The Best Things I ate in Paris

I was lucky enough to spend a week in Paris with my wife for our twentieth anniversary.  Having never before visited the City of Lights, I was excited to eat as much amazing food as humanly possible.  Based in the Rue Cler district, we branched out all over the city center and ate and ate and ate.  Given that it was my first trip, I make no claims to having uncovered anything veterans wouldn't know well, but these were my favorite things.

Cheese.  There are more cheese shops in Paris than anyone could make a dent in during a one week trip, but my very favorite was a small shop on Rue du Champ de Mars called Marie-Anne Cantin. They age their own cheeses and have a wonderful selection.  Epoisses is one of my favorite cheese and Cantin's had a wonderful grassy note, but I also loved their pungent Camembert, and their wide selection of aged goat cheeses as well as their butter.

Baguettes Cereal.  A baguette is a simple enough thing, but Paris baguettes are a wonder, with a density and richness absent in even the best baguettes I've had in the U.S.  While wheat breads in the US tend to be hard and flat tasting, the baguette cereal, a French whole grain baguette, is intensely flavorful, adding a zing to the regular baguette.  There were numerous boulangeries that had amazing baguettes, but one of my favorite cereal baguettes was at Nelly Julien on Rue Sainte Dominique.

Chocolate apes at Patrick Roger

Chocoalte Truffles.  The amount of cheese I ate in Paris was second only to the chocolate. Chocolate stores abound and display their wares like jewels in glass containers.  I'm a fan of the plain, cocoa coated chocolate truffle.  The two best I had were at Patrick Roger and La Maison du Chocolat.  The Patrick Roger truffle had a stronger and more complex flavor with a good balance of acid and bitterness. The Maison du Chocolat truffles may not have been as complex, but they had a creaminess that made them even more enjoyable.

Hot Chocolate.  Laduree is a chain of chocolate cafes.  Looking like a frilly English tea room, they might have been decorated by my six year old daughter, but they are oh so good.  Hot chocolate is everywhere in Paris in the fall, and the hot chocolate at Laduree is the best I had.  It's really a very thick ganache, much like the kind I make at home.   The serving is enormous and I'd recommend getting it with whipped cream (a la Viennoise) to cut the richness a bit because it really is more like drinking melted chocolate than any typical hot chocolate, though it is oh so good (and it'll give you a bit of a caffeine jolt as well).  They have great macarons as well.

L'As du Fallafel.  I thought it was curious that this little falafel stand seemed to be the single most recommended eatery in Paris by my friends and guidebooks alike.  Located in the Jewish corner of the Marais neighborhood, L'As dishes out falafel sandwiches to long lines day and night, and they are worth the wait.  These are small, perfectly fried, perfectly spiced falafel in a pita with a number of veggie slaws, grilled eggplant and an awesome, garlicky, hot sauce.  This may have been my favorite meal in Paris (I went twice).  The sweetness of the eggplant, the piquant sauce and the plethora of little falafel balls all comes together in perfect balance. You can go to the take out window or eat in, but the advantage of eating in is that you get your own little bowl of the hot sauce, which is a big plus.

Aux Merveilleux de Fred

Meringues from Aux Merveilleux de Fred.  These things are crazy.  Layers of meringue covered in whipped cream and rolled in chocolate (or other flavored) flakes.  Akin to a meringue layer cake, they come in various sizes.  They are creamy, chewy, melt in your mouth miracles of taste and texture.  The cream is not overly sweet and comes together with the delicate meringue to create a crunchy, creamy wonder.  The whole experience is like biting into a sweet cloud.  I'm not usually a fan of white chocolate but that was my favorite flavor.  The dark chocolate flakes overwhelmed the subtlety of the cream whereas the white chocolate just added to the creamy richness.

Ice cream. Ile St. Louis is a small island in the Seine that seems to consist mostly of ice cream shops.  Flocks of tourists window shop with cones in hand.  Most of the shops serve Paris' legendary Berthillon ice cream, but if you continue past the pretenders, you'll reach the actual Berthillon shop and find that its reputation is well earned.  Bold flavors and a creamy texture made this some of the best ice cream I've had.  We tried the rich, dark chocolate cacao, tangy passion fruit sorbet, and a creamy but nutty pistachio. 

Fine Dining.  I ate at a lot of bistros and cafes, but while in France, I wanted to do a splurge meal at a traditional French temple of fine dining.  On a friend's recommendation, I chose Le Pre Catelan.  The restaurant is located in Bois de Boulogne, a huge and beautiful (though somewhat seedy) park on the northwest outskirts of Paris.  The dinner menus at this three star Michelin eatery are extravagant and extravagantly priced, but they have a lunch prix fixe for 105 Euro (140 with the wine paring).  The lunch is an even better deal than it looks like as each course actually consists of two or three parts.  I will resist going through each course of this meal and say only that it was one of the most memorable meals of my life.  The ambiance, including the traditional French service with an army of waiters set in a beautiful dining room with a courtyard view, was of course memorable.  But, as part of my three part pork entree, the meal included probably the best cooked piece of pork belly I've ever had, with cracklin' skin, a thick, toothsome but somehow not fatty layer of fat and meat that was the rich essence of all that is good and porky in this world, all bathed in a pork jus (the other two pork courses were a braised pork in tomato foam and a sort of liquid head cheese served in a martini glass and topped with mayonnaise.  And of course, the cheese selection was wonderful, with a particularly well aged Mont D'Or.  The wine pairings added depth to each course, and unlike in most American tasting courses, the pours were generous and bottomless.

Not everything was perfect in the world of Paris food, but it was pretty close.  Sure, we had some mediocre bistro meals, and I can only imagine the world of tiny, out of the way treasures we had no clue about (and please let me know what they are!), but generally, the availability and quantity of amazing food was, well, just as true as everyone says it is.

What is the Stinkiest Cheese?

Time to dip into the old mailbag with this question:

Sku, I love a stinky, stinky cheese. What's the stinkiest cheese you know?

Ah, a question that pulls at my heart strings. Well, there are different kinds of cheese stink and the stink depends not just on the type of cheese but on its age. I love the stench of a blue mold or the barnyard floor smell of aged goat. The downright stinkiest cheeses, though, have to be the soft, washed rind cheeses. I've had some very mild Taleggios, but I've also had some that were super-powerful and Stinking Bishop from England is appropriately named (although it's actually named after a variety of pear). And while Epoisses and Pont l’Eveque are legendarily stinky, their stinky exteriors fade on the palate to reveal a rather subtle and delicious cheese.

If I had to pick out the absolute stinkiest cheese I've had in recent memory, it would have to be Vacherin Mont d'Or, the French cow's milk cheese. I recently purchased one of these from the Cheese Store of Silverlake (shown at the top left in the above photo), and while Vacherin Mont d'Or is always stinky, this one was corpse-waking material...or maybe just corpse. I have a pretty huge tolerance for stench, but I even had trouble getting it down, and my fridge still doesn't smell the same.

So if you really, really want to push the envelope on stench, see if you can find one of these ripe Vacherin Mont d'Ors, but you may want to keep it in a lead box or something.

Turkey Day Cheese

If you're looking for some good cheeses to start off your Turkey Day, here are some I've been enjoying lately:

Toreggio (also known as Roccolo). No, not Taleggio but from the same region of Italy, Toreggio is a cow milk cheese with a consistency more similar to a goat, a bit chalky in the middle, smooth and creamy closer to the rind. It's a washed rind cheese with a subtle, nutty flavor which would go well with any of the traditional cheese plate accompaniments, including nuts and dried fruit.

Caveman Blue. Rogue Creamery in Oregon is probably my favorite maker of domestic blue cheese. Caveman Blue is a creamy, raw cow cheese with a sweet disposition. It plays well with fruit, so slather it on tart apple or pear slices, and I bet it would go down well with either a Riesling or a Beaujolais, if that's how you roll on Turkey Day.

Harbison is a soft, bloomy rind cow cheese from Jasper Hill Farm in Vermont. Wrapped in bark, the cheese oozes at room temperature. It starts off with a nice nutty character, then you get just a glimpse of some ripe, aged Camembert type flavors; tasty but not the highest of stink.

So happy Thanksgiving and cheese it up!

NorCal Cheese Plate

Northern California has become a major center of artisan cheese, so I always try to sample some when I'm in town. These cheeses come from all over the North Bay, but we got them all at the great local cheese section of Sonoma Market, the fabulous grocery store on Napa Street which carries all kinds of locally sourced food and drink.

This plate features, clockwise from the triangle at the top:

Cypress Grove Bermuda Triangle (Humboldt County). From the makers of Humboldt Fog, these little triangles have long been one of my favorites. Coated with ash, they are spicier tasting than the Fog but have the same creaminess as they age. I actually prefer the triangles to Fog.

Cowgirl Creamery Red Hawk (Marin County). Long one of my local favorites, Red Hawk is a washed rind cheese. Buying them can be risky. When sold too young, they are chalky and raw tasting, but when just right, they are creamy and stinky like a French Epoisses. For best results, visit their dairy in Point Reyes or one of their shops, but in a pinch, I take a chance at Sonoma Market, which treats its cheese pretty well for a general market.

Nicasio Valley Foggy Morning (Marin County). This is a fresh cow cheese that's light and fluffy. It could easily substitute for ricotta in a lasagna or pizza or go in a salad with figs.

Nicasio Vallye Formagella (Marin County). A bloomy rind cow cheese. this one is quite mild but has a nice flavor, reminding me a bit of the Mt. Tam from Cowgirl Creamery.

Not Pictured: Bellwether Farms San Andreas (Sonoma County). This is a hard, raw milk sheep cheese with a lovely, subtle flavor giving just a hint of sheep.

Sonoma Market
500 West Napa Street, Suite 550
Sonoma, CA 95476
707-996-3411

RIP Ig Vella - The Godfather of Artisan Cheese

Ignazio ("Ig") Vella passed away last week at the age of 82. Vella, the owner of Vella Cheese Company in Sonoma and the maker of the famous Vella Dry Jack is one of the pioneers of the American artisan cheese movement. He's definitely the person most responsible for my love of great cheese.

As a kid growing up in Sonoma, Vella's was a regular stop. The musty stone building on 2nd Street East, just down the street from the Sonoma Plaza had the same feel as one of the many surrounding wineries, cool and damp, but instead of smelling like fermenting grapes, the smell of cheese wafted from the behind the counter. They made the cheese in the back, sold it in the front, and Ig, in his ever present white paper hat, always had a slice for the kids.

A couple of years ago I wrote in more detail about my memories of Vella's shop and its cheese, and Ig sent me an email thanking me and asking if we could talk on the phone. He wasn't interested in publicity, he just wanted to thank me and reminisce about the shop and his cheese. He was that kind of guy.

Rest in piece Ig, I'm sure there's a slice of some good dry Jack waiting for you.

Cheese Pick: Ticklemore Goat Cheese

Today's cheese pick is Ticklemore Goat cheese from Devon, England by way of Neal's Yard Dairy. It is a slightly sharp tasting aged goat cheese with a creamy exterior surrounding a chalky center; the more cream on this the better, and at room temperature it's pleasantly oozy. It's quite similar to Humboldt Fog.

Cheese Pick: Der Scharfe Maxx

This week's cheese pick is Der Scharfe Maxx, a pungent, raw milk, Swiss cow cheese made by the Studer Dairy and aged six months. I love this stuff. It really knocks you out with a deep stink, but the taste has everything you love about Swiss cheese, magnified by ten. Drink it with a sweet white wine, or better yet, beer...yum.

Cheese Pick - Le Puits d'Astier

Le Puits d'Astier just showed up at the Cheese Store of Silverlake. It's a French sheep milk cheese formed as a large wheel with a hole in the middle. The rind is a yellowish color. It's more subtle than you might expect from the look of it.

The cheese has a light, milky smell. The palate is surprisingly mild at first bite, but as you chew it, a sheepiness emerges and eventually coats the mouth in a warm and pleasing way, giving a light barnyard tone which ends at the petting zoo. Great stuff.

Check it out.

Cheese Report - Capriole's Sofia

If you're a fan of Humboldt Fog goat cheese, you must try Sofia, a goat cheese from Capriole Farmstead Goat Cheese in southern Indiana. Sofia is similar to Humboldt Fog in that it's a bloomy rind goat cheese with layers of ash in the middle. It develops the same luxuriously creamy texture as Fog as it ages and warms. I actually liked it better than the Fog; it was a bit sharper tasting. Available (when they have it) at Surfas or, if you want to buy a whole pound, the Capriole website (picture is from the website).

Cheese Report - Trader Joe's Goes Epoisses

Epoisses is probably my favorite cheese, so when I heard Trader Joe's was carrying a store brand Epoisses, I had to try it. Like all of TJ's products, the Epoisses gives no indication of where it was made, other than somewhere in Burgundy, which is a given. The cost is $8 for a smallish half wheel.

The TJ's Epoisses was not bad. It had a nice flavor with a bit of pungency. It lacked the balance of the better Epoisses I've had which are a perfect balance, at once mild and creamy as well as strongly pungent. The texture was also not quite right. At room temperature, the cheese was soft but not at all runny. It was more the texture of a Taleggio; in fact, it generally tasted more like a Taleggio than an Epoisses, and also had some nuttiness to it.


TJ's isn't a good substitute for Berthaut's wondrous Epoisses, but at $8, it's a pretty good deal and would work in a pinch for your cheese plate.

Cheese Report - Demon or Angel

I had a cheese emergency the other day. It was after cheese-store hours and I needed something right away for an evening get together. The best option in such cases is usually Whole Foods, but they are a big step below one of the local cheese shops. Whole Foods pre-cuts and wraps their cheese which is bad news as you can't tell how fresh it is, though their quality tends to be better than most stores which pre-cut and wrap, probably because of a fairly high turnover.

Anyway, because of the pre-cut and wrap issue, I was looking for an uncut round and I have to admit, I was intrigued by Le Demon Du Midi, less for its devil character than for a pleasingly pungent smell emanating from the cheese.

The Demon is a cow cheese from the Franche-Comté region of Eastern France. I expected a washed rind, but opened the wrapper to find a brie-like bloomy rind.

Unfortunately, this cheese was much less demonic than advertised. It was mild and buttery, almost like an Explorateur. Of course, everyone loved it, probably more than they would have the high-stink type of cheese I like, but damn it, if you put the devil on something, it should have some demonic qualities.

"Prison Cheese" Proves Growing Problem for Correctional Authorities

Monitoring and policing the nearly 200,000 inmates in California prisons has long been a challenge for authorities. Officials constantly struggle with controlling contraband such as drugs and weapons, but now they face a new challenge: a rise in "prison cheese." Department of Corrections Media Relations Director Byron Hadley explains:

"For years we had problems with pruno, a fermented wine-type beverage that inmates would make in their toilets with fruit from the dining halls. Gradually, some inmates switched from produce to dairy, and now we increasingly have inmates producing cheese in these same cell block toilets."

Referred to by inmates as "milk rot," this homemade cheese has led to an increase in black market activity both in cheeses and cheese making supplies. Last month, a group of guards at Pelican Bay was arrested as part of black market ring that sold rennet tablets to inmates.

The problem has become so widespread in the system that different prisons are associated with different types of cheese. Ig Jenkins, director of the Department's new Contraband Cheese Task Force (CCTF), explains, "When we recover a cache of illegal cheese, we can tell where it comes from, which gives us clues to the lines of operation between different prisons in the system. For instance, Corcoron is a big cheddar producer. Solano is only a stone's throw from all of those Sonoma County goat farms, so if we see a chevre, we know there is a 95% chance it originated there."

But California's most notorious prison is also its most notorious source of contraband. According to Jenkins, "Pelican Bay is a cesspool of illegal cheese. I've seen everything you can think of come out of there, epoisse, livarot, guryere, ricotta salata, even feta."

The CCTF is up against great odds, but Jenkins believes the Task Force's approach needs to use a carrot as well as a stick.

"We can bust hundreds of illegal milk rot mongers, but until we give inmates an option beyond USDA Loaf Cheese in the dining halls, we're going to have to deal with this problem."

Cheese Break: Gres des Vosges

Today's cheese break is for the lovely Gres des Vosges [gray day vozsh]. This wash rined, soft cow cheese comes from Alsace. It's got a good stink to it. I find the rind unpleasantly grainy, but the soft, creamy cheese inside has that perfect balance of straw, nuts and a bit of the stink, similar to a young Taleggio. It's a bit pricey, $12 at the Cheesestore of Silverlake for a wheel the size and shape of a small anchovy tin. Oh, and that thing on top is a little fern leaf.

Two Luscious Soft Cheeses: Wynedale and Nevat

I haven't written up a cheese plate in a while, so I thought I would highlight two excellent soft cheeses I picked up at the Cheese Store of Silverlake.

Wynedale is a Belgian cow cheese. It is a pungent cheese with an underlying sweetness, and notes of wine or liqueur. The flavor is almost fondue like (i.e. cheese plus liqueur). I absolutely love this cheese and it pairs well on a plate with some of the stinkier cheeses, adding some contrast with its very particular flavor.

Nevat is a Spanish goat cheese from Catalonia. It has the look of a major stinker, but then surprises you with a totally different flavor profile. It's light and salty and a bit acidic tasting. It pairs very well with nuts.

I put these two on a platter with some Epoisse (of course) and had a great soft cheese plate.

My Birthday Cheese Making Experiment

Only a spouse who truly loves and understands me would get me a cheese making kit for my birthday. I am a lucky man indeed. She first read about Ricki Carroll's home chessemaking operation in Barbara Kingslover's locovore manifesto Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life and was convinced I would love making my own cheese.

Carroll runs a cheese making supply company and sells books and other materials to home cheesemakers. Her starter kit for making mozzarella and ricotta comes with a book and DVD as well as various supplies and ingredients, including vegetarian rennet tablets, citric acid, finely cut cheese salt, cheesecloth and a thermometer. Once you have the kit, all you need is a big pot, a slotted spoon or ladle and milk.

As you know if you are a regular reader, I eat lots of cheese, but though I've occasionally heard about home cheesemakers, I'd never contemplated making my own. I've seen artisan cheesemakers in action before and it doesn't look easy. However, Carroll starts you on the easiest cheeses and has done an amazing job of finding recipes that can be replicated in a home kitchen with everyday ingredients.

My first project was the Thirty Minute Mozzarella, a cheese that could allegedly be made in a half hour. The process is amazingly simple. You heat up the milk which curdles upon the addition of citric acid. Then you add rennet and heat it a bit more. The rennet creates the solid curds which separate from the whey. Once they have separated, you ladle the curds into a bowl, salt them and microwave it a few times, stretching the cheese a bit in between heatings. A gallon of milk produces a softball sized mozzarella ball.

I figured that, while it looked easy on TV, the actual process would be a bit harder. Once you get the hang of it, it is remarkably easy, but it took me three tries to make something edible.

The first try was with Trader Joe's Organic Whole Milk. It didn't work, turning into a runny, mess. My hypothesis is that TJ's treats its milk to very high temperatures during pasteurization. The book warned that ultra-pasteurized cheese would not work for cheesemaking, and while TJ's isn't labeled ultra-pasteurized, the result was the same that was warned of for the ultra-pasteurized cheese. So, we took a quick trip to Ralph's for some Altadena and Ralph's brand milk, both of which worked.

The second batch came together as cheese, but had the consistency of rubber. Two hypotheses here. Either I cooked it to too high a temperature or I played with it too much when it was about ready (it was hard to resist stretching and braiding it like taffy; it's fun stuff).



Batch three was a success. I added a bit more salt than recommended for flavor, cut down the heat and resisted the temptation to treat it like silly putty. It was moist and delicious.

The cheese that results doesn't taste much like the fresh mozzarella you get it stores, but was very tasty. It has more of a milky taste than a cheesy one. We ate it plain and on a bruschetta.

The cheese was also not as tasty when cool. Freshly made and warm, it was wonderful and hard to stop eating, but it became a bit hard when cold. I ended up warming it prior to serving.

Next up I'll be making ricotta and will report back. The book actually includes recipes for all manner of cheeses, hard, soft, washed rind, cheddars and more, but many of those appear pretty labor intensive and require presses and other special equipment. For now, I'll stick to the easy ones. What a great, cheesy birthday present!

Portugese Cheese: St. George from Matos Cheese

Matos Cheese in Santa Rosa, California was founded by a Portuguese immigrants who started a dairy with a herd of 45 cows. They now produce a Portuguese style cheese known as St. George which I was lucky enough to receive as a gift. St. George is a hard cheese with a complex, nutty flavor. It's like a more flavorful variation of the Spanish Machego. This was a really wonderful cheese and was a good accompaniment to some Arrogant Bastard Ale I had on hand.

Check it out.

Ig the Noble - Vella Cheese

I grew up in the wine and cheese rich town of Sonoma, California. I was practically weaned on Cabernet Sauvignon and the cheese on my brown bag school lunch sandwiches was inevitably a Vella's Monterey Jack. Trips to the musty, stone building that housed Vella's factory and shop on Second Street East and tastes of the voluminous free samples were a staple of my childhood from age 5 to 18. Let the tourists have their Sonoma Jack cheese on the town plaza, with its caraway and jalapeno versions; we were a Vella's family.

I didn't know then that Ig Vella had been making cheese in that same spot since 1931, nor could I have predicted that in the American artisanal cheese explosion to come, Vella's would be seen as the patron saint. No less an authority than Steve Jenkins writes in his influential Cheese Primer, "Let there be a visible aura around this text, because elder statesman Ig Vella and his magnificent cheeses are driving forces behind the emergence of American-made cheeses that must be ranked among the world's finest."

Vella's has five age-levels of Jacks. Outside of Sonoma, you are most likely to come across the Dry Jack, which is Vella's most vaunted product. This hard cow cheese tastes more like an aged American cheddar than the Parmigiano-Reggiano to which it is often compared. The cheese is aged seven to ten months and coated with cocoa. There are now older versions as well, the Special Select Dry Jack and the Golden Bear Dry Jack, aged two to four years.

While I love Dry Jack, one of my favorite Vella's cheeses is not widely available outside the wine country. The Mezzo Secco, partially dried Jack, is the level between the young, high moisture Jack and the popular Dry Jack. In the Mezzo Secco, you can still taste the rich, creamy Monterey Jack character along with the beginnings of the aged flavors that will take over in the Dry Jack. It's a window into the aging process and it creates a unique cheese that is equally good on a sandwich, in a salad or on its own. I find the Mezzo Secco to be just as good as the Dry Jack, though it is underappreciated.

Mezzo Secco Jack along with other Vella cheeses are available on the Vella's website.

Good & Goaty: Andante Acappella

Andante Dairy in Petaluma, California is the one woman project of the musically inclined Soyoung Scanlan who has been making cheese for 10 years. Andante makes cow, goat and sheep cheeses.

I was very impressed with a small ash covered round of her Acappella goat cheese which I picked up at the Cheese Store of Silverlake. This aged cheese had an intense goaty flavor, though not in a barnyard sort of way. It was sharp and intense in the way that aged goat cheese can be when it's at its best, with the creamy consistency of a soft cow cheese. This little round packs an excellent punch.

I will be excited to try her other products.

Hanker for a Hunk of Cheese

I'm pretty sure this guy is at least partly responsible for my cheese obsession. These PSAs were a regular fixture during Saturday morning cartoons in the '70s.




Mmmm, I'm hankering for an Epoisse wagon wheel right now!

Fresh Mozz

The cheese stand at the Sunday Hollywood Farmers Market that carries Winchester Gouda is now also carrying a delicious fresh mozzarella di bufala made by a dairy in Chino. They have both big and mini-balls of the stuff and it all tastes creamy and fresh. The mozz is usually made the day before the market, so it's as fresh as can be. They also have fresh buffalo ricotta and a few aged and smoked buffalos, but for me, there is nothing like the rich, solid cream feel of fresh buffalo mozzarella.

Check it out!


The stand is at the north end of the Sunday morning Hollywood Farmers Market (on Ivar, between Selma and Hollywood Blvd.), on the west side of the street.