Fondue with two Auvergne cheeses

For the past 10 or 12 years, Walt and I have been making a nice hot cheese fondue every year on Christmas Eve. Usually it's a fondue of "Swiss" or Alpine cheeses, including Comté, Gruyère, and Emmenthal. The other ingredients are white wine, nutmeg, black pepper, and kirsch (cherry brandy). A little cornstarch binds it all together so that the melted cheese doesn't separate into curds and liquid.

Today's cheese fondue will be an Auvergne variation on the Savoie/Switzerland theme. The Auvergne is a mountainous region in the center of France, south of Saint-Aignan and west of the Alps. The mountains there aren't nearly as high as the Alps, but a lot of them are very ancient extinct volcanoes. The winters in the Auvergne are cold and snowy — as is winter all over France this year. In September 2009, we spent a few days with friends in the part of the Auvergne called the Cantal and enjoyed the scenery, the people, and the cheese.

Two cheeses from the Auvergne region of France

Our 2010 fondue will be made with two Auvergne cheeses called Cantal and Saint-Nectaire. Cantal is a cheddar-like cheese that melts very smoothly and is slightly nutty-tasting. The Larousse book Les Fromages describes Cantal as demi-dur — semi-hard — it's an "uncooked" cheese. It can be made with pasteurized or raw (unpasteurized) milk. I did a series of posts on our visit to a dairy farm in the Cantal last year.

Cantal Entre-Deux is a medium-aged cheese
(in-between Cantal Jeune and Cantal Vieux)

Saint-Nectaire is an smoother, creamier cheese than Cantal. The Larousse Fromages book classifies it as demi-ferme — semi-firm — and it's also uncooked. (Swiss-style cheeses are "cooked" — the milk is heated during the cheese-making process.) Saint-Nectaire is made in a village of that name in the center of the Auvergne and the surrounding countryside. Its flavor is described as "delicate, with hints of hazelnut." Some Saint-Nectaires are made with raw milk, and others with pasteurized milk.

A wedge of Saint-Nectaire cheese

The main difference, technically, between Cantal and Saint-Nectaire is that the Cantal milk curds are cut and pressed twice during the cheese-making process, and the Saint-Nectaire curds just once. Otherwise, the two are made with the same milk in the same region, Cantal being just south of the Saint-Nectaire production area.

I see the label now says AOP rather than AOC.
New European labeling standards...

According to the Larousse cheese book, Cantal may well be the oldest existing French cheese, dating back 2000 years and mentioned in Roman texts. Saint-Nectaire cheese-making dates back about 1000 years, and it became well-known across France when it was presented at King Louis XIV's table in the 17th century.

Cantal and Saint-Nectaire are both AOC (or AOP) cheeses.

Both cheeses have the Appellation d'Origine Contôlée (or Protégée) label, or AOC/AOP. That means that to be called either Cantal or Saint-Nectaire, a cheese must be made according to strict standards that specify where the milk comes from (where the cows graze, and what on) and how the cheese-making process is carried out. You should be able to find them in America and other countries outside France. They should look and smell fresh when you buy them.

Here's a recipe for an Auvergne-style cheese fondue. The general rule for fondue is that you want between a third and a half pound of (whatever) cheese per person. This recipe is for four:

500 g of Cantal cheese (a generous pound)
300 g of Saint-Nectaire cheese (a generous half-pound)
1 or 2 cloves of garlic
1 baguette of good French bread
50 cl of dry white wine (2 cups or 16 fl. oz.)
a pinch of nutmeg
1 tsp. of cornstarch
2 or 3 tablespoons of kirsch (clear cherry brandy)
a pinch or more of black pepper, to taste

Peel the garlic clove(s) and cut them in half. Rub them around in the fondue pot to give the fondue a hint of their flavor. (If you want, you can press the cloves and add them directly to the fondue.)

Cut the rinds off the the cheeses. Cut all the cheese into thin strips, or grate it. Also cut the French bread into small cubes so that each piece has some crust on it (it will be easier to keep on the forks that way). Mix the cornstarch into the kirsch (cold) in a small bowl or glass to make a slurry.

Pour the wine into the fondue pot and start heating it up on a burner on the strove. Gradually add the cheese. Season with pepper and nutmeg. Keep the heat low and stir the cheese mixture constantly with a wooden spoon. As soon as it starts to reach the boiling point, give the cornstarch slurry a stir and pour it in. Continue stirring and cooking the fondue for three or four more minutes.

The fondue should be smooth and fairly liquid. If it seems too thin, add a little more cornstarch dissolved in kirsch or white wine. If it's very thick, heat up a little more white wine and gradually mix it in.

Set the fondue pot on the table on a heat source and give each person some bread cubes and a fondue fork to spear them with. Dip each bread cube into the melted cheese and enjoy. Follow up the fondue with a big green salad dressed in tart vinaigrette.

We are off to the market in Montrichard, 10 miles downriver from our village, to pick up our Christmas turkey. It's not snowing (yet) but the roads are supposedly icy, so we'll see how it goes. At least I have new tires! Merry Christmas Eve to all.

More about gastronomes and fromages

It's funny and revealing, the French word « gastronome », I think. How do you translate it? The Grand Robert et Collins dictionary gives “gourmet” and “gastronome” — only the first of those works for me. However, the American Heritage Dictionary says a “gastronome” or “gastronomer” (!) is “connoisseur of good food and drink; a gourmet.”

I hear English-speaking people use the term “gourmand” for “gourmet” in English, and I don't like it. But they aren't wrong. The AHD says in a usage note: “A gourmet is a person with discriminating taste in food and wine, as is a gourmand. Gourmand can also mean one who enjoys food in great quantities.” To me, it means the latter more than the former.

Courtine describes Bleu d'Auvergne cheese as having
« un goût un peu sauvage, piquant, très remarquable »
— a taste that is slightly earthy, sharp, and quite remarkable.

In French, the two terms are more differentiated. A gourmand just loves food. I'm one of those. A gourmet is, according to the Grand Robert dictionary, a « personne qui apprécie le raffinement en matière de boire et de manger » — a person who appreciates refinement in food and drink. I guess I'm also one of those, but if you put the two words on a scale, in my case the gourmand would greatly outweigh the gourmet.

Sometimes, I think my tastebuds must not be very sensitive, because they like nearly everything that passes over them.

Courtine doesn't have a lot to say about French-made Mimolette,
which resembles an American orange-colored Cheddar or Colby. About
“authentic” Dutch Mimolette, he says it is « d'une grande finesse
de pâte » — of a very refined texture and taste.

Anyway, I assume the late great Robert Courtine, was a (French) gourmand and a gourmet, an epicure and a gastronome (or gastronomer or gastronomist). He was what we would call in our straightword American English a “food writer” — he wrote 1500 columns as a chronicler of cooking and restaurants for the Paris daily called Le Monde, under the pen name La Reynière. His mentor was the great Curnonsky.

Evidently, he liked good puns — « Courtine-La Reynière aime les calembours bons », I read in an article published on the occasion of the gastronomer’s seventieth birthday, in 1980. He supposedly lamented in a column the decline of the good old mixed drink, the cocktail, which was losing favor to brand-name apéritif drinks in France: « L'art chatoyant des coquetels se perd. Saint Zano, priez pour lui. » I'm not going to translate that.

What Courtine says about Billy goat cheese mystifies me.
He describes it as being made in the village of Billy, near
Selles-sur-Cher and Saint-Aignan. But the only Billy I've
ever seen is this Petit Billy cheese that is made in Brittany.

Robert-Julien Courtine billed himself as Robert J. Courtine when he wrote the Larousse guide Les Fromages (1973, 1980) and when he published a revised and corrected version of the voluminous Larousse Gastronomique (1967) food and cooking encyclopedia. I wonder why he adopted an anglicized version of his name, but never mind.

He was called the « prince sans couronne de la gueule » — the uncrowned prince of the gullet, I guess you could say. Somebody who is a « fine gueule » has a fine gullet, or very discriminating tastes in food and drink. Did you know that people who are in the business of selling, preparing, and cooking food are said to exercise « les métiers de bouche » — the mouth trades?

Getting to the point: here's what Robert J. Courtine says about Morbier cheese in Les Fromages. After describing it as a cheese made by taking the curds from the bottom of the vat after the good curds used for making Comté cheese have been skimmed off the top, he says:

« Le Morbier est plus une curiosité qu'un fromage attractif par ses vertus gustatives et son intérêt gastronomique. » — “Morbier cheese is more of a oddity than it is a cheese that appeals by virtue of gustatory qualities or gastronomical significance.”

Let me quickly add that Walt and I both enjoy Morbier and have been buying it for years, both in France and in California. However, a friend who knew Paris well back in the 1940 to 1970 period once told me he had never really heard of it until much more recently. It must not have been “exported” to markets outside of its local environment until the 1970s and '80s.

I wonder what Courtine would say about « Nouveau » wines
like our local Touraine Primeur. I bet it wouldn't be praise.

And here is more of what Courtine says about the classic Swiss cheese fondue, or la fondue savoyarde as it is known in France. First, he compared la raclette to la fondue by saying the former was « combien meilleure » — so much better — and « plus chaleureuse, plus savoureuse ! » — much heartier and tastier. Then he snidely dismisses cheese fondue by saying:

« Ce plat national suisse communautaire et indigeste a ses ‘fans’. » — “This Swiss national dish, Europeanized and indigestible, has its ‘fans’.”

Now I'm not at all sure about translating « communautaire » as “Europeanized” but it's as good a guess as any. I think he might mean that the fondue has been bastardized and corrupted by being adopted and adapted by cooks in so many regions and countries. It doesn't have a very strictly defined identity — not the way la raclette does.

I think, too, that what might bother an old-school French gastronomer (!) about a dish like Swiss cheese fondue is that it includes a hodgepodge of ingredients. Three different, albeit fine cheeses are mixed and mashed into a gloppy mess, with the addition not only of white wine but also kirschwasser, nutmeg, and cornstarch. How much more elegant and pleasing is a good, rich cheese simply melted slightly and immediately served. With la raclette, you know what you are getting.

Here's a cheese that usually goes into a fondue.

Okay, all that said, I have to admit that Walt and I started making cheese fondue again, after years of not even thinking about it, at least 10 years ago. We enjoy preparing and eating a fondue savoyarde every Christmas Eve, using a selection of cheeses. I follow a recipe given to me by a French friend, one who had lived in the eastern part of France where fondue cheeses are made, more than 30 years ago. We've used combinations including Gruyère, Emmental, Comté, Beaufort, and even Cantal cheese for our fondues since we moved to Saint-Aignan six years ago.

So we love fondue, despite what Courtine says about it.

After all, Robert J. Courtine was also quoted as saying that the potato is « un tubercule exotique d'origine récente [qui] n'intéresse pas notre cuisine » — “an exotic tuber of recent origin that doesn't have a place in French cuisine.” Joël Rebuchon, if he were dead and buried, would be spinning in his grave. I guess Courtine would have considered Gratin Dauphinois a bastardized and corrupted dish as well.

La raclette

According to the Larousse Les Fromages book, written by the late gastronome Robert Courtine, la raclette is a typically Swiss dish. It originated in the Swiss canton called Le Valais. Raclette is both the name of the cheese and the method of melting and eating the cheese. It's pronounced [rah-KLEHT].

It's winter and the cheeses that the French markets and supermarkets are featuring prominently are Alpine cheeses, including Raclette, Reblochon, and Morbier. Reblochon cheese is used to make a hearty dish called la tartiflette, kind of casserole of sliced potatoes and pork lardons (chunks of bacon) smothered in cream and cheese. Reblochon is also often be served as part of a cheese tray or platter and, like Morbier, eaten just as it is, not melted (in my experience).

Here's a pasteurized Raclette for just over U.S. $3.00/lb.
The more expensive Reblochon is made with raw cow's milk.

Raclette and tartiflette are dishes you eat after a day outside in cold weather — skiing or hiking in the mountains, for example. They are filling and give you energy to do it again tomorrow. But both are now served in all parts of France in the wintertime.

So what exactly is raclette? The cheese itself originally came from Switzerland but now is also produced in France. Raclette is shorthand for fromage à raclette, or raclette cheese. It's usually a rich cow's-milk cheese, but in this weeks supermarket advertising flyers I see at least one example of a goat's-milk Raclette.

For $8.75/lb. you can get pasteurized goat cheese (upper left)
for raclette. For $6.75/lb. there's a thermalized cow's milk Raclette
(lower left). The Morbier cheese on the right is made with raw milk
and is an eating cheese , not a cooking cheese.

In other words, raclette cheeses have common characteristics, but they are not all identical in composition or made the same way. Some are made from raw milk, some from pasteurized milk. Most are made with cow's milk and some might be goat's milk.

The way you eat raclette cheese is to melt it and serve the melted cheese with boiled new potatoes, the little sour gherkins called cornichons, pickled onions, slices of ham like jambon de Savoie or prosciutto, sandwich-type boiled ham called jambon de Paris, dried or cured beef slices (viande des grisons), grilled bell peppers or mushrooms, steamed broccoli or cauliflower florets... whatever you like.

The Raclette on the right seems to come in both pasteurized
and unpasteurized versions. It sells for about $5.00/lb.
And there's another raw-milk Reblochon on the left.

Traditionally, a big round of raclette cheese, weighing up to 20 lbs., was cut in half, mounted on a special stand, and set on the hearth in front of a hot fire. As the cheese started melting, it was gradually scraped off onto warm plates and taken to the table, where all the garnishes were waiting. The French verb racler, from which the term raclette is derived, means "to scrape off" or "scrape out" and comes from Latin.

Nowadays, people have special raclette appliances the way you might have a fondue set. The raclette set is a electric heating unit that you set on the middle of the table and into which each person slides a little metal tray with some cheese in it. Often there's a grill or stone on top where you can cook mushrooms or sliced peppers as you go. When the cheese has melted in the little trays, you pull one out and eat the cheese with the vegetables and meats. It's hard to describe, but here's an example.

Years ago, before people had all these special-purpose appliances, I had raclette made by putting the cheese on a little plate, putting the plate in a medium oven, and then bringing it to the table warm after the cheese had melted. It was just as good but more trouble for the cook.

Robert Courtine says that la raclette is better, tastier dish than the typical fondue, which is cheese melted in white wine and often served only with bread. La raclette is a dish that « le gourmet préfère de loin aux fondues » — a dish that a gourmet prefers by far compared to fondues.

From a different supermarket, here's a Raclette
that comes in several styles, all aged for 10 weeks.

We've used raclette cheese on pizzas. It melts to a smooth, almost runny consistency, and it's delicious. Courtine says the Swiss cheeses traditionally used for la raclette — fromages de Conches, de Bagnes, d'Anniviers, ou d'Orsières — have a flowery and creamy aroma that he attributes to the grasses and flowers of the pastureland where the cows graze.

As you can see from the ads I've scanned from the supermarket flyers we get in the mail every week, there are many types of raclette cheese to choose from, and the prices vary widely. You have to think a lot of people are making a raclette fairly often to use up all this cheese.

Note that all the cheeses in these ads are marked as « Origine : France ». None comes from Switzerland at all.