Bonjour Mont d'Or!

The season for Mont d’Or has finally arrived!

 After a long summer of grazing the hillside pastures of the Haut-Doubs and the Jura to produce milk for Comté d’estive and Morbier, small herds of the regions’ famous Montbéliarde have been moved into winter housing in preparation for the harsh alpine winter months.  

It is now, when the cows are being fed only the purest, sweetest alpine hay cut and dried from May-August, that Mont d’Or (or Vacherin du Haut-Doubs) is produced. Not only has the cow’s diet changed, but the lactation cycle of the herd will be coming to an end, a time when the fat level of the milk naturally increases.

Calving is usually staggered in larger herds of cows, to give a continual milk supply with changes in milk composition at various stages of the lactation being lost in the volume of milk. A smaller herd will tend to “block calve” so all the cows give birth at around the same time, and are all on the same lactation cycle. This rich, fatty milk is better suited to making soft cheese than hard cheese (although Comté is always made using partly-skimmed milk), and so is utilised by making a very special cheese – one of Frances greatest soft cheeses.

Mont d’Or is beautiful to look at; beautiful to taste; and with a beautiful story of respected tradition and regional agriculture behind it – the seasonal movement of animals dictated by landscape and climate, and the seasonal production of artisanal cheese, dictated by the milk.

The famous spruce band which makes Mont d’Or such a visually striking cheese is tied around the cheese when the cheese is very young, before the rind has begun to develop. The spruce cambium (a thin, pliable layer between the bark and wood of a tree) serves a practical function – to hold the ripening cheese together as it develops a melting, almost liquid texture, and also imparts the most striking aromas to the cheese. An aroma of rubbed pine needles, of Christmas trees, of soft-wood resin. As the cheese ripens and this unmistakeable aroma begins to develop, a thin rind starts to form – a delicate geotrichum bloom which breaks down the firm paste of the cheese, giving a creamy texture and yeasty flavour. Fluffy white moulds coat the cheese and act with the geotrichum to ripen the cheese and also give the rind an undulating or crumpled appearance.  Once fully ripened, Mont d’Or will have a tender, delicate rind with a powerful aroma – not just of spruce, but of cream, cauliflower and cured meat.

Try baking a small Mont d’Or. Stud the cheese with thin slivers of garlic and small sprigs of thyme before sprinkling with a little white wine and baking for 25 minutes.

The cheese comes hot and molten from the oven, scented with garlic and thyme. Spoon the cheese over toasted pain de campagne, baby celery hearts, French mountain hams, saussie de Morteau, acidic little cornichons and maybe a salad of frisée dressed with the lightest drizzle of walnut oil. This is one of the best meals of the year.

The Mont d’Or will be available from specialist cheesemongers until February or early March when the season draws to an end. The cows are dried off, for a few months before returning the hillsides for the first spring grazing after a winter under snow.

It is here where the herds will calf, and begin to produce milk for summer hard cheese making. Here they will stay, grazing in the summer until next autumn when the Mont d’Or season will start again, just as is has done for over 200 years.

Pechegos: a Tarn valley goat's cheese



Pechegos - washed rind goat's cheese from the Tarn valley

 The past few days have been turning increasing autumnal, with the early morning air being cold enough to want a scarf.
Blackberries have ripened, plums are around by the bucket load -tender Victorias, rich and delicious Opals, and the first, small damsons.
Apples too, pink fleshed Discoverys are now joined by Falstaff, Worcester and Blenheim Oranages at the farmers' market. 
It will still be a good month until the real glut of apples hits, joined by quinces, game, pumpkins, root vegetables and spice. 
When it begins to get a little colder, as far as cheese is concerned, I like to eat something robust. More earthy, savoury and meaty than the creamy, delicate cheeses of warm summer days.
Something with a washed rind and big, bold flavours.
Pechegos was the perfect cheese this week, a washed rind cheese from the Tarn valley in the Languedoc-Roussillon, made using raw goat's milk from local herds grazing the limestone hillsides of the Tarn.
Like the famous Mont d'Or (or Vacherin if you prefer), this cheese is encased in a band of spruce, which imparts a sappy flavour of the forest to the cheese, and holds together the soft, melting paste.
Pechegos is ripened for 6-12 weeks, so cheeses being sold now will have been made with milk from the herb rich pasture of mid-summer, resulting in cheeses with deep, full flavours. 
Over the ripening period, Pechegos is washed in brine, to encourage the development of Brevibacterium linens, giving the cheese a moist, sticky, orange rind and the typically meaty flavours of a washed rind cheese.
The finished cheese is quite unlike any traditional French goat's milk cheeses - soft, almost runny, rich and buttery, bold, meaty flavours, not unlike wild mushrooms or truffles.
Made by a sole producer, Le Pic (a small co-operative producing a range of both modern and traditional style cheeses), Pechego is seasonally available from Paxton and Whitfield, La Fromagerie and Androuet.


Bouchette cendree, a small, ashed
goat's cheese from fromagerie Le Pic.



Sparkenhoe Red Leicester

I have sold Red Leicester cheese for almost 4 years, but it was never really a cheese that interested me much. I suppose I dismissed it as little more than a brightly coloured cheddar style cheese.
However, a few days ago, upon opening a 9 month old cheese from Sparkenhoe farm, I change my mind on the cheese.

Sparkenhoe Red Leicester made 01/11/10

This was a cheese with depth and complexity.
The rind was thick, well formed and musty from its long ageing in Sparkenhoe's cheese store, and the curd was nutty, savoury and biscuity - like browned butter.
Sparkenhoe farm is situated on the Leicestershire/Warwickshire border, and is the only producer of a raw milk, traditionally cloth-bound Leicester cheeses in the county of Leicestershire.



So the only REAL Red Leicester cheese for me. 

The majority of Red Leicester is made from pooled (milk from many farms)and pasteurised milk in big creameries in Somerset. Formed in big blocks, shrink-wrapped in plastic and matured for only a few weeks, those cheeses are little more than a shaddow of the cheeese made at Sparkenhoe farm.

Sparkenhoe only makes cheese using milk from the farm's 160 strong herd of Holstein Friesian cows, which spend their whole life on the farm, grazing the green pastures of middle England grass and clover.
This sweet, rich milk is pumped into the dairy each morning where it has the addition of annatto - a pure extract from the jugle berry, Bixa Orellana, to give the cheese the characteristic deep orange colour. The milk is soured, and then coagulated with traditional calves rennet.
The curds are then cut, scalded, stirred, and drained, before being cut into blocks and stacked in order to realase more whey from the curd structure. Next, the curds are milled and salted, constantly being hand mixed to stop the mass of curds knitting together and to lower the temperature of the curd before being pressed into cheese. 
Once out of the cheese press, Sparkenhoe is a large, impressive cheese; a 20kg flat wheel, likened to a mill-stone in shape. The new cheeses are coated in lard and a layer of cloth, to form a proper rind on the cheese, protecting it over the 6-9 month long ageing period, where the cheeses are rubbed, turned and flipped on beechwood shelves.
Leicester may often be likened to a Cheddar, or perhaps more accuratly, a Cheddar style, but it is really one of our traditional territorial cheeses; it is a superbly traditional England cheese.

A final note on the cheesey history of Sparkenhoe farm - Leicester cheese was being made on the farm from 1745-1879, using milk from dairy longhorn cattle, a popular dairy breed in the Midlands at that time.
Production ceased due to "no money in cheese manufacture".

6 years ago, the current farmers of Sparkenhoe, Jo and David Clarke started making Leicester cheese once again due to the lack of money to be made in producing liquid milk. 
How things change.

New additions to the Sparkenhoe herd