pastures and famous cattle, it is generally not recognized as a cheese producing region.

In fact, Caillou Cruesois is the first one I've ever encountered.


La Creuse, one of the départements in le Limousin region, is located halfway between Paris and Toulouse. Celebrated AOC cheeses are produced in every direction - to the north, the south, the east and the west - yet this area doesn't seem to offer many regional cheeses for sale to the general public.
Maybe one has to live in the area to experience what cheeses it has to offer?

Le Caillou Creusois is a hefty little unpasteurized cow's milk cheese that gives off an enticing, earthy, barnyard aroma. Yes, I consider a barnyard aroma enticing...when it comes to cheese.
The compressed pâte has a rich chalky texture that coats your taste buds with satisfying yeast and fresh milk flavors.


A refreshing white wine from the Loire would be a good match to this delicious cheese.

Revue de presse cuilinaire 3: January 2006

The Prisma Presse group publishes three cooking magazines: Guide Cuisine, Cuisine Actuelle and Cuisine Gourmande. The latter is the most upscale title of the trio, and focuses more on dinner invitations, decoration and creative cooking. Sometimes their creativity goes a bit overboard, as in the recipe for Brownies de betterave (Beet Brownies) found in the January-February 2006 issue. I'm all for finding more imaginative ways to use beets, but I'm not sure including them in brownies is one of them. Besides the beet feature, the January Cuisine Gourmande presents ideas for celebrating Chinese New Year and for using cinnamon, which is relatively rare in French cooking. The cover story announces the "eternal comeback" of bistro cooking, and the magazine leads off with "La recette dont on parle," or the recipe that everyone is talking about: Compote de cranberries et crème coco, or Cranberry and Coconut Cream Compote.