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G. K. Chesterton once commented on the ominous fact that "The poets
have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese,” but
we will attempt to wax lyrical on this creamy wonder of the
culinary world. The French have developed a particularly fine
appreciation for cheese and in many lycées a poster of the
country’s seemingly endless varieties of delectable cheeses will
sometimes hang on the wall right next to a map of the world.
The teacher will point to a particular cheese and quiz his charges
about the region from which it originates: “Boucheron,” he will
intone gravely and his students will hopefully all answer in
unison: “La Loire.” Next: “Chabichou,” and like so many
Gallic parrots, they will correctly answer “Poitou!”
According to some legends, cheese was invented serendipitously by
an Arab nomad who was carrying milk in his bag as he traversed the
desert. Never to be outdone, the ancient Greeks credit
Aristaeus, son of Apollo, with the discovery of cheese, while it
is under the Romans that cheesemaking most probably developed into
a culinary art form -- in fact they kept a separate cheese kitchen
or caseale solely for the production and aging of
cheese. John Lanchester is uncharacteristically terse about
cheese in his wickedly humorous novel,
The Debt to
Pleasure,
where he is so loquacious about all things foodie and French:
"Dead milk, live bacteria." He also, with a sort of sinister
pleasure, quotes Joyce who called cheese 'the corpse of milk.' His novel owes much
to Brillat-Savarin, the famous lawyer, politician, and gastronome
who was also the author of
The
Physiology of Taste,
a treatise and meditation on the pleasures of food, and for whom the
sinfully decadent (triple cream!)
Brillat-Savarin cheese
is named.
Goat cheese is particularly appreciated by turophiles or lovers of
cheese for its tangy tartness. Goats with their heartier
constitutions happily consume bitter herbs which give goat cheese
its characteristic sharp flavor - divine with figs or pears or
wonderful when melted in warm steamy gougères.
Murray's
Cheese
in the Village and Zabar’s are traditional favorites for buying
cheese, while
Salumeria
Rosi
on Amsterdam Avenue serves a particularly delicate semi-soft
Amalattea made from goat’s milk. Another cheese mecca,
Artisanal
(officially billed as a Fromagerie, Bistro and Wine Bar) has a
superb selection of goat cheeses which are all stored in a special
temperature-controlled room, including a nutty Garrotxa from Spain
and the sinfully creamy, ash-covered Valençay from the Loire
Valley.
And it was
Brillat-Savarin of course who came up with the aphorism: Tell
me what you eat and I'll tell you who you are!
Read:
The Debt to
Pleasure, John Lanchester
Read:
The
Physiology of Taste, Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, tr. by M.F.K.
Fisher
Eat:
Brillat-Savarin
cheese
Eat:
Salumeria
Rosi
Eat:
Murray's
Cheese
Eat:
Artisanal
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