We have just recently received our Christmas cheese. These are not wheels covered in ivy and mistletoe but older cheeses we sell over the festive period. The flavour tends to be more intense but we try to retain that sweet, nutty, creaminess you find in the younger cheeses and with these cheeses I think we've done alright. I reckon we have enough to see us through to the middle of January 2012.
Also, we are a couple of shipments in to the Mont D'Or season. For those of you unfamiliar with this cheese it's a soft cows' milk cheese bound with a ribbon of spruce and sold in a little wooden box. When just ripe it has a sweet, fresh milky flavour and an oozy texture. As it ages it gradually becomes more runny and pungent. Mont D'Or is seasonal. Production starts mid August and ends mid March. The cheese is first sold in the middle of September and will be availble toward the end of March. The cheeses we've had so far have been delicious.
Monday, 12 December 2011
Friday, 29 July 2011
Stop Press!
We will not be selling comte at the South Bank this weekend as the Real Food Festival Market is taking a week off to make way for the Real Food Festival Vintage.
We will be back selling Comte at The Real Food Festival at the Southbank Centre August 5-7.
The times are:
- Friday 11-8
- Saturday 11-8
- Sunday 12-6
If you need some comte before then we will be selling at our Arch in Bermondsey as usual on Saturday.
(55 Stanworth Street, London, SE1 3NY) - see Map
We are open every Saturday from 9-2pm where besides Comte we also sell grade A Virginian peanuts.
Friday, 17 June 2011
Trip to the Jura
This Tuesday we will receive our latest delivery of Comte. Jason and I selected them on the 9th. Unlike most of our visits to the Jura where we usually stay overnight this was a day trip.
We started early. My alarm went off at 3.30am. Coffee, banana then a cycle to Vauxhall from my house in Nunhead to meet Jason. Bike in the back we drove to Heathrow.
We arrived in Geneva around 9.30 local time. By ten we were on the road driving along lake Geneva toward Lausanne before turning toward France on the Besancon road.
As soon as you cross the road into France you start to climb. Though nowhere near as high or as dramatic as the Alps the Jura Mountains are 1000 metres plus and get a lot of snow in the winter. The weather this time however was overcast with dark, glowering clouds.
After an hour and a quarter we arrived at our destination: Fort St Antoine, home to Marcel Petite and over 100,000 wheels of Comte. After a frustrating fiddle with a new intercom system we walked around the back and made our way to the offices/kitchen area to see Claude Querry, chef de cave.
Claude was in his office in his whites, cheese iron sticking out of his top pocket. He and Jason got into a conversation and plunged into cyberspace. I had a chat with Hubert.
Hubert is the linchpin between Marcel Petite (maturers of Comte) and the various 'Fruitieres' (small farmer owned co-operatives where the Comte is made). We talked about milk - quality and price. According to Hubert April, May and so far June are proving to be excellent months for milk. For Hubert this is not so much about yield as a good balance of fat and protein.
While having coffee we were joined by Philippe Goux, one of the Directors of Marcel Petite and Jose who has helped select the bulk of our cheeses over the years. Then Jason and I donned our white coats and we all followed Claude to look at some cheese.
Selecting any cheese involves certain preliminaries. Before choosing Comte there is a lot of tapping. With the handle of his cheese iron (a long channel of steel a bit like an apple corer) Claude or Jose tap the cheese all along the surface. They listening for a change in pitch which will indicate a crack in the paste. The cracks are caused by bacterial fermentation within the paste releasing carbon dioxide gas. Cracking is one indicator that a cheese is ready to be sold. Not all cheeses have cracks, but to find out every cheese needs a good tapping.
The cheeses we chose on this trip came from the villages of Chapelle D'Huin and Valoreille. Both had the characteristic sweet nuttiness we are looking for though Valoreille was more savoury and less creamy than Chapelle D'Huin. The tasting was a quick one: hour tops. Then it was lunch.
It had to be fondue. And, after a moments hesitation, it was. We drank, as is customary, some Jura wine and tried a sweet dandelion jelly with some cold meat. By 2 I was feeling "flushed"; Jason less so as he had to drive.
Another coffee at 2.30 and off. We had, however, one last engagement. A drive toward Pontarlier to visit a smokery and buy some saucisse de morteau. The saucisse is something we might import in the future. For now we just wanted to bring some home, cook it and see what it was like. Answer: good.
Dominic
We started early. My alarm went off at 3.30am. Coffee, banana then a cycle to Vauxhall from my house in Nunhead to meet Jason. Bike in the back we drove to Heathrow.
We arrived in Geneva around 9.30 local time. By ten we were on the road driving along lake Geneva toward Lausanne before turning toward France on the Besancon road.
As soon as you cross the road into France you start to climb. Though nowhere near as high or as dramatic as the Alps the Jura Mountains are 1000 metres plus and get a lot of snow in the winter. The weather this time however was overcast with dark, glowering clouds.
After an hour and a quarter we arrived at our destination: Fort St Antoine, home to Marcel Petite and over 100,000 wheels of Comte. After a frustrating fiddle with a new intercom system we walked around the back and made our way to the offices/kitchen area to see Claude Querry, chef de cave.
Claude was in his office in his whites, cheese iron sticking out of his top pocket. He and Jason got into a conversation and plunged into cyberspace. I had a chat with Hubert.
Hubert is the linchpin between Marcel Petite (maturers of Comte) and the various 'Fruitieres' (small farmer owned co-operatives where the Comte is made). We talked about milk - quality and price. According to Hubert April, May and so far June are proving to be excellent months for milk. For Hubert this is not so much about yield as a good balance of fat and protein.
While having coffee we were joined by Philippe Goux, one of the Directors of Marcel Petite and Jose who has helped select the bulk of our cheeses over the years. Then Jason and I donned our white coats and we all followed Claude to look at some cheese.
Selecting any cheese involves certain preliminaries. Before choosing Comte there is a lot of tapping. With the handle of his cheese iron (a long channel of steel a bit like an apple corer) Claude or Jose tap the cheese all along the surface. They listening for a change in pitch which will indicate a crack in the paste. The cracks are caused by bacterial fermentation within the paste releasing carbon dioxide gas. Cracking is one indicator that a cheese is ready to be sold. Not all cheeses have cracks, but to find out every cheese needs a good tapping.
The cheeses we chose on this trip came from the villages of Chapelle D'Huin and Valoreille. Both had the characteristic sweet nuttiness we are looking for though Valoreille was more savoury and less creamy than Chapelle D'Huin. The tasting was a quick one: hour tops. Then it was lunch.
It had to be fondue. And, after a moments hesitation, it was. We drank, as is customary, some Jura wine and tried a sweet dandelion jelly with some cold meat. By 2 I was feeling "flushed"; Jason less so as he had to drive.
Another coffee at 2.30 and off. We had, however, one last engagement. A drive toward Pontarlier to visit a smokery and buy some saucisse de morteau. The saucisse is something we might import in the future. For now we just wanted to bring some home, cook it and see what it was like. Answer: good.
Dominic
The Borough Cheese Company will be selling Comte at The Real Food Festival at the Southbank Centre.
The times are:
- Friday 11-8
- Saturday 11-8
- Sunday 12-6
You can also get your hands on Comte from our railway arch in Bermondsey (55 Stanworth Street, London, SE1 3NY) - see Map.
We will be open every Saturday from 9-2pm where besides Comte we also sell grade A Virginian peanuts.
We share our arch so you can also get vegetables and meat from Fern Verrow,
coffee from Coleman Coffee Roasters; and natural wines from
Aubert & Mascoli.
Other arches in the area are also open for trade during the same hours. For details of who and where they are see the following link
www.maltbystreet.com.
You can also get our cheese from Neals Yard Dairy at Borough Market.
Further west you can buy our cheese at Partridges Food Market on Duke of York Square, Kings Road Chelsea, from 10-4 every saturday.
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