Archive for the ‘cheese’ category
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Truffle sounds festive high note
Monday, December 27th, 2010
It doesn’t take much truffle to make a difference to all sorts of foods: charcuterie; garnish; timbales; soufflés. Escoffier even cooked them in Champagne for some of his more select diners. For the 2010 festive season, when Isigny Sainte-Mère launched its Camembert with Truffles, regional paper Ouest-France interviewed director general Daniel Delahaye. He remembers truffles [...]
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Cheese that improves with age…
Thursday, December 16th, 2010
The older a cheese gets, the more water it loses. However, a totally dehydrated cheese would not taste of anything. One of the challenges when maturing longlived cheeses like Mimolette is to ensure that it retains enough water to be edible, since the process is irreversible. The cheese grader’s skill is to be able to [...]
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From Isigny to Birmingham and the world
Wednesday, December 8th, 2010
From the Normandy coast to the heart of England is a well-trodden path for Isigny Sainte-Mère’s cheesemakers. This time, though, the occasion was shared with cheesemakers from all around the globe at the World Cheese Awards. Birmingham has been an export destination for Normandy dairy products since the days when steam power first started supplying [...]
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A living tradition has room for progress
Sunday, January 31st, 2010
How persistent is the appeal of a terroir today? In the second edition of Isigny Sainte-Mère’s company history, the author quotes recent surveys which found that 30% of all Europeans think that the provenance of a cheese is an important factor in their choice. Three quarters also responded that they eat traditionally-made food, which are [...]
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Foods that span centuries
Friday, December 18th, 2009
A Croque Monsieur is standard offering at bars and cafes across France: it comprises melted cheese on toast with a slice of ham between the cheese and the meat. When the Isigny Sainte-Mère chef Ivan Vautier prepared his version, he used Normandy’s charcuterie speciality, andouille, with Pont l’Evêque cheese. The andouille is a speciality sausage [...]
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A treat in store
Sunday, November 29th, 2009
As every Camembert is wrapped before going into its box, bear in mind that it is a living cheese and needs to breathe. That is why at least half the box will be made of wood, since boxes made completely of cardboard tend to go soggy, while the cheese does not travel well. The Camembert [...]
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Cutting mimolette: a hard cheese challenge
Monday, August 31st, 2009
How do you cut a hard cheese like mimolette safely and easily? For anyone behind a cheese counter, cutting veteran specimens of this cheese is at best an art, requiring a certain level of skill and dexterity. For a start, it requires a thick blade with a wedge profile to split the hard orange ball. [...]
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One Mimolette, up to two years
Saturday, August 29th, 2009
The first 15 days in the life of a Mimolette are vital to ensure it lasts the course. Since this cheese can be ripened for up to two years, it is hardly surprising that the cheesemakers and graders are very careful to follow the technical manual. Between the cheese mould to a special press, the [...]
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The legendary Camembert name
Tuesday, August 18th, 2009
Given the enormous success enjoyed by Camembert, it is hardly surprising that other cheesemakers started to join in. The existing Camemberts had branding, but there was no legally binding description or appellation for the cheese, which sold by thousands across the country. In 1909, Camembert makers joined forces to organise the Syndicat des Fromagers du [...]
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The Camembert legend (3)
Saturday, August 15th, 2009
The Camembert that Marie Harel made would not have had the familar white downy penicillin crust of a modern Camembert. That came later.In 1901, Normandy’s Camembert cheesemakers sought the advice of the Pasteur Insititute in Paris. The scientific answer came back to innoculate the Camemberts with the candidum strain of penicillin. This prevented the subsequent [...]
