Roquefort

I just love some of the history behind where some of our most well known food products come from which is quite simply the only reason you'll find me writing about cheese of all things. The last time I visited this category was to impart a little of the story of Camembert upon anyone willing to listen, and this time its the turn of another, much more palatable French cheese in the form of Roquefort, a cheese which has been termed the "king of cheeses". As I said, some of the foods we take for granted these days have some extremely colourful histories, Roquefort is one of those products. It is a cheese which has been around since roman times, a ...

“Once upon a time, there was a young French shepherd who caught sight of a beautiful maiden. He decided to follow her, leaving his lunch of sheep's milk curd and bread behind in a cave. When he returned, he found the bread was mouldy, and there were blue veins running through the sheep's milk curd. Desperately hungry, he ate it anyway, and cried out with delight! "How delicious!" Roquefort had been discovered!” Don’t you love the history and romance surrounding the foods we eat? We have Chicken Marengo, the meal invented by Napoleon’s chef using available ingredients after winning the Battle of Marengo in 1800. ...

Roquefort is another big fish in the blue cheese world, made from ewe's milk it has a notable tangy flavour and is aged slightly longer than Stilton at a minimum of 3 months, until European law had a more notable effect there seemed to be various Roquefort wannabe's available in the supermarket, it now however has a stricter criteria, to meet this and for the cheese to be allowed to use the name Roquefort, it must be aged in the natural Combalou caves of Roquefort-sur-Soulzon in the south of France (Occitan). Roquefort pre-dates most cheeses and goes back as far as AD79. Being French it also has a romantic legend about it's invention, supposedly a shepherd ...