Goat cheese and roasted red peppers

Bell peppers grow really well here at La Renaudière.

I mentioned that we ate roasted red peppers Saturday night. Those came out of our freezer; if you don't already know, you should be aware that they freeze really well. And you can thaw them on a low setting in the microwave, because they have already been cooked in the roasting process.

We grew these peppers in our garden last season, roasted and peeled them, and packed them for freezing. I did a blog topic about it, with pictures, here: Picking and packing peppers.

Peppers roasted, waiting to be peeled

Roasted red peppers are not a Loire Valley specialty, but the fact is that they are very good eaten on a slice of toasted bread with a smear of fresh goat cheese. They're good the same way with Philadelphia-style cream cheese as well. Our roasted red peppers are a local product because we grew, roasted, and peeled them ourselves.

Now goat cheese, that is a real Loire Valley product. There are several well-known goat cheeses (fromages de chèvre) produced in our area and named after the towns where they are made: Selles-sur-Cher, Valençay, and Pouligny-Saint-Pierre are three of them. The best-known Loire Valley goat cheese is produced in Sainte-Maure-de-Touraine, about 40 miles west of Saint-Aignan.

The goat cheeses I buy are made by Monsieur and Madame Bouland, who own and operate a farm inn (ferme-auberge) called La Lionnière up in the vineyards about a mile from our house. Monsieur Bouland sells the cheeses at the Saint-Aignan farmers' market on Saturday mornings. You can also go directly to the farm to buy them. The ferme-auberge runs a restaurant where meats, vegetables, and cheeses produced on the farm — lamb, goat, chicken, guinea fowl, goat cheeses, vegetables, and fruit — are served.

Goat cheeses for sale at the big Thursday farmers' market
in Selles-sur-Cher, ten miles upriver from Saint-Aignan

Monsieur Bouland makes his cheeses in various shapes:

• round disks (ronds) about three inches across, in the style of Selles-sur-Cher
• similar-sized heart shapes (coeurs)
• logs (bûches) about six inches long, in the style of Sainte-Maure
• truncated pyramids (pyramides) , in the style of Valençay and Pouligny
  

All the cheeses he makes, and many goat cheeses from different regions, are dipped in black wood ash when they are fresh. The ash forms a crust and gives flavor as the cheese ages.

The cheeses are aged under specific conditions of temperature and humidity, and they are sold at different stages of maturity. The freshest cheese — fromage frais de chevre — has a yogurt-like consistency but tastes like goat cheese. You can make good dips with them.

Cheeses that have been formed — the French word fromage,and the Italian formaggio derive from the word form, or mold) but are still pretty fresh are very spreadable and are good with herbs and garlic, for example, or with roasted peppers and other vegetables. They have the consistency of cream cheese.

I've already posted this picture several times. It was taken by
my friend Cheryl at the Bouland's restaurant when she was here
a couple of years ago. I'm going to have to start paying her royalties.

Semi-dry (demi-sec) or medium-hard goat cheeses are still soft enough to spread but have a more pronounced flavor than the really soft fresh ones. Dry (sec) or hard goat cheeses can be sliced. They can be crumbly, and the flavor is even more pronounced and delicate, you might say. The stages of maturity are not strictly defined; it's a continuum. You can buy cheeses that are more or less soft or hard, and more or less fresh or aged.

All the goat cheeses are pure white inside. They are lower in cholesterol than cow's milk cheeses, I understand, and they are a staple in the Loire and Cher river valleys, where raising goat, not cattle, is a big business and an old tradition.