{"id":123,"date":"2009-08-31T08:54:46","date_gmt":"2009-08-31T12:54:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/?p=120"},"modified":"2010-03-09T16:30:35","modified_gmt":"2010-03-09T16:30:35","slug":"french-cuisine-fromage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/french-cuisine-fromage\/","title":{"rendered":"French Cuisine – Fromage"},"content":{"rendered":"

A few things happened to me when I lived in France that made me begin to understand one of the major points of French culture – le fromage<\/em>!\u00a0 First of all, as a student who had to go out and get her own groceries for lunch, one of my first excursions was to a supermarket and the cheese aisle was about as long as the snacks aisle in the US (not just Roquefort, Camembert and Brie).\u00a0 I later was told that there are over 1000 different kinds of cheese produced in France.\u00a0 That’s a lot of cheese!\u00a0 There are soft cheeses, hard cheeses, blues, goat’s cheeses (ch\u00e8vr<\/em>e<\/em>), herbed\/garlic (Boursi<\/em>n) cheeses and much, much more.
\n\"Fromage\"<\/p>\n

After about six months of living in France, I was invited to a friend’s house for lunch.\u00a0 After the main course, out came the hostess with a large, round dish with several different cheeses on it.\u00a0 My friend told me to take some of whichever I liked or to try them all.\u00a0 So, I grabbed my knife and was just about to cut off the bottom of one of the cheese triangles, when his father waved me off and said, “On ne se coupe pas le fromage comme \u00e7a!<\/em>” (You don’t cut cheese like that!).\u00a0 After seeing how red I got in the face, he quickly laughed it off and said not to worry and explained to me that you are supposed to cut cheese in a way that everyone gets an equal part.\u00a0 So instead of left\/right (or just hacking the point off), you should cut the wedge from the top to the bottom.\u00a0 In other words, with the large end of the wedge at the top, you cut a slice off vertically.\u00a0 He then proceeded to explain the different taste of each of the cheeses and took great pleasure in getting me to try them all and discuss them.\u00a0 Each different kind of cheese is cut in a different way<\/a>, but always with the same principle behind the cut- that each person basically gets an equal part and for the cheese not to look demolished as it is served again and again after each meal on the cheese platter.\u00a0 Custom is to pass the cheese platter around the table with each person carefully cutting a portion from each type of cheese and placing their portions on their own plate to eat them once everyone has been served.\u00a0 You normally won’t see French people reaching to the center of the table to get more and more cheese.\u00a0 If someone does want more, they usually take the platter to serve themselves more or ask someone to pass them the platter.
\nYears later when I again lived in France, a friend of mine would often invite me out to dinner and would always make a point to tell me to close my eyes and savor the cheese served after the meal and tell him if I could taste the grass the cheese-making animals had eaten prior to getting milked.\u00a0 What???\u00a0 Can you actually taste the grass in the cheese?\u00a0 Is this true or is this just exaggerative French people for you again, I remember asking myself.\u00a0 Needless to say, I never could taste the grass.\u00a0 It just tasted like cheese to me, albeit delicious.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\"\"

A few things happened to me when I lived in France that made me begin to understand one of the major points of French culture – le fromage!\u00a0 First of all, as a student who had to go out and get her own groceries for lunch, one of my first excursions was to a supermarket…<\/p>\n

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