Emily in France 🇫🇷 To Every Cheese There is a Season
Don't get cheesed off.
One of the things I love most about living in France is the food. (Is anyone surprised?) But I find it's tempting to paint the French relationship with food in too rosy a hue. It's not as though France is a country locked in time, impermeable to globalization. We have hamburgers; people snack far more than they ever used to. Obesity is on the rise, and while some people do still take hour-long lunches with a glass of wine or two, there are also people who work straight through the midday meal, just like they do back at home. (Though when I used to do this at my office job back in 2013, I was painted as the office b*tch. But I digress.)
There are French markets, bien sûr, but there are also supermarkets. And the markets you do find are not necessarily farmer's markets, selling produce not just from France but from Brazil, Peru, and Kenya. (Though I will concede that at least, in France, they have to tell you where things are from; as I realized recently at Borough Market, this isn't the case everywhere.)
But one thing that I do find exceptional about the French system, something that's remaining, if not stalwartly true, at least more true than elsewhere, is the keen attention to and respect for seasonality.
We can stretch our seasons a bit, here, but for the most part, strawberries are not available in December, and asparagus are not on sale in August. Produce arrives, is fully taken advantage of (by me, especially. I'm nothing if not a lover of produce. Just ask my produce guy on the rue de Bretagne.) and then swiftly removed from market stalls in favor of what comes next. It means that you have the time to fully appreciate, say, a perfectly ripe punnet of gariguette strawberries or the height of creamy, sweet potimarron season, before moving on to something new.
And the same goes for cheese.
With mid-March comes the tentative disappearance of one of my favorites, but the arrival of some of my favorites: goat cheese. To every cheese its season: I'll be waiting.
Cheese of the Week
Taking its final bow this month is Mont d'or. This lightly washed, soft cheese hails from the Jura mountains, and is made when dairy cows – the same ones used to make pressed Comté – come down from their summer pastures – that is to say, between August and the Ides of March. (And yes, in addition to being a cheese nerd, I’m also a literary one.) This cheese contained in a spruce box, it’s most frequently prepared by drizzling it with white wine, baked, and spooned over potatoes… or straight into your mouth.
To discover more of my favorite cheeses (as well as a reel of an oozy, delicious baked Mont d'or!) be sure to follow me on Instagram @emily_in_france.
What I'm Eating
French food is phenomenal – let’s start there. But let’s be honest: This is a people who thinks that cinnamon is spicy. If you like your food with a bit of heat, this is not a cuisine after your heart.
I had pretty much resigned myself to ho-hum Mexican food until I tried Los Gueros, home to traditional Mexican street food in Paris’ 11th arrondissement.
More on the blog.
Discover more of my foodie finds via Instagram @emily_in_france.
What I'm Writing
1. From the archives: Not all croissants are created alike, so how can you tell a great one from the ho-hum version highly likely to be baked from frozen? I give you all the insider's knowledge over at USAToday.
2. I got the recipe for the next-level Calabrian hot wings over at San Francisco's Fiorella – complete with Point Reyes blue cheese dipping sauce. For InsideHook.
3. Compared to when the rich girl Claire pulled out a box of "rice, raw fish, and seaweed" to scorn and nose wrinkles in "The Breakfast Club," sushi has become fairly commonplace in the West, with countless restaurants peddling the Japanese specialty. But there's more to this staple than meets the eye, as I explore for Mashed.
What I'm Saying
1. With links to the Norsemen of yore, Normandy is so much more than the home to the D-Day beaches. This week on The Terroir Podcast, Caroline and I delve into the history of this rich region, home to some of France's best beef and its most famous apple brandy: Calvados. Forest Collins is sharing her recipe for a fall fashioned, Caroline and I chat about whether we're for or against andouillette (aka the sausage that smells like a toilet), and Benjamin Renaud of the Ferme de Romilly takes us through some of his efforts to modernize his historic cider house. Listen here.
2. This week on Navigating the French, I'm chatting with food historian Jim Chevallier, author of August Zang and the French Croissant. He’s here to explain why Marie-Antoinette could not have brought the croissant to Paris – and why her country of origin is still given credit for it through the word for this category of beloved breakfast pastries: Viennoiserie. Listen here.
What I'm Reading
1. Why Edgar Allen Poe thinks all works of art should begin at the end, in the New Yorker.
2. Why there are no more public bathrooms in American cities, in Bloomberg.
3. What happens to a village made of bookshops when people stop buying books, in the Washington Post.
A bientôt !