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00:00I'm now for our Entre Nous segment.
00:01Solange Mujan joins us in the studio.
00:04Solange, I can tell by what you have with you today,
00:06we're going to be talking about cheese.
00:08Just to remind everyone today, March, no, actually, March 27th.
00:12Is that today?
00:12It is today.
00:13March 27th is the National Day of Cheese,
00:16or the Journée Nationale du Fromage.
00:17And you're going to walk us through some of the rules about cheese,
00:20particularly how to cut it.
00:22So start with the examples.
00:23Yeah, well, we've created a cheese board for you to illustrate
00:27basically the intricacies and the difficulty of cutting cheese correctly.
00:31But before we get into that,
00:33there are some pointers that are good to know about actual cheese boards.
00:36Ideally, a cheese platter is going to have a vache, a brebis
00:41and a chef or a cow, a sheep and a goat cheese.
00:46Also, it's going to have cheeses of different textures and different strengths.
00:50You're going to eat cheese in a particular order from the mildest
00:53to the most pungent so as not to ruin your palate.
00:57For the next cheese.
00:58As for when to bring this out to guests,
01:02cheese in France is nearly always served at the end of a meal.
01:05There are exceptions to this.
01:07Fondue, for example, is a meal in and of itself.
01:10A host may decide to have an aperitif or an early evening drinks
01:15meal where the cheese and possibly sliced cold meat as well is served.
01:20As for what to drink, contrary to what many think,
01:22you can absolutely drink white wine with many cheeses.
01:26Actually, certain red wines are considered a no, no, particularly with chef
01:29cheeses, for example, because the tannins will drown out the taste of the cheese.
01:35Now, already, this cheese board has a mini faux pas in it.
01:38Many hosts will actually make a cut to invite guests,
01:42say, for example, with this one, they'll make a cut into that
01:45to invite guests to entame or to start a camembert
01:50as for what to cut it with.
01:52Well, there are all types of cheese knives.
01:55There are even spoons, which is what you eat the famous Mondeau with.
01:58But your average cheese knife looks a bit like this.
02:01And here there are a few elements to keep in mind.
02:04It's often a very thin knife.
02:07It can have teeth like here.
02:09And they are sometimes holes in it to reduce the surface area
02:14so that a softer cheese won't stick to it.
02:16And quite often, and this has it has this little double pointed end.
02:21This is handy because it means that you don't have to touch the cheese.
02:25You can slice into it and then stab it and put it onto your plate.
02:28All right. Now, on average, French people eat about 27 kilos of cheese every year.
02:32That's over 50 pounds.
02:34I mean, obviously making France the number one cheese consumer in the world.
02:37So I'm assuming the French generally know how to cut the cheese.
02:40Yeah. Cutting cheese correctly is an important thing to know in France.
02:44And doing it wrong is a sure fire way to have your French
02:48host go bug eyed on you in surprise if you do it wrong,
02:52whether you're French or not.
02:53Now, this isn't to say, though, that all French people or it is to say,
02:57rather, that all French people have mastered the complex geometry
03:00and mind field that comes with cutting the over 1200 cheeses in France.
03:06Actually, the vast majority of French people, well, they buy their cheese
03:09at the supermarket and not at a fromagerie.
03:12So their purchases are often but not always somewhat easier to cut.
03:16They're already pre-cut.
03:18Of course, the proper rules are also often up for debate.
03:21This is France, or as Charles de Gaulle said to have said
03:25in regard to the difficulty of ruling the country.
03:27How do you want me to govern a country where there are 258 varieties of cheese?
03:32There's actually a debate on whether he said that number or another number
03:36in 1962, as it was, as the quote wasn't recorded.
03:39Needless to say, there are lots of ways to do it
03:42and lots of ways to debate about how to do it.
03:44All right. So now I'm intrigued. How do you do it?
03:46How do you cut the cheese?
03:47Well, the rule of thumb is actually quite goes quite well
03:50with the French national motto of Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité or Liberty.
03:55You do it as you want when it's just you and your cheese,
03:58when you when you eat at home by yourself to each his own.
04:01And then there's equality and fraternity, because the idea is to have enough
04:06for everyone to have a fair slice with each slice,
04:09having both the heart and the rind of the cheese.
04:12One of the easier ones is the Camembert.
04:15OK, it's right here.
04:16You cut it like you would a pie.
04:18So you start in the center and you go outside.
04:20I'm going to just do this very quickly.
04:22I hope I'm doing it right.
04:23Oops. There we go. Oops.
04:26If it's already been cut and there's the gooey inside
04:29that's popped out of the wheel, do not just take that gooey inside.
04:33You need some of the rind as well.
04:36As for the rind, whether you eat it, that's up to you.
04:39But you do have to be careful here about how much you carve off of the end.
04:44You can get some shocked faces if you just say cut there
04:47and leave too much of the inside.
04:49But next up is the pyramid.
04:51Yeah, that one always. I never know what to do.
04:53It seems tricky.
04:55This is a Chef Cendres Valenciers.
04:57And again, though, it is quite simple, though, because it's the same concept
05:01as the round ones of having a bit of the center
05:04and a bit of the wider part on the outside.
05:06Ditto. And I'm not going to touch it because it stinks.
05:09Is that very red and orangey maroilles
05:13here? Again, with the maroilles, you do not do slices,
05:17but you go from the center right there and you go around.
05:20Careful with your fingers here.
05:21They will smell if you touch the orange and we'll get to why
05:24they are so stinky in just a minute.
05:26Next up is the heart.
05:28This is a Neufchâtel.
05:29It seems a little more complicated to cut,
05:32but the rules are actually not that bad either.
05:34If you keep in mind that the center of the heart is right, is right there.
05:38OK, the heart of the heart, the heart of a heart
05:40where I personally find that it gets quite tricky is the brie.
05:44Hmm. In practice, you may see people taking thin slices all the way along,
05:50all the way sort of across.
05:52But cheesemongers say that the correct way is actually to cut at an angle
05:56at the heart as to actually to cut that first bit off
06:01and then divide up on the on the rest.
06:03Right. Always leave the point on the brie.
06:05Yeah. Yes. Yes.
06:07Now, Comte,
06:09Pate Crite is a harder cheese.
06:11The natural thing to do, you'd think, was to make slices all the way up.
06:15But the problem with that is at the end, you get the person
06:17gets stuck with the end of the rind again.
06:19Egalité, fraternité.
06:21So to do it correctly, you do thinner.
06:23But if it's a long piece of Comte, you do thinner pieces at the bottom,
06:27then a bit wider pieces that you cut in two towards the middle.
06:31And then at the end, you apply the pie method of going like that.
06:36Last but not least is Roquefort.
06:38Now, my fingers will smell from this.
06:40It's OK. It's all for a good cause.
06:41Exactly. My introduction to these etiquette rules
06:45actually happened with Roquefort.
06:47During my first years in France, I'd cut it like this.
06:50I'd cut from here.
06:51Much the oh la la's of the people I was with.
06:54With Roquefort, you actually have to keep in mind that the sides
06:57and the top are more pungent.
06:59So the center for cutting purposes is actually in the middle on the bottom.
07:04And then you do the pie method.
07:06I can smell it from here. I know. I'm sorry.
07:10So there are many ways to cut, but it's not easy.
07:12But but it is manageable.
07:14All right, so we just have a minute left.
07:16You promised to tell us why cheeses are sometimes so smelly.
07:20Yeah, it's important to cut the cheese correctly.
07:23For those that don't know, there isn't an American expression
07:26who cut the cheese, which actually means to pass gas.
07:30Anglophones in this in this newsroom didn't know that from in the UK.
07:34This is due, of course, the smelliness is due, of course, not only
07:38the smelly aroma comes from the fermentation process,
07:42the mixture of bacteria, fungus, yeast that is part of cheesemaking.
07:46Some of the bacteria produces a gas in it that has sulfur in it.
07:49And that's why it smells.
07:51As for why Mao was OK, I'm going to touch it.
07:54Why it smells so funky.
07:55Well, the aging process in for the ride is that they pour salt
07:59and water solution on it in the aging process, which gives it its orange color
08:03and also its funk.
08:05It's actually, though, quite not not very strong on the inside.
08:08That was amazing.
08:09Solange Meijan, thank you so much.
08:11You are official cheese expert now here at France 24.
08:13Solange Meijan with our entre nous.
08:15Solange, thank you very much.
08:17You are watching France 24.