A few years ago (2008) the woman who used to bring us bread (the opportunity to buy it, actually) 4 or 5 mornings a week was driving a much bigger car than her regular LWV (Little White Van), which is the standard commercial vehicle in this area. That day, she was doing her rounds in what would be called a mini-van over in the U.S. She had to get out of the mini-van and go open the back hatch to get the bread I wanted that morning. Usually she would just stay in the driver's seat of her LWV and grab a baguette or whatever for us.
Madame Corbeau's goat cheeses,
in the style of Selles-sur-Cher
As I looked into the back of the van, I noticed three or four nice-looking goat cheeses sitting on a tray alongside the many loaves of bread. The label on the cheese was shiny and blue and it caught my eye.
Where does the goat cheese come from? I asked. Romo, Roselyne (the bread lady) said. It looked so good.
Je vais en prendre un, I told her. I'll take one — how much are they? €2,90 was the price. I had to run back into the house to get some more money. By the way, Romorantin (called "Romo" by most people) is a big town (pop. nearly 20K) about half an hour from Saint-Aignan and 20 minutes northeast of Selles-sur-Cher.
The cheese under the gray rind
is perfectly white, smooth, and firm
This goat cheese is very much like the cheese my neighbors make at their farm up in the vineyard. It's a little disk with a grayish-black rind and a smooth, perfectly white interior. Local people call it
un bleu — but it's not at all a blue cheese like Roquefort or Bleu d'Auvergne; it just has a bluish rind. There are many local producers of such cheeses and they are available in the local supermarkets and weekly open-air markets too.
That rind is the result of a mixture of wood ash and salt that the cheese is coated with for the ripening process. The ash and salt give the cheese extra flavor. You are supposed to eat it, not scrape or cut it off and throw it away.
Here's a clearer shot of the label
This cheese "selected" by Mme Pierre Corbeau in Romorantin is made in the style of Selles-sur-Cher cheeses, which carry an A.O.C. quality label. If you've never tried goat cheese, this is the one to start with. It doesn't have a mushy texture or a strong goaty flavor like some goat cheeses do. The flavor is distinct but mild, and the texture is firm and almost chalky (but not quite) when it's
mi-sec. It's great with a glass of Sauvignon Blanc wine from the Cher Valley (Sancerre, Menetou-Salon, Quincy, or Touraine).
I sure do miss having the bread lady stop by to sell me a little
baguette or a larger
pain or
boule several days a week. Nowadays, we have to fire up the Peugeot and make a special trip to one of the half-dozen local bakeries to get bread.
In fact, the
boulangerie that's closest to us is closed; it's down in the village center, across the road from the village church. That's a 45-minute walk from our house. Most of the way, there are no sidewalks along the road. The baker pulled down the shutters on March 18. We're hoping somebody will take it over soon and will make bread as good as the other baker did. I imagine he bought a bakery in a bigger town where the business would be more profitable. That's what the baker who preceded him did. A lot of locla people just by bread in the supermarkets these days. The quality of supermarket bread has improved greatly over the past 20 years.
Vierzon is a medium-size town about an hour's drive east of Saint-Aignan. It's on the Cher river, as is Saint-Aignan, but the Cher at Vierzon is channeled into several canals that flow through the town. Vierzon is on the southern edge of the forested Sologne region, about half way between Saint-Aignan and Sancerre. It is also an established railway hub, with trains lines from Lyon to Nantes and from Paris to Toulouse passing through. I took these photos in early February 2004, less than a year after we came to live in the region. You can see how nice the weather was. For us, Vierzon is a place to go shopping or to take the train to larger cities.
