Mold Gold

Roquefort cheese

Moldy food is not always the best candidate for the trash bin. Sometimes, it's precisely the mold that makes something taste good.

The original Casanova once called a moldy, creamy cheese his favorite aphrodisiac.

It was love that helped a young shepherd in Roquefort, a village in southern France, discover this Casanova favorite centuries ago. Unfortunately, the shepherd discovered this green gold too late to entice his own sweetheart.

Legend has it that the young shepherd was watching his flock near the caves of Roquefort when suddenly the most beautiful woman he had ever seen appeared on the grassy hill. He approached her but she wasn't about to test her chances with this young man and ran. But he pursued her in an impassioned fit, leaving his flock. This continued for days, but the young man never caught up with her. Days later the shepherd returned to his cave in Roquefort broken-hearted and hungry. To his dismay, the slice of cheese and bread he had left in the musty cave was covered with dark green mold. Ravenous with hunger he ate it anyway. Surprisingly, the cheese had a captivating pungent flavor to it that he had never tasted before. He shared the information with others and they started figuring out how to make the cheese.

There are similar blue cheeses like Roquefort produced in different countries under different names; England makes Stilton, Spain produces Cabrales and you can find Maytag Blue from Iowa. Today, Roquefort is still produced much as the young shepherd's version. Bread is induced with spores from mushrooms that grow in the caves of Roquefort, and then left until it has grown into a fungus called penicillium roqueforti. This penicillium powder is added to vats of sheep's milk which curdles, and is molded into large white rounds of cheese. The rounds are then aged in the caves under the supervision of master cheese makers, finally emerging after three months ready for market.

If you visit the town of Roquefort, I highly recommend the tour at Société, one of only seven producers of Roquefort. The hour-long Société tour costs three euros and is surprisingly entertaining, informative and includes a tasting of the three Société Roquefort cheeses. You can keep all cheese for about three months in the fridge without a problem. Cheese gets more flavorful as it ages and normally the older it is, the better it is by French standards.

And if you want to get the sense of what the young shepherd must have gone through to chase his lover, you can also climb the cliff behind Roquefort. There is a hike that leaves from the tourism office. The views of the hills, cliffs and plateaus that make-up the surrounding countryside are stunning. You’ll burn almost enough calories on this hike to justify eating a quarter round of Roquefort for the next three months.

View from the hike.

Barcelona

One of the many benches to sit at in Barcelona.

I am suddenly realizing that my year in Toulouse is almost over and have begun experiencing a bitter sweet mixture of sadness that I will soon leave France, and excitement over moving to New York. This year has been extremely fulfilling and I will miss my relaxed French lifestyle, the adventure of working in a French company and the illuminations that come with living in another culture.

However, my trip to Barcelona last weekend helped remind me that much of what I love about living in France can be found anywhere in the world – the chance to explore, to open yourself up to new people and customs, the pressure to get the most out of your short stay in a place (three days, a year, or hey, why not a lifetime?) and the chance to express yourself in new ways to new people– which in my case this weekend was a very botched Spanish, I didn’t try to butcher Catalan.

A door at the La Pedrera apartment building that Gaudi designed.

Barcelona is about three and a half hours from Toulouse by car, but last weekend was my first time going this year. Despite the proximity to France, I was impressed by the differences between Barcelona and Toulouse, or even Paris.

Barcelona is funky, colorful and vibrant where Paris is more classy, contained and refined. In Barcelona I particularly loved the abundance of bright colors, the diversity of the architecture and the extroverted and exuberant people. At the same time, Barcelona isn’t intense and moves at a relaxed, rolling pace. The wide, tree-lined ‘ramblas’ encourage strolls throughout the city and benches are an inviting way to read a paper or talk friends.

Fresh squeezed juice at the Boqueria Market.

The food I ate in Barcelona was less highly polished than the French fare but very good – I ate lots of cured ham, small tapas and of course, beer is everywhere and olive oil on everything. I loved the traditional slices of toasted bread scrubbed with olive oil, garlic and smashed tomatoes. They can be found everywhere and are a college student’s dream for being cheap cheap. I also full heartedly enjoyed a particular chicken dish I ordered at a high-end restaurant. To my surprise, a soup bowl of olive oil arrived with small shredded pieces of chicken breast floating in it. Despite my initial fears, I have to say the tapa was excellent – the oil had a lemon flavor and was light and fine.

Another memorable food experience was the “Marcat Boqueria,” an immense food market with everything from fish stands, to chocolate, to organic and meatless paella. The fresh squeezed fruit juice for under 2 euros was a yummy and an inexpensive breakfast. But the most memorable experience I had was watching a butcher cut up a chicken. While he butchered away, he casually talked with his customer as if he saw her every Sunday. After about five minutes, he had in front of him the typical breast and thigh cuts that usually arrive under plastic in American supermarkets. I had never seen a chicken cut up in front of me, and it was fascinating to see how the process works. I wish this custom would come to the US as it seems both very hygienic and a good way for people to be more conscious of the meat-ness of meat. Seeing the full carcass and the cleaning and cutting process made me re-think every having thrown away chicken that had gone bad because I had not cooked it in time.

Una bruja!

And of course, going to Spain meant I got to dust off my long dormant Spanish, which was incredibly fun for me and probably very painful for anyone I was speaking to. I had many opportunities to practice as I drove to Barcelona and back in a car full of Spanish speakers, including some who spoke neither French nor English. A good sign of my level is this conversation I had in Spanish: a Spaniard (or should I be saying Cataluynian?) in the car told me that my Spanish was good, and I responded in Spanish by saying, “Yes, the Spanish (people) are great” thinking he was benefiting from my Barcelona enthusiasm to make a joke about how great all Spanish people are. This led him to laugh and inevitably modify his statement about my language level.

But, a few misunderstandings and all verb conjugations aside, I was happily surprised that many Spanish words have stayed with me from the days of singing with Señora Farr and Señor Jimenez en Español. I am solid on colors, food groups, days of the week, animals and physical descriptions. (If speaking to me in Spanish please stay within these topics.) However, now that the Spanish language part of my brain has been activated, my French has been infiltrated by incoherent sounds and words that are in no language at all.

All in all a great weekend and a wonderful city to visit.