Loire Valley goat cheeses

Even in France, a lot of people say they don't like goat cheese. Maybe they've bought or been served a goat cheese thatwas just too strong-tasting. Goats have a particular smell about them, and sometimes the cheese made from goat's milk has that same smell. Walt and I had an experience illustrating this one time, 25 years ago. We were driving up to the top of the Mont Ventoux in Provence when we were caught in a small traffic jam. A goat-herder and his herd were crossing the road. The smell of the goats was overpowering. It was the aroma of goat cheese, we thought, but much stronger. I hasten to add that our local Loire Valley goat cheeses are very mild in flavor and aroma.

I'm not sure when I started eating goat cheese. One memory I have is a time in the mid-1970s when I was living in Paris. A Frenchman I knew — he was a professor at the University of Illinois — had gone to the Loire Valley to spend a long weekend. When he came back to Paris, he offered me and others some goat cheeses that he had brought back from a farm. I remember the incident, but I don't remember whether I liked the cheese at that point.

When Walt and I came to live in the Loire Valley 16 years ago, we realized that our new house and village were located in an area famous for its goat cheeses. Four goat cheeses — Selles-sur-Cher, Valençay, Sainte-Maure-de-Touraine, and Pouligny-Saint-Pierre — are produced all around us. I don't find them very different from each other in taste, though they are made in different shapes (disks, pyramids, logs) and either coated or not in wood ash, so they look different from each other. All are good.

 The cheese in these pictures is the Selles-sur-Cher. The village which is the center of its production area is just 10 miles east of Saint-Aignan.

Here's a close-up of its label. I actually bought this cheese, which is farm-made (c'est un fromage fermier) at the supermarket. It's made on a goat farm located not more than six or seven miles from our house, using raw (unpasteurized) milk from farm's own herd of goats. Above, you can see how white the cheese is. It has an almost grainy texture. This one is demi-sec, meaning "semi-dry" (semi-hard), having been "aged" (affiné) for a few weeks. We ate almost half of it yesterday at lunchtime.

Today for lunch, I'm going to make an asparagus dish with melted fresh (not aged) goat cheese and slices of ham. It'll be what I guess we'd call it asparagus and ham au gratin, cooked in the oven. It's going to be an experiment...