Shepherd's Delight (Roquefort)

Member Name: lamorna

Product:	Roquefort
Date:	16/10/01 (217 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Versatile, delicious, perfection

Disadvantages: None, price, easy to stuff your face

“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.

We have Peach Melba, named for Dame Nellie Melba, the celebrated Australian soprano.

There is Pavlova, created in the 1930s to honour the Russian Ballerina Anna Pavlova.

Then of course we have the celebrated John Montague, the Fourth Earl of Sandwich, a notorious gambler, who ordered bread and meat in order to continue gambling without interruption, consequently ‘inventing’ the sandwich in 1762.

Here we have an unknown shepherd, from an unidentified era, discovering the delights of an accidental combination of ewes milk and mouldy bread, hailed by gastronomes everywhere as the perfect after dinner cheese.

The French prefer their cheese served after the main course or salad, and definitely before the sweet. Italians are apt to be content with a slice of Gorgonzola with a crisp apple or succulent pear in place of dessert. Americans have a preference for their cheese with salad, which I find rather off putting, as I have yet to find a wine that goes with salad. While the English choose to have their cheese after the sweet, as a savoury to accompany the traditional Port.

Whichever your preference, for my palate, to end a fine meal with cheese, wine, butter and biscuits is ideal. There is nothing as perfect as the finest, and arguably the oldest,
blue cheese ever produced, Roquefort from the Rouerge district of France, served with the red wines of Bordeaux, Bourgogne and the Cote du Rhone.

In 1411 Charles VI of France gave sole rights to the ageing of Roquefort cheese to the village of Roquefort-sur-Soulzon, and all Roquefort still must be aged in the caves there today.

Until 1985, Roquefort was made with ewe’s milk and mouldy bread in the natural caves of the Cambalou Plateau, where moist winds called ‘fleurines’ creep through openings on the surface of the caves, conveying their own flavour and quality to this world famous cheese. Until then Roquefort was available all the year round.

Since 1985, Roquefort has been restricted to sheep of the Mediterranean Lacaune breed kept within the Aveyron vicinity. They give milk only from December to July, so cheese making is a seasonal business. This is where the "real" Roquefort cheese is made that bears the "red sheep" seal of authenticity.

The flow of air from the ‘fleurines’ through the naturally cool, damp caves lets a blue-grey mould develop inside the cheese. This mould is called penicillium roqueforti, strains of which have been cultured, copied and sent around the world to almost everywhere that blue cheese is being made. The penicillium roqueforti is a kind of spore that occurs naturally in caves and cellars.

Traditionally the Roquefort cheese makers put out loaves of bread to attract it, just like the romantic legend of the shepherd, then scraped the mould off and mixed it with their sheep's milk at the start of cheese making. Nowadays the spores can be standardised and cultured in laboratories, with a gain in consistency but a loss of idealistic folk-lore.

I sometimes think it doesn’t do to read too much about the food we eat, but I did and in a way wish I hadn’t, and found that:

“Penicillium Roqueforti is produced f
rom rye and wheat bread loaves inoculated with pure culture. A blue growth penetrates the bread when left in humid air for several weeks. The moulded loaves are crumbled, dried, ground, and sifted to a fine powder containing active cultures.”

I was quite happy with this until further research told me that:

Penicillium Roqueforti has many different industrial uses, for example, flavourings, and most well known blue cheeses. In general, Penicillium Roqueforti is safe to use as flavourings and for cheese. This fungi does, however, produce many mycotoxins. These mycotoxins are strong, but not stable. Medical opinion says that blue cheese is safe for human consumption, and does not really pose a threat to humans, unless the person has an allergy to the mycotoxins.

Even though the fungus on cheese seems to be safe for human consumption, many workers in factories dealing with Penicillium Roqueforti have had severe respiratory problems. These cases, however, are infrequent and seem to affect older or weakened workers. And of course the warning that Roquefort is a soft cheese made from un-pasteurised milk. Pregnant women are advised to avoid all soft cheeses.

Maturing for such a special cheese is in two stages.

The sheep’s milk is left to curdle at the cheese makers, then inoculated with the mould Penicillium Roqueforti and returned to the caves to mature. The cool ’fleurines’ air circulates, the cheeses are pricked, encouraging the mould to grow. After three months ripening, the cheeses are both hand crafted and factory shaped, wrapped in foil and are ready to be marketed.

Roquefort is a semi-hard cheese made of ewe's milk. The "King of Cheeses," It has a tingly, pungent taste. Ripe Roquefort is creamy, thick and white on the inside and has a thin burnt-orange skin. It was the favourite cheese of Emperor Charlemagne as well as the French King Charles VI and I’m pretty fond of
it too.

What can you do with it? The best way for me is as an after dinner cheese, but try this. Cream the Roquefort with butter and spike it with a drop of Brandy, then fill lengths of raw celery. It is instantly orgasmic spread on a fine grilled steak. Salad dressings are raised to another level by blending Roquefort with sour cream and lemon juice.

A classic from the great Robert Carrier is Roquefort Pear and Walnut Salad. The ripe cheese is blended with brandy, cream and paprika and sandwiched between the pears, sprinkled with walnuts and served on a bed of Cos lettuce leaves with French Dressing. For cauliflower cheese, there will be no better sauce, but even better would be a Cauliflower and Roquefort soup! Imagine a Roquefort soufflé? I can!

If you want to eat Roquefort simply as an after dinner cheese, then it is advised to warm the knife first to get a clean cut, sit back, sip your Port and take pleasure in your chosen dining companions.

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