Bien choisir son melon charentais jaune

How to choose a Charentais melon

1. Le poids
   Bien dense, le melon doit peser lourd au creux de votre main.
   Although dense, the melon should be heavy in the palm of your hand.
2. La couleur
   Vert clair virant au jaune, le melon doit présenter des sillons vert très marqués.
   Light green turning to yellow, the melon should have well defined green grooves.
3. La maturité
   Une craquelure autour de pédoncule est signe de maturité. Ne pas confondre avec des fentes!
   A crack around the stem is a sign of maturity. Do not confuse with slots!
4. Frais et souple
   Son écorce doit être souple, ni dure, ni molle. Contrairement aux apparences le melon est fragile. À manipuler avec douceur.
   The rind must be flexible, not hard or soft. Contrary to appearances, the melon is fragile. Handle gently.
5. Le parfum
   Son parfum doit être subtile, pas trop prononcé. Une trop forte odeur révèle un melon trop avancé.
   Its perfume should be subtle, not too pronounced. Too strong an odor indicates that the melon is overripe.

Clearly the French are very serious about their melons.

In my continuing series on French groceries, I would love to see something like these in the US. Are you listening Trader Joe’s?

Not all cheeses in France are made with raw milk, but many are, including those aged less than the 60 days required to sell raw milk cheese in the US. Brie and Camembert, for example, are generally aged only 3-4 weeks.

But what’s interesting is that the vast majority of milk available for drinking in the French supermarket is ultrapasteurized (aka UHT milk) and sold in unrefrigerated bricks or liter bottles.

You’d think that a country comfortable with eating raw milk cheese would also prefer drinking their milk raw (lait cru), but you’d be wrong. Thus it’s ironic that the political fight to allow the sale of raw milk in the US focuses primarily on raw milk for drinking, not raw milk for cheese. It’s almost like something got lost in translation. Let’s not forget that it was a Frenchmen, Louis Pasteur, who started this whole “mess” in the first place. I kid.

How something is pasteurized (yes, there are different ways!) is of great importance to a cheesemaker, home- or otherwise, as ultrapasteurized milk is effectively dead from a cheesemaking perspective. It just won’t curdle. It’s basically cooked. This is compared to “regular” HTST pasteurized milk which does less damage by heating the milk to a lower temperature for a short time.

Even the Time Traveler’s Cheatsheet includes a description of pasteurization (though for unknown reasons it starts off the technology section, as opposed to health).

I learned in my most recent cheese class, Sheep Showdown, that not all cheesemakers look down on pasteurization. Our teacher, Michelle Buster, told us that “to pasteurize or not to pasteurize” is as much a question of taste and legality, as it is a question of economics (everything always is). For the local Italian and Spanish cheesemakers she imports from, pasteurizing their milk reduces the risk of a batch of cheese going bad or having an off-taste. Thus pasteurization actually helps to increase their yield, and thus their revenue. On the other hand, the pasteurization equipment is expensive, so some simply cannot afford to go that route.

So why do the French drink ultrapasteurized milk? Apparently, it has to do with refrigeration. Not only is it expensive to ensure that milk stays refrigerated from the processing plant to the grocery store, but the French are known for having rather small fridges at home. Thus several liter bottles (or boxes) of UHT milk can be stored much more easily in the pantry than in the refrigerator.

That would be the name of the cheese class I attended at the Cheese School of San Francisco last Saturday. It was taught by Michelle Buster, who led us through Cheeses of the Mediterranean a year earlier. This time we focused specifically on sheep milk cheeses from Italy, Spain, and Portugal, in particular ones that she has a direct hand in importing to the US—and in many cases, naming.

Starting with the cheese in the cup and going around clockwise:

1. MitiCrema
2. MitiCaña de Oveja*
3. Rustico Limone*
4. Malvarosa
5. Romao Queso al Romero
6. Sfizio Pecorino Crotenese
7. Azeitão D.O.P.*
8. MitiBleu
9. Fulvi Pecorino Romano

I marked my favorites with an asterisk (to be honest they were all quite good), but the one that stood out the most was this runny, gooey Portuguese cheese called Azeitão D.O.P.

This may be old news, but I learned a lot watching this interview with Chipotle’s founder, Steve Ells, and Polyface Farms’ Joel Salatin.

Pretty much all I knew, or thought I knew, about Chipotle was that they were somehow owned by McDonalds. That knowledge always made me feel a little guilty about eating there (on the rare occasions that the FM Engineering team treks out to 1st and Market for lunch). Turns out I can rest easy.

Here are some of the juicier tidbits from the video:

“870 Chipotle restaurants and counting”

Joel: “They get to fully express their pigness. This fully respects and honors the pigness of the pig.”

“Chipotle is one of Joel’s biggest customers”

“After cooking school in 1993 he opened his first Chipotle, a burrito shop in Denver. It was supposed to be his stepping stone to a real restaurant.”

“McDonalds was the major investor in Chipotle, until it sold its shares in 2006 [after seven years]”

The video above was produced in June 2009, but there’s also a good article in the Washington Post that predates it by more than a year, discussing the relationship between Chipotle and Polyface: In Trial Run, Chipotle Heads to the Farm.

In the course of writing this post, I stopped by Chipotle’s website, and my eyes were immediate drawn to the bottom center of the page. How many “fast food” chains do you think are promoting the movie Food, Inc. on their homepage?

How many fast food chains have a whole page on their website dedicated to Food, Inc.?

Color me impressed.