Cheeeeeeeses of the Week - Langres & Chabichou du Poitou

For the second installment of our cheese of the week blog post, we are going to discuss two different cheeses. We bought these at the farmer's market on Boulevard Raspail in Paris.

The first cheese was Langres. It became an AOC cheese in 1991 and is a cow's milk cheese from the Champagne region of France. It has an almost unnatural looking orange rind and a very pungent scent, but we were told by the fromager that it smells stronger than it tastes (more on that in a moment).

A whole lotta Langres

A map highlighting the Champagne region of France

Our Langres

So our evaluation of the Langres was mixed. Contrary to what we were told, it did have a very strong flavor. The cheese has a really nice, creamy texture, but you can almost taste the grass that the cow was eating and the cheese had a very sharp, bitter bite to it. Caroline and I were both a little turned-off at first, but on my second go-around, I started to appreciate it a bit more and when I was picking at it the next day, I was really starting to enjoy it. It had such a raw, natural flavor, unlike anything I had ever tasted. Caroline on the other hand, never really acquired a taste for it.

The second cheese we tried was Chabichou du Poitou. This is a more traditional goat milk's cheese and in our opinion was one of the best goat cheeses we've ever had. Chabichou du Poitou is an unpasteurized cheese from the Poitou-Charentes region of France and is a very young cheese, typically aged only 10-20 days. The region has a long, traditional history of goat-herding that dates back to the 8th century when many muslim "Saracens" lived in the area. Supposedly, the word Chabichou is a derivation of the arabic word for goat, Cheblis. The cheese was given protected AOC status in 1990 and more information can be found on the Chabichou website at http://www.chabichou-du-poitou.eu/

Our personal experience with the cheese was very positive as noted above. It was almost the perfect texture for a goat cheese. It is firm, but creamy and gives you that great feeling when you first stick your knife into it. As for the flavor, it has a relatively mild flavor, but is extremely balanced and instantly recognizable as a goat cheese. Overall, we felt that it had a very sweet finish. I'm sure it would have been great with a little bit of honey.

The Poitou-Charentes Region of France

Our perfect piece of Chabichou du Poitou

Countdown to 2011

In celebration of the start of 2011, here's a calendar photo gallery of some of our favorite pictures from 2010. It was an exciting year for us, filled with wedding celebrations, travel, great food and great friends. Here's to 2011 living up to the high standard set by 2010!

Happy 2010!

January

We kicked last year off with a January boat ride to Ellis Island.

February

In February, our good friend Morgan prepared for her upcoming April wedding by inviting the girls to a day of trapeze school in New York City!

March

While Caroline and the girls were inside celebrating her last few months of being a "single girl", one of the worst storms Greenwich has ever seen was brewing outside!

April
Attending the Garba at our first Indian wedding. We pretty much nailed this stick dance.

May

Obviously, May was a very special month for us!

June
In June, we celebrated our 5 year reunion from Bucknell! After 3 Bucknell weddings this spring, were lucky to reconnect with our college friends for a 4th time!

July

A whirlwind month! A trip to Maine for our dear friends Mary and Nick's wedding, which was graced with an incredible rainbow arching across the sky, followed by packing, cleaning, moving, and finally a perfect Rocky Point goodbye dinner.

August


Our honeymoon to St. Jean-de-Luz: A relaxing week at the beach!

September
September brought us to our new home, Jouy-en-Josas. Moving into our room on HEC's campus was a lot of work, and the bare-bones set-up required that we do a lot of shopping at the local Leclerc (French Walmart). After an exhausting day of shopping, lugging, cleaning and moving, we enjoyed our first meal together in our new home, looking out our enormous window at the view we'd enjoy for months to come.

October
In October, we had lots of time for sightseeing. Above are photos of Chateau de Vincennes, right in Paris, and the "manifestation" we saw happening, in the glorious month of strikes that took over Paris.

November

Our modeling debut in HEC's Japan-Week fashion show!

December

Christmas markets, mulled wine, a ride on the Ferris Wheel outside the Louvre, and most importantly, a cooking lesson that actually resulted in a real-looking French macaron.



2010 proved to be a great year, on both sides of the pond. Thanks to our friends, old and new, for making our trip overseas so memorable so far, and supporting us on our journey

Cheers!

Polar Bear Swim

In order to celebrate the end of our first term at HEC and build up some publicity for the 2011 MBA Tournament (MBAT), a bunch of my classmates and me took a plunge into the frozen lake on campus.  I had never done anything like this before and I probably won't ever do it again, but it was worth the experience.  After getting out of the water, Caroline was waiting with a towel and a warm blanket.  A few swigs from a bottle of scotch and I was as good as new!  Here are a few pictures:

French Cheeses

As a follow-up to the last post, I thought this list might be interesting.  It is a list of all the different AOC cheeses in France.  I've highlighted the ones I know we've tried in red, so it looks like we have a lot of work to do!  The years indicates the year that the cheese was officially added to the list.  As you can see, Roquefort is the oldest protected cheese on the list.

Note: I haven't highlighted Camembert or Brie because supposedly the names are very loosely applied to non-AOC cheeses and I cannot confirm whether we have tried the "real-thing".

Cow's milk cheeses

Abondance de Savoie - 1990

Beaufort - 1968

Bleu d'Auvergne - 1975

Bleu de Gex haut Jura - 1977

Bleu des Causses - 1979

Bleu du Vercors-Sassenage - 1998

Brie de Meaux - 1980

Brie de Melun - 1990

Camembert de Normandie - 1983

Cantal - 1956

Chaource - 1970

Comté - 1952

Époisses - 2004

Fourme d'Ambert - 1972

Fourme de Montbrison - 1972

Gruyère - 2007

Laguiole - 1961

Langres - 1991

Livarot - 1972

Maroilles - 1976

Morbier - 2000

Munster-Géromé - 1969

Neufchâtel - 1969

Pont l'Evêque - 1976

Reblochon - 1958

Saint-Nectaire - 1955

Salers - 1979

Tome des Bauges - 2002

Vacherin Mont d'Or - 1981

Goat's milk cheeses

Banon - 2003

Chabichou du Poitou - 1990

Chevrotin - 2002

Crottin de Chavignol - 1976

Mâconnais - 2005

Pélardon des Cevennes - 2000

Picodon - 1983

Pouligny-Saint-Pierre - 1972

Rigotte de Condrieu - 2008

Rocamadour see also Cabecou - 1996

Sainte-Maure de Touraine - 1990

Selles-sur-Cher - 1975

Valençay - 1998

Sheep's milk cheeses

Ossau-Iraty - 1980

Roquefort – 1925

Mixed milk cheeses

Brocciu - 1983 (sheep and goats' milk)

Roquefort - Cheese of the Week

This is our first installment of our "Cheese of the Week" blog post.  Our goal is to try different French cheeses and give a brief overview of the history of the cheese and our thoughts.  The first cheese we will discuss is Roquefort.  This is a really well known cheese, but I learned a few things I didn't know before while putting together this post.  The cheese we bought is unfortunately not from a chic, local producer, but was bought at the grocery store.  However, it is certified AOC (Appellation d'Origine Contrôlée), meaning that it meets the government standards for any cheese bearing the Roquefort name.  AOC guidelines may sound familiar because they are also applied to French wines.

So what are these government standards you might ask?  Roquefort cheese must be aged in very specific caves of the Roquefort-sur-Soulzon region of France.  It is also a sheep's milk cheese that is aged with a very specific mold that is in fact created in a laboratory.  This aging process creates the unique, blue "veins" in the cheese.  There are only 7 certified roquefort producers in France and the particular cheese pictured above was made by the largest one, called Roquefort Société.  They produce over 60% of all the roquefort on the market.

Totally ripped this off the internet

And this one...

So the next question I'm sure you are all dying to know is how does it taste?  Well, it is similar in nature to many other blue cheeses such as gorgonzola or stilton.  The mold creates a sharp flavor, but I also found this cheese to have a nice and creamy texture.  In addition to the cheese, I added a bit of onion marmalade that Caroline and I bought at the Borough market in London.  It added a bit of sweetness to go along with the sharpness of the cheese.

Other popular ways to eat Roquefort are with belgian endives, or in the summertime, with slices of tomato and a dijon vinaigrette, much like you would do with mozzarella.  I also like to do a nice little American style iceberg wedge with dijon vinaigrette, bacon, and tomato.

I hope you all found this blog post interesting and I'll do my best to put together another one for next week.

Two Thanksgivings

Believe it or not, Thanksgiving can be hard to come by in France! (Joking, obviously). This favorite American holiday rolled around at what seemed to be the perfect time-4 months after leaving the US, with still a month to go before seeing our friends and families again. All of the American students at HEC were pretty excited when the school announced it would be hosting a traditional Thanksgiving feast in honor of the American students. You can see from our smiles below that we all had a good time, but when you reach the photo of the food, you will understand that our smiles came from the laughing we were doing while we talked about just how bad it was.

Peggy and Vikram reading about the history of Thanksgiving (provided on all of the tables).

They still made us use cafeteria trays?

The photo you've all been waiting for.


With this being our first Thanksgiving as a married couple, we decided to host our very own traditional meal, thankfully having Cherche-Midi in Paris renter-free for that weekend. We invited some of our closest American friends (and of course our Brazilian friends we never seem to want to do anything without!) over to enjoy a real home cooked meal!

All the fixins'

It's nearly impossible to find a whole turkey in Paris (for under 50 euros, that is) and often a challenge to fit something so big in a pint-sized French oven. So we opted to create a whole bird by buying a butterflied breast and two legs. Peter did the seasoning with herbs and garlic, and it was perfect!

A melange of seasonal vegetables from the local market.

The full, home-made, from scratch, meal!

Turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, roasted vegetables, salad with cranberries, walnuts and goat cheese, and an apple-pear crumble for dessert!

How we didn't manage to get better pictures of the group, I'll never know, but needless to say, we were all very happy to celebrate our holiday together!