Emily in France 🇫🇷 Stinky Cheese and Small Talk
I take big issues with small talk.
Food tour season is back in full swing, which means that the time has come for "weird questions" – scare quotes totally intentional. I love me a "weird" question, from whether the French actually still eat frogs' legs to whether pigeons poop green in Europe. (I've gotten both just this week.)
If I don't know the answer to a given question, I'm perhaps doubly thrilled – it means I get to look it up... and use one of my favorite French expressions – Je me coucherai moins bête (I'll go to sleep less stupid).
The only part of "weird" questions I don't like? The fact that people are continuously construing them as weird! (Or construing weird as bad...)
I can't be the only person who's bad at small talk. I've told the story of how I ended up in France or what I do for a living more times than I can count. I want my questions esoteric and odd. When’s the last time someone asked you your favorite color? Your favorite dinosaur? Your favorite day of the week?
Frankly, if a four-year-old would ask it, it's my kinda question. So ask away!
Cheese of the Week
If you're a fan of washed-rind cheeses, look no further than Vieux-Lille – a particularly pungent example of this strong-smelling category once known as "puant macéré" or "steeped-n-stinky" (alliteration mine – I love me some alliteration).
Vieux-Lille hails from France's North, which was my first French port of harbor at 14. My host family never fed me Maroilles or Vieux-Lille, and frankly, I can understand why. Maroilles, after all, is already an assertive mofo (and the OG washed rind cheese), and Vieux-Lille is made by aging Maroilles even further – about five or six months – and rewashing it in brine or storing it in salt for even more assertiveness. Ostensibly invented by mineworkers who wanted to extend the shelf life of this already stinky cheese, Vieux-Lille boasts a rind that often migrates from Maroilles' typical orange to grey.
As with most washed cheeses, its bark is worse than its bite... but only a little.
To discover more of my favorite cheeses, be sure to follow me on Instagram @emily_in_france and tune into the Terroir Podcast, where Caroline Conner and I delve into France's cheese, wine, and more one region at a time.
What I'm Eating
I have a few soapboxes gathering dust in my brain, one of which is that the classic bistro has fallen out of fashion, in France. Many are mere museums to their former illustrious past (as I wrote for Life & Thyme): either relics and ho-hum tourist traps or ritzy, too-expensive stalwarts with gorgeous dining rooms and prices to match their rarity. Brasserie Dubillot is a bit different, revitalizing the category with a blend of old stalwarts and new favorites, including this fun play on leeks vinaigrette. More on the blog.
Discover more of my foodie finds via Instagram @emily_in_france.
What I'm Writing
1. Vieux-Lille's slightly less stinky cousin Maroilles was the subject of My Very First Cheese Column! Check it out over at My French Life.
2. From the archives: While we're on the subject of stinky cheese, back in 2017, I delved into a Maroilles-related myth purporting that locals of the North dunk this meaty cheese in their morning coffee, for Vice.
3. Chicago Chef Troy Jorge grew up dreaming of becoming, not a chef, but a fashion designer, and it totally shows in his gorgeous approach to rich, moreish pork belly. I've got the recipe for InsideHook.
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What I'm Saying
1. A rose by any other name may smell as sweet, and this bit of southwestern France – whether you call it Dordogne or Périgord or even Aquitaine – smells sweetly of walnuts, washed-rind cheese, and wine. This week on the Terroir Podcast, Caroline and I are breaking down Périgord's seven strawberry varieties, delving into why a cheese invented by monks was vastly improved by nuns, and explaining how the wines here got to be so deceptively delicious for how reasonable they are. Caroline shares a recipe for a delicious local walnut cake; I reduce the 100 Years' War to 15 seconds or less, and we both fangirl over the ultimate badass Eleanor of Aquitaine, who married two kings and proved to be cooler than both of them. Tune in to the Terroir Podcast for more!
2. Books are an inextricable part of French culture, and so is where you get them. Librairie is a false cognate – the French word, not for library, but for bookshop. On this episode of Navigating the French, I'm joined by Janet Skeslien Charles, author of the award-winning novel The Paris Library (and also one of my all-time favorite humans), to talk about this false friend as well as the place of both bookshops and libraries in French culture today.
What I'm Reading
1. The Caretakers, a gorgeous début from Amanda Bestor-Siegal, aka yet another of my all-time favorite humans (my God my friends are talented) that's coming out in TWO WEEKS. Preorder your copy of this poetic, heartfelt, Francophile, phenomenal novel here. You will not regret it.
2. I don't think I have any "good" screens anymore... but Embedded makes the case that that's the role TV plays, these days.
3. This story straight out of a Douglas Adams novel about an oh-so British art heist in the BBC, featuring Goya, TV licensing, and lost luggage receipts.
A bientôt !