Why French Goat Cheese Belongs on Your Easter or Passover Cheese Board
Editor’s note: If you can’t find the cheeses mentioned, ask your cheesemonger which French goat cheeses are available. A couple that may be easier to find include Selles-sur-cher and Valencay. If you’re keeping kosher for Passover, matzah makes a great substitution for crackers or bread.
French goat cheeses photo credit Jennifer Greco
As winter melts away, it’s time to bid adieu to the cold weather classics like Mont d’Or and Raclette (both the cheese and the meal), and put away recipes for heavy, stick-to-your-ribs dishes such as fondue and tartiflette (a gratin of bacon, potatoes and melted Reblochon) until the next big chill. Spring is coming, and with it comes goat cheese season!
This special time exists due to two factors: the goat’s natural breeding cycle and their diet. In the winter, goats are usually taken into barns and their diet consists of dried hay, straw and grasses, and they’re also pregnant, so producing little or no milk. Once the kids are born in the late winter and early spring, their fat and protein-rich milk production begins in earnest, and they’re taken back outside where they eat fresh grasses, clover, flowers and herbs, all of which perfume their milk. Sweet, rich, flavorful milk equals sweet, rich, flavorful cheese.
The first goat cheeses of the season are just now arriving at the markets and fromageries, and when I go shopping, I feel like I’m being reacquainted with old friends. The other day I picked up a few favorites, la Bouyguette, le Trèfle du Perche and Pélardon, and created a celebratory, early spring chève board.
La Bouyguette is a slender, oblong goat cheese produced at la Fromagerie Ségalafrom, located in the Tarn département (administrative region) in the south of France. Their cheeses are made from milk collected at 6 local farms where the goats graze on the sweet grasses and flowers in the hills north of the city of Albi. Its unusual, long shape is formed by hand, then each fragile cheese is wrapped in a piece of linen and aged for three weeks, giving it a distinctive, furrowed appearance. Once it is unwrapped, the thin rind is decorated with a sprig of fresh rosemary. It is unpasteurized, has a grassy aroma and an airy, fluffy texture that is reminiscent of whipped cream cheese. The flavor is mild, with hints of clover, citrus and fresh milk, and the rosemary adds a subtle perfume to the cheese.
Back in 1999 a group of 7 artisan cheesemakers in the northern part of the Loire Valley and the southern part of Normandy, a region known as Le Perche, established l’Association des Fromagers Caprins Perche et Loir (AFCPL) and created a new goat cheese, le Trèfle du Perche. Their goal was to produce a chèvre that would both catch the eye of the consumer and become associated with their region. During its inception, one of the members spotted an unusual, four-leaf clover shaped clay cheese mold in a local farm museum, and the rest is history. Le Trèfle (clover in French) has been in production since 2005 and is currently made by only a dozen farmers in 4 French departments: the Eure-et-Loir, the Loir-et-Cher, the Sarthe and the Orne. Beneath its thin rind of blue-gray ash, the snowy white interior is rich, creamy and tender. Depending on its age, its flavors can range from fresh milk and hazelnuts, to peppery and salty, and it has a wonderful, long finish.
Pélardon photo credit Jennifer Greco
Pélardon has been gracing the tables of the Languedoc-Roussillon region for over 2,000 years and was also a favorite of the ancient Romans (according to the diaries of Pliny the Elder, written in the 1st century CE). It went through numerous name changes up until the 19th century, when it was finally christened Pélardon. It is now heavily protected, having been granted both appellation d’origine contrôlée (AOC) in 2000 and appellation d’origine protégée (AOP) in 2001.
In the mountains of the Languedoc, the goats graze on a diverse diet of wild herbs, flowers, pine and juniper needles, and oak and chestnut leaves. It is truly a cheese that expresses the terroir of the region. Pélardon is complex, offering nutty and floral notes with hints of yeast and rich butter. When it’s very young, the texture is soft and smooth, after another week or two it relaxes into a creamy, runny disc, and finally becomes dry, brittle and much more goaty in flavor.
French goat cheeses for Passover and Easter photo credit Jennifer Greco
In order of tasting I would start with la Bouyguette, then the Trèfle du Perche and finish with the Pélardon. I paired the trio with a glass of fruity, dry rosé and added a few accompaniments to the board, some flavors and textures that compliment these young cheeses. Green grapes add a hint of sweetness and a juicy, crisp contrast to the creamy textures, while the hazelnuts enhance their nutty flavors. The acidity and sweet notes of strawberries always go well with fresh chèvre and a drizzle of rosemary honey accentuates the herbal notes in la Bouyguette and pairs nicely with the salty notes in the other cheeses.