IT’S not everywhere that you can get raw milk from a vending machine, or see how cheese tastes when it’s made without any added salt (pretty bad) or when it’s aged after being sewn up in a sheepskin, wool side in (like a wet sweater).
I sampled many lactic curiosities this October in Bra, a small city near Turin in northwest Italy and the home of Slow Food, which organizes a gathering of cheesemakers, merchants and fans from all over the world every two years. But the cheese most on my mind was one I’d found over the summer in a San Francisco supermarket.
It was a French Camembert that seemed like the real, summertime, raw-milk deal, its thin edible rind touched with orange highlights, its interior golden and softly clotted, its flavor intense, persistent, mouthfillingly fruity, mushroomy, earthy, buttery and meaty.
The label bore the name of Hervé Mons, who is a French affineur — a merchant who buys directly from cheesemakers and then brings the cheeses to maturity to sell them at their peak of quality. Mr. Mons is known for his advocacy of artisanal raw milk cheeses. But United States government regulations specify that all cheeses aged fewer than 60 days must be made from pasteurized milk to kill any potentially harmful microbes. Camemberts go to market after 21 to 30 days. So why was Hervé Mons making a pasteurized-milk Camembert, and how did he make such a good one?
I found him in Bra doing brisk business with his nattily uniformed team, got the short answer, and followed up last week with a long phone call to his maturing caves in Roanne, near Lyon. Laure Dubouloz, his United States export manager, interpreted and adumbrated.
Mr. Mons told me that he had grown tired of finding nothing but bad export Camemberts on his travels in the States and resolved to develop a good one, a cheese that would be delicious despite being made in a factory from pasteurized milk and spending weeks in refrigerated transit on ships and trucks.
The project was also prompted by larger concerns. “Industrial production feeds people quickly and cheaply, but it has bad effects on agriculture and on the planet,” he said. “We hope that if we can give more people a taste of really good-quality food, then they will develop a greater interest in where their food comes from and how it’s made.”
So in 2007, Mr. Mons said, he started working with a small manufacturer in Normandy to develop a pasteurized Camembert as if it were made from raw milk. They began with the best milk they could find. Normally destined to be made into raw-milk cheeses, it has high protein and fat levels that contribute to rich textures and flavors, from farms that feed their cows on pasture much of the year. “Ninety percent of the quality of the cheese comes from the quality of the milk,” Mr. Mons said.
His Camembert is in the works within a day of milking. The milk for pasteurized Camemberts is typically refrigerated for two days before cheesemaking begins.
Mr. Mons’s manufacturer uses the same coagulating enzymes and ripening microbe cultures used in other pasteurized cheeses, but adds less of them. And it cuts the coagulated milk into pieces before draining, a practice not allowed by the strictest definition of Normandy Camembert. This releases more whey from the curd, so the cheese is drier and gets sticky rather than runny when ripe.
Mr. Mons said that many consumers like a creamy consistency, but it usually means a less
flavorful cheese. “The drier cheeses take longer to soften, and this gives more time for the flavors to develop,” he told me.
This was the second key to making an exceptional pasteurized-milk Camembert: paying exceptional attention to flavor development. Practically every processing detail influences it, from the moisture, salt, acid, enzymes and microbes in the cheese, to the surrounding temperature and humidity. Mr. Mons said that he and his manufacturer spent months balancing these factors to coordinate the protein breakdown that softens the cheese with the fat breakdown that produces much of its flavor.
The cheeses spend two weeks in the factory, three to four weeks in trucks, ships and warehouses on their way to retail markets, and then up to three weeks in the cheese case at the supermarket. They pass much of that time at refrigerator temperatures that slow ripening to a crawl. Mr. Mons says that Camemberts (and most cheeses) are best evaluated and eaten when they’ve warmed up to a cool room temperature, and often benefit from a day or two at that temperature to soften and develop flavor.
The first Mons Camemberts reached American markets in spring 2008, retailing for around $10 for an 8.8 ounce wheel. (They’re sold nationwide in Whole Foods stores, and in the Pacific Northwest under the Pommier label.) The cheeses now in stores come from cows fed on winter hay, and are paler and milder than the summer cheeses. This makes them a less domineering presence in end-of-the-year feasts.
“We find that Camemberts do go well with brut Champagne,” Mr. Mons told me. “They bring out its apple aromas.”
In 18 months, Mr. Mons has sold a few thousand Camemberts in the United States, which represents a fraction of the daily output of one of the larger Camembert factories. The French eat around a million a day. But he pronounced himself happy with his small American experiment.
“Moving from fast food to slow food will take time,” he said.
December 30, 2009
Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company
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