Here are three photos I took on May 4, 2023. That was yesterday. This was our lunch — une quiche aux épinards et au jambon.
I used two cheeses. One was fourme d'Ambert, a blue cheese made with cow's milk in the Auvergne region. The other was one I recently discovered. It's called meule fruitée and is a cow's milk cheese made in the Franche-Comté region. There seems to be a certain amount of controversy about making a Comté-style cheese in Franche-Comté. Here's a newspaper article in French.
Meule is the French word for "millstone". The word is also used as the name of a big "wheel" of cheese — by the way, it takes 400 liters of milk to make a 40 kg meule of Comté cheese. A place where these Alpine-style cheeses are made is called a fruitière. It's a kind of cheese-makers' cooperative to which dairy farmers sell the milk from their cows to have it made into big rounds of cheese like Gruyère or Comté. The term fruité ("fruity") has a specific meaning when it comes to describing such cheeses. The fruitière helps the farmers' work "bear fruit". To learn more, link to this article about fromageries, fruitières, and crèmeries in French.
The article says the cheese is produced within the boundaries of the AOP, so there must be something else that does not allow this cheese to be labeled "Comté". Unless it's a marketing scheme to justify the remarkably low price and therefore sell more. Our closest LIDL is still a drive away, not a walk, so I haven't been there in quite a while. Next time, I'll try to remember to pick some of this cheese up.
ReplyDeleteAgain, I signed in and it wouldn't allow me to use my Google account and I did use the "comment as [name]" above, but it still registered as "anonymous". It's Ellen
DeleteHi Ellen, most of the supermarket chains now sell Meule Fruitée cheese. I get it at both Intermarché and Super U. It is much less expensive than Comté or even French Guyère, not to mention Swiss Gruyère.
DeleteThat quiche looks fantastic! I'd rather a slice of that than "Coronation Quiche." :-)
ReplyDeleteI'm out of touch with coronation things, I guess. What is Coronation Quiche? I'll have to look it up.
DeleteI'm with you, Ken, I had to look up Coronation Quiche. Interestingly, it includes... broad (fava) beans! And my fava crop is galloping forth. Like Kiwi, though, I'd rather have a slice of yours. :-) --Ellen Chiri here... couldn't sign in for some reason.
DeleteHi Ellen, good to hear from you.
DeleteThat's very interesting, about the amount of milk it takes to make cheese, and about the place being called a fruitière. The Quiche was delicious, I bet!
ReplyDeleteYou find the best eats of anyone I know!
ReplyDelete