FOOD TALK FOOD TALK
Not to diss a Brie, but there’s a whole wide world of cheese out there and we should be exploring more of it, says June Lee.
Sweet dreams are made of cheese
In 2018, while judging at Sopexa’s Best Sommelier in French Wine competition, I was impressed when eventual third-place winner Daisuke Shibuya correctly identified all six items during the cheese round. If you’re wondering what a sommelier competition has to do with fromage, the answer is – a lot. Cheese and wine pairings are a delicate art that requires the sommelier to know their curds as well as they do their wines.
When I was growing up, Kraft singles were an occasional treat. It was only when I started a career in food writing that I memorably discovered the likes of pungent Epoisses and delicately nutty Reblochon, at now-defunct Le Saint Julien restaurant where chef Julien Bompard and wife Edith introduced a new generation of foodies to complex, gourmet cheeses. They now run La Fromagerie (gourmetshop.com.sg), where you can still order the Reblochon AOC, a washed-rind and smear-ripened French cheese made from raw cow’s milk. So important is this cheese that it has its own AOC, a French guarantee of ‘protected designation of origin’.
Stinky cheeses and durians are oft compared due to their similar olfactory assault on the senses – followed by creamy, wildly intricate flavours that are raved about by connoisseurs. I’m from the camp that loves both, but often find myself lacking in the vocabulary and deep experience that Europeans have when describing these extraordinary dairy treats.
Last June while in Czech Republic, I happened to map a detour to Olomouc, a town that birthed a sensationally smelly cheese in the 1600s that is the pride of the country. With some trepidation, and in a well-ventilated restaurant where even then the cheese announced itself soon as it entered the room, I got acquainted with the fearsome Olomoucke tvarůžky. This low-fat, full-protein cheese has a very distinctive aroma that’s caused naturally by the proteolytic degradation of cheese proteins during the maturing process. Whichever the cause (yes, it lived up to its odourous reputation) and more surprisingly, it’s rather fulsome and maybe even addictive in taste to an enthusiast like myself.
Another cheese that might seem stinky to Singaporeans is the washed rind category, i.e. the Epoisses I mentioned earlier, perfect with a glass of red Burgundy. Trou Du Cru is another example, washed in Marc de Bourgogne, a strong local alcohol in Burgundy, up to three times a week for three weeks. It develops a bright orange-red, wrinkled rind and inside a creamy ivory yellow paste with a slight smoky flavour overlaid with savoury floral notes that melt in the mouth. This one is ideal with Sauternes, making it a perfect excuse to break out both as dessert.
Over at The Cheese Artisans (thecheeseartisans.com.sg), they tell me that Singaporeans are equally interested in soft and hard cheeses, though hard ones have a slight edge as they store longer. What’s really interesting is their Yan Xun Wei (‘smokey blue’), which was specially developed by them in a marriage of east and west. The base of this cheese is Cashel Blue, an organic Irish cow’s milk cheese picked at eight to 10 weeks old, which is then lightly hickory smoked for two weeks, then packed to age in Chinese black tea for another two to three weeks. The result? A creamy, buttery and crumbly cheese with a seductive smoky veil that finishes on a refined tea finish. The Cheese Artisans also had a series of sake, whisky and gin pairings last year in their now-shuttered Greenwood shop; meanwhile they’re hunting for a suitable new premise.
Sadly, my other formaggi purveyor, Secrets Fine Foods, packed up for good last year, leaving me bereft of their gold medal burrata and aged Comté at my doorstep. I now head further afield to The Cheese Ark (thecheeseark.com), which decamped from their original Pasarbella digs to a new space in Stirling Road. Owner Ai Ming Syu is a dedicated cheesemonger who lives and breathes the kind of small-batch, artisan produced cheeses that are in danger of going extinct. While her occasional offerings of truffled cheeses fly out the door, it takes time and effort to educate palates on the matured and aged treasures she brings in from over 20 happy, family-run farms where cows and goats roam freely.
Out of curiosity, I browse the list of 16 winners in the most recent World Cheese Awards, and am chastised to recognise maybe just three cheeses, such as Ossau-iraty, Baffalo Blu and Pecorino Gran Reserva. Other names were completely new to me, like Fanaost from Norway, Lihmskov from Denmark, Golden Cross from the U.K. and Maayan Harod from Israel. There were a recordbreaking 3,500 cheeses from around the world, judged by 230 experts from 29 nations. It strikes me that even if I explored a new variant a week, it’d take me years to really do justice to the beautiful world of cheeses. Evidently, I’ve got a lot of catching up to do.